From social justice to slate heritage: One woman's long career in community development

September 19, 2025

From social justice to slate heritage: One woman's long career in community development

Jayne Myfanwy Mills has spent all her adult life seeking to "enable the quiet voices to be heard". These days she's using her skills and experience to work with other members of the community to keep Abergynolwyn's slate heritage alive - and to ensure this world-recognised resource benefits the village's future.

Jayne is a founder of Abergynolwyn Community Heritage (Treftadaeth Gymunedol Abergynolwyn) project, which was set up in response to Gwynedd Council's bid to acquire UNESCO World Heritage status for the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales. Made up of six sites around the county of Gwynedd, this dramatic historical scenery includes Bryneglwys Quarry, perched high above Abergynolwyn, the village itself and the railway - Talyllyn - that was built to transport the slate to the coast at Tywyn and, from there, to all parts of the globe.

For just over a century, the quarry - which operated from 1845 to 1946 - was the area's biggest employer, with more than 300 men and boys working there during its heyday. Its incline and horse tramway system, designed to take slate from the quarry down to the railway - the skeleton of which can still be seen today - is thought to be unique.

Quarry incline in its heyday. Photo courtesy of Talyllyn Railway archives

Not as large or as well-known as the quarries in northern Snowdonia (Eryri), such as Dinorwig and Penrhyn, Bryneglwys can sometimes be overlooked.

"I've been at meetings where Abergynolwyn hasn't been mentioned as part of the World Heritage site, and I've had to remind people," says Jayne, whose links to the area go back to her Welsh grandfather.

"The Abergynolwyn Community Heritage project has been helpful in keeping the local history alive and explaining why it's still important, but the aim is not just to preserve the heritage; it's also about giving the community a voice and getting a fair share of the resources that are available to the World Heritage site as a whole. In the north, for example, they are putting on events and training programmes on how to work slate and slate art, so it's not only about history - it's about the future too: skilled crafts have to be a way forward in terms of economic and cultural opportunities for people in the area."

Bringing together old and new, past and future is vital, she says. "It's not enough for us simply to tell the story of the quarry and the village - it's really important that we build relationships of mutual respect between the old and the new communities, and I hope the heritage project is a platform that can help to do that."

From producing storytelling videos and leaflets on the Quarry Inclines Walk to organising bilingual talks at the community centre (ganolfan) and securing funding for the erection of a memorial to the slate workers, the project hopes to shape the impact that being a World Heritage site might have on the village.

"It's about keeping Abergynolwyn in the spotlight and on the map, but also about keeping the heritage locally owned and real so that we don't ever become a Disney-style attraction."

In fact, Jayne's professional life has been anything but Disney-like, with much of it spent in inner-city areas of England and Wales where she's worked in community development.

"Both my parents were quite active in the community, so from an early age I've been motivated by social justice. In all communities there are people who have loud voices and those who aren't heard, because of an imbalance of power. My work has been about enabling the people with quiet voices to be heard - and not just heard, but for action to be taken as a result of what they say."

One project Jayne helped to set up and run in the late 1980s was a women's training initiative in Sunderland, in the north-east of England, called The Bridge Project, which ran for 25 years.

"The building we set it up in was next to a working men's club and we actually received death threats for - allegedly - 'breaking up marriages'," she remembers. "We ran confidence building and non-traditional skills training such as lorry driving, plumbing, bricklaying and technology."

So successful was the project that it expanded to cover five sites, and at one point was sending 400 women to college each week. "One woman, a single mother-of-three, who came to us because her roof was leaking and she didn't know what to do, ended up going to university and becoming an engineer."

Years later, Jayne was in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and, by chance, met the daughter of a woman who'd attended the project. "I was buying something at a street food stall and got chatting to the woman running it. When I mentioned I used to work at The Bridge Project, she said: 'Oh, you made such a difference to my mother: you gave her the confidence to leave my dad, who was violent and horrible, and all of us kids have gone on to have healthy relationships as a result of what the project did for my mum'. Getting that feedback all those years later was so special."

Jayne (centre) outside The Bridge Project in the 1980s

Jayne's community development work has also taken her to Wales. During the 1980s she ran a children's art scheme in Barry, South Wales, and she also helped to set up a centre there teaching unemployed young people decorating skills.

"More recently I've supported social enterprises, mostly in Wrexham and Flintshire, but also in Newtown, and I've done a little bit of work around here too." One happy outcome was the saving of Plas Madoc Leisure Centre in Acrefair near Wrexham after it closed down "when the council ran out of money". Jayne worked with local politicians and members of the community to help local people take it over and run it as a social enterprise, now called Splash Community Trust.

As well as working for various local authorities, Jayne has also done national consultancy work, including being appointed an expert adviser to Tony Blair's government, where she and others raised concerns about plans for the so-called Big Society.

"I've had my own business, Praxis Community Development Consultancy, since 1998, and I've worked with local authority, charity and community sectors offering, amongst other things, mentoring, troubleshooting and training. At the moment I'm hoping to establish Abergynolwyn Community Heritage as a Welsh-led charitable trust, and I'm also in the process of starting up an advice surgery for social enterprise, community and charity workers and their organisations."

During the decades she spent in different parts of England, Jayne was always aware of a nagging feeling of homesickness for a country she'd never actually lived in - Wales.

"All my life I've had hiraeth (loosely translated as deep longing for somewhere, often one's home), but until I moved to Abergynolwyn nearly 13 years ago, I didn't know it had a name," she explains. "Whenever I'd been away from this place for more than a year, I would get homesick."

Although she grew up in Birmingham to English-born parents, Jayne was keenly aware of her Welsh heritage. "My maternal grandfather, Idwal James Roberts, whose family originated from Anglesey and Ruthin, was embedded in his Welsh identity and I was brought up to feel I had Welsh identity too. I was given the middle name Myfanwy, and I remember listening to a lot of Welsh music when I was young."

Jayne describes her childhood as "quite challenging" and says the place she felt safest and most content was her grandparents' rented hillside cottage, Coed-y-Gof, in Abertrinant. "I spent every minute I could there and will always be grateful to my grandparents and to Austin and Elizabeth Williams, who rented the cottage to them, for the sanctuary it gave me."

Eventually, in 2013, Jayne decided to move to Wales permanently. "There were lots of changes happening in my life and I was 56, so I thought, 'it's now or never' and I moved from North-East England to Abergynolwyn."

Although she found it "really hard" at the beginning, making the village her home has been "amazing", she says.

"I feel quite proud of myself, because I moved on my own from somewhere I was well known to a place where I knew only one person. But I started networking and gradually I got to know people. What's especially gratifying is that I now feel accepted by the local community. That means