#Mab Gwalia

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Just Michael, improving the world a little bit at a time.

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The Two Michaels, with Danielle Fahiya - 30/08/2024

Mansfield & Sheen - The Two Michaels

Together for one night, two famous crusaders against injustice - one in the arts, the other in the legal profession. Michael Sheen - Welsh actor and social campaigner - Buried, The Way, Nye, The Assembly,  Michael Mansfield KC - Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough, Stephen Lawrence and the Grenfell Inquiry. In Wales The Cardiff Five, Cardiff Newsagent Three and Mahmood Mattan. The two care passionately about social change, whether it's fighting through the courts or raising awareness on the stage and screen. Tonight the two meet for the first time to talk about how we, the people, can make a difference.

Hosted by Actor and Presenter Danielle Fahiya of BBC Sounds Mattan: Injustice of a Hanged Man.  All proceeds will be shared between Michael Mansfield's charity SOS Silence of Suicide and Michael Sheen's charity Mab Gwalia

Michael Mansfield will be signing copies of his book The Power in the People following the talk, in asssociation with Book-ish. No ​filming nor recording of the talk will be permitted

Event organised by Danielle Fahiya and Phillipa Cherryson.

[asat3683]

[ingravinoveritas]

Oh, God, yes. Seeing that new video was so refreshing because it’s like you can see the real Michael reemerging again:

To be completely honest, I did not at all like his hair when it was dyed for Amadeus. Not only the color, but the fact that his curls seemed to be repeatedly squished and compressed beneath the wigs he had to wear. But the salt and pepper curls are so incredibly attractive on him and clearly seem to be the aesthetic he feels most “at home” in (well, and perhaps also when he goes Soho Gay Blond to play Aziraphale).

But yes, so very glad to see Michael’s hair in its present state (along with the return of the beard!) and hoping he keeps it like this for the GO 2 press tour...

Anyone else loving Michael's hair recently?

I'm loving the gray and white bleeding into the brown his hair had been dyed a few months ago.

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Long time reader/lurker, first time writer. Have you seen the article Michael wrote for the mirror published on 15/8/2024? it won’t let me link it here, but it’s titled “Theatre changed my life“ and it’s a wonderful piece - I felt very sad to hear him speak of his father’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, but it always warms my heart to see all the good he’s doing with his charity work. It reminded me of hearing him speak so passionately about his charitable works on the Table Manners podcast

anyway- thanks for all you do in the fandom- I always enjoy your thoughtful and (sometimes racy) posts!

Hi there! Oh, it's so lovely to hear from a longtime reader/lurker. I appreciate you writing in! I did indeed see the article Michael wrote for The Mirror this past week. I'll post the link below, for folks who haven't gotten a chance to see it:

I didn't know that Michael's dad has Alzheimer's, and was so saddened to read about this and to imagine the pain his family must be feeling. One of the things that made me first fall in love with Michael is that he is such a brilliant storyteller, but in particular when he talks about people he really loves. He brings those people so completely to life because he wants you to know who they are. Meyrick has always seemed like such an almost larger-than-life character, and it felt like we knew him, in a way, from Michael's stories--especially the ones about his work as a Jack Nicholson lookalike. So it breaks my heart to know that Michael is having to see the threads of who his father is slowly slipping away.

I agree with you as well that it was lovely to read about Michael talking about his charity work. None of it felt braggadocios in the slightest--rather, it seemed like it was Michael saying, "I've done all these things, but there is still so much more to do, so many more people who need help." It seems like he doesn't even necessarily think of it as "charity work," but as essential efforts to create change. Things that should already be happening, but that for one reason or another aren't.

Michael never seems content, in that way, to rest on his laurels, and that may be why he is always keeping himself busy with film work, charity work, and so on. I love as well that he started Mab Gwalia to fund endeavors that he himself is unable to personally helm, but still supports and champions (ASD Rainbows and A Writing Chance are particularly close to my heart as a writer who also happens to be an autistic woman). I just hope he isn't overextending himself by trying to do too much, especially after spending the first half of this year playing Nye Bevan, which was so physically and mentally demanding on its own.

I also wanted to thank you for the kind words you said at the close of your message. There are times where it's difficult for me to tell what sort of presence I have in the fandom, or if I'm just shouting into the void (though I suppose we all are, in a way). So I am very glad to know that you are enjoying my posts (even if I do tend to overthink everything). My heartfelt gratitude to you for writing in! x

[hemlocktowers]

Good initiatives: https://mabgwalia.wales/

[invisibleicewands]

A ROCK BAND hailing from Caerphilly has teamed up with a Hollywood star, to fund the education for aspiring actors in an arts funding project.

Rockers Manic Street Preachers have teamed up with Hollywood star Michael Sheen to fund aspiring actors. 

Mr Sheen said: "We’re in the midst of an arts emergency in Wales.

"Cuts are taking away tongues at the very moment our stories need to be shouted loudest."

The Manics and the Good Omens actor handed thousands of pounds to 11 aspiring actors over the past three years to fund their educations. 

Sheen, 55, has pumped more than £250,000 of his own money into the arts funding project, which is also backed by the "Design for Life" rock band. 

Sheen revealed that the funding - given as part of his Mab Gwalia organisation - will be renewed for a further three years after he hit out against government cuts to the arts. 

The Damned United actor, said: "Mab Gwalia has emerged to provide support to give tomorrow’s talent a platform and pathway to develop their craft and tell our truth to the world. But the door is open to others with shared values who can contribute financially to the fund."

The Mab Gwalia Welsh drama student scholarship has so far handed up to £15,000 per academic year to aspiring actors and announced it will continue for a further three years. 

One of those students, Hollie Saunders, said the funding helped her attend Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. 

Maesteg-based Holly, said: "The scholarship really made me feel so confident and just kind of hopeful, and without that scholarship, I wouldn't have been able to have that propeller to be like, I could do this too."

Sheen - who is known for his roles as former Prime Minister Tony Blair and soccer boss Brian Clough - has also helped fund a writing project and given bursaries to 11 writers from working-class and under-represented backgrounds.

One of those to benefit from the A Writing Chance scheme, Grace Quantock, of Newport, Gwent, praised Sheen for funding the initiative. 

Ms Quantock, said: "Michael Sheen’s belief in Welsh working class voices changes lives. He knows art makes change, revolutionises lives, opens horizons and he is willing to step up to make that happen in his art and in his actions. 

"His support changed my life through the A Writing Chance programme."

Outside the arts, Mab Gwalia has supported causes as vital as autism support, army veterans, mothers suffering post-natal depression, community skills hubs, foodbanks and more.

[invisibleicewands]

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What is @MabGwalia? when

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‘Theatre changed my life,’ says Michael Sheen. ‘Now my passion is for helping others’

Theatre can change lives. And I should know. It’s changed my life more than I’d ever have imagined. Back in 2011, a play called The Passion took over the streets of my hometown of Port Talbot. And I haven’t been the same since.

Perhaps the perception of actors before a play is that we’ll learn a few lines, try on a few costumes... break a leg. But with The Passion, I went all in like never before.

I also met the people doing vital work in the community I grew up in, helping vulnerable people who need it the most, often at make-or-break moments. Being at this coalface of community opened my eyes.

This patchwork of people holding society together with the thinnest of threads, going over and above each and every day to help people in almost every aspect of their lives.

I saw then – and I continue to see – kind-hearted, warm, tolerant people helping out their fellow humans to bring communities together. These are the people who make our nation what it is.

The good deeds that these people did – from giving young carers a night off to go bowling, to setting up the only grief counselling service in the area – generally worked under fragile funding and often were under-appreciated by the wider community.

I knew then that I had to devote as much time and energy as I could to helping, however I could.

In the decade and a half since The Passion, I’ve started projects around homelessness, high-cost credit, care, and local journalism. And for the past 18 months, these have come under the banner of a movement known as Mab Gwalia.

Mab Gwalia believes that opportunity should not only be available to those who can afford it. The ambition is to build a movement that makes change.

We support people and projects which work in three ways: projects creating opportunity and fighting for fairness; projects rooted in communities, helping people directly; and projects that work in new and ambitious ways to deliver change.

My work on The Passion made me realise there’s so many people out there doing this. And Mab Gwalia has supported as many of them as we can.

This has included: Army veterans in Merthyr Tydfil. Autism support for children in Rhondda Cynon Taf. Food growing in Pembrokeshire. Opportunities for women in Swansea who’ve suffered knock-back after knock-back. Community skills hubs in Rhyl.

Theatre changed my life. Now I want the spark it set off in me to do the same for others.

My ancestor, Nanny Blower, the lion tamer

My great-great grandmother was called Mary Ann-North. Or Nanny Blower, as we know her.

She left Wales for New York in 1896 where she became, wait for it, an elephant and lion tamer for the Bostock and Wombwell Circus. Fast forward to today and young people in the Upper Neath Valleys don’t have to run away to join the circus. Organised Kaos comes to them.

Kaos stands for “keeping adolescents off the streets” and that’s what they do. I first met them on The Passion (riding BMXs through fire – them, not me) and now Mab Gwalia has helped fund their work.

Manics band drum up £15,000 for drama study

“Libraries gave us power” – the opening lyrics to Wales’ second national anthem, A Design For Life.

The Manic Street Preachers wrote a version of the song for The Passion, performing it at The Last Supper in the Seaside Social & Labour Club… before being arrested and hauled off stage for the show’s added drama.

The band is working with Mab Gwalia to fund a drama scholarship, providing financial support to students who need it. Since 2021, 11 students have received up to £15,000 each academic year.

We’ve just committed to another three years. The students tell us it gives them a chance to believe. The arts should be for everyone.

Mothers Matter, like my mum and partner Anna

My mum’s going through a tough time as my dad is living with Alzheimer’s. It’s a lot to take. I’m thankful every day for how my partner Anna is with our daughters.

It’s an understatement, but mothers matter. That’s the name of an organisation Mab Gwalia has supported. Mothers Matter helps mums suffering from loneliness and isolation through support, counselling, wellbeing hubs and workshops. Mothers in South Wales don’t have to do it alone.

We give a voice to working class writers

A summer reading recommendation: Only Here, Only Now by Tom Newlands. It’s Cora’s story – a teenage girl with ADHD finding her way through life in the early 90s in post-industrial Scotland. She’ll change the way you think about neurodivergence. It’s an unforgettable debut novel.

Tom was part of A Writing Chance, a project I developed alongside the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, New Writing North and Northumbria University. The Office for National Statistics says nearly half all authors are from the most privileged backgrounds.

So we’re trying to redress that balance. To turn up voices not always heard. Tom was one of the first group – 11 writers who received bursaries and mentoring with industry leaders including regular writer of this column, Ros Wynne-Jones.

You can hear their stories in the BBC Sounds podcast Margins to Mainstream with Michael Sheen. Now, 16 more writers are on board. Think of the stories to come.

My debut at the ‘brilliant Welsh party’

With origins dating from 1176, the National Eisteddfod is Europe’s largest cultural festival. A celebration of Welsh language culture with performances and competitions in everything from composition to cynghanedd (a type of Welsh poetry). And, last weekend, in Pontypridd, I made my debut on the maes (site or field).

My four-year-old daughter now refers to it as “that brilliant Welsh party” which neatly describes the atmosphere. On stage, the actress Sian Phillips said the sounds of words in Welsh “echoed with the language”.

I felt those echoes all day. Spoken in the park by families. Performed by young actors. Sung with emotion by choirs. It was a beautiful thing.

Homeless World Cup a beautiful game

Next month, the Homeless World Cup takes place in Seoul, South Korea. Bringing the tournament to Cardiff in 2019, seeing 500 players with experience of homelessness represent their nation on the football field, was something I’ll never forget.

If you can’t wait until then, watch The Beautiful Game on Netflix. Keep an eye on Callum Scott Howells, a brilliant young Welsh actor who I directed in BBC drama The Way (available on iPlayer).

Nye NHS vision seen on world stage

I’ve spent much of this year playing the man who had the vision and valour to create the National Health Service. Nye was theatre at its most far-reaching.

There were sold-out runs in the National Theatre in London, the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. And cinema screenings were viewed by people all over the world.

On the night we filmed the NT Live screening, NHS workers from around the country were invited to be in the audience. They knew that at that moment, a global audience was learning about our welfare state and the man who was behind it.

My dad came along one night. He was just a little kid when Bevan’s idea became reality. Soon there’ll be very few left who can remember what life was like before the NHS.

Let’s hope it stays that way. Can the new government come up with a progressive policy that inspires a story which packs them in 75 years on? We can but dream.

[ingravinoveritas]

Have you seen Anna’s latest photo of her and Michael? Doesn’t Michael look so sad and tired? I feel like the whole vibe is just like they’ve just had a fight and are trying to keep it together for the camera, and the kids.

Hello, Anon. I did indeed see the picture that Anna posted last week, and it's honestly hard to know where to begin. First, let's get a visual up, for anyone who hasn't yet seen it:

What I first thought of when seeing this pic was, "How does this even look like a night out?" They're posed against a blank blue wall that gives no context as to where they are or how this has anything to do with a night out. But what came to mind next was that AL posted this specifically because she wanted the same thing that Georgia got when she posted a picture of her and David in an Insta story earlier in the week, which is to have people sharing it all over Twitter and gushing about her and Michael being "couple goals."

The problem, though, is that in the pictures Georgia posts, David at least does not look like he is being held hostage in them. It's that even though those pictures may be posed, Georgia is very adept at being subtle and making them look spontaneous. AL, however, is not...and the harder she tries to make her and Michael's relationship look like Georgia and David's, the more obvious it is that it's not.

What truly confounds me is that we're expected to believe Michael is happy in that picture, especially when we look at it side-by-side with this picture that was taken just one day prior:

When I look at the picture on the left, to me, that is the real Michael Sheen--the man who loves being out in the community and meeting people. In the picture on the right, that is Michael playing a role, the version of himself that exists in AL's fantasy/idea of what their relationship is...but it's clearly not a role he believes in (the difference is particularly visible in his eyes, which are sparkling and bright in the picture on the left, in stark contrast to how dull and lifeless they are on the right). And the thing for me is, if Michael doesn't believe in that role, then why should any of us? It just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

Overall, though, it's just...really a terrible picture? Even the composition of it next to the picture on the left is so strange, because they're both selfies, yet Michael looks so subdued in the picture with her--perhaps that sad/tired vibe that you were describing, Anon. AL clearly had agency over when/where that picture was taken, and yet she still chose to post it. There were so many choices being made here, and it's sort of mind-boggling to me how astoundingly bad a lot of them were.

To make matters even worse, just a few days later, it came to light that the big "night out" was them going to see a play at a community theater in Swansea, and Michael meeting with people from a charity that he supports, Adferiad Recovery:

Yet there was no reference made to any of this in AL's Insta post--not of the play, nor of the charity of which Michael is a patron, and which she could've easily mentioned. If this was in fact the night out in question, it makes it seem like she was using him for PR and making his work about her. It also seems like she had no problem being purposely misleading about what happened while showing how little she cares about his charity work in the process.

The sad thing is, this isn't even the first time she's done this. In the week before the Insta post, it came to my attention that AL retweeted two of Michael's Mab Gwalia videos, and immediately followed that with a retweet of this:

For those who may not have keyed into the meaning behind the acorn emojis in the caption, Anna seems to be bragging about Michael staring at her tits. (Though personally that is not even remotely close to my interpretation of this picture.) Painfully unfunny, and embarrassing as all get-out to boot. So she retweets the videos of his charity for PR, but it's when she retweets this picture and writes in her own voice that her true nature comes to light, which seems to involve not caring how bad she makes him look.

When the Insta picture was posted, I had several people DMing me about it, so I'd like to wrap this up by sharing a few things that were said, as I think they perfectly sum up what my feelings are. One person said to me that Michael and AL "can’t achieve the same look of happiness together as they can apart" and that "the weird distance" between them "is always present." I'm just not getting "couple" energy from them in that picture, and if Anna's reason for posting it was to convey that, I'd say she achieved the opposite effect instead.

The other thing I'd like to share comes from @thetardisisblueandroseistoo, in response to the fans who did share the picture on Twitter (though I didn't see it on any other social media channels, strangely enough) and who have gushed over Michael and AL as "couple goals":

"[...]All four people [Michael, AL, David, Georgia] are "couple goals" because they're presenting as straight, white, and monogamous. They are comfortable to consume and stan when presented like that. But if you pause and think maybe David and Georgia are open, David is very probably at least bi, Anna is collateral, and Michael is a serial womanizer that fell in love with his married male co-star, that's a lot less comfortable to think about. Fans project onto them, but instead of these people having the same problems that "normal people" have, they evidently have no problems at all. They're projecting an idea of infallibility onto all of them."

As anyone who follows my blog knows, I ardently ship Michael and David. But when I talk about their relationship, it's always from the perspective of what might be, and what seems probable from what has been publicly presented. Do I also discuss fantasies involving the two of them? Absolutely. But (I hope, anyway) that distinction between reality and fantasy is clear, whereas I don't see that at all in the people who vigorously defend Michael and AL's relationship. These fans see what they want to be true of that relationship, rather than discussing the reality of what the situation might actually be.

My aim in having these conversations on my blog and answering these Anons is to let people know that it's okay to ask these questions. It's okay to see Michael and David (and AL and Georgia) as human beings, instead of as "perfect" or "flawless." And it's okay for us to be honest about what we are seeing, especially when pictures like this are posted and stand out to so many of us for all the wrong reasons.

So those are my thoughts on the picture from last week. How accurate (or not) I may be in my observations, who knows. But I think it speaks volumes that more and more people seem to be noticing the marked difference in Michael's appearance and expression in pictures with AL versus with other people, and how that does not seem to bode well for their relationship. I guess we'll just have to see what happens...

[invisibleicewands]

michaelsheen photographed on film exclusively for his brilliant new initiative MabGwalia, a couple of weeks ago. I've really enjoyed hearing from the different organisations Mab Gwalia helps, as I've travelled around Wales photographing them

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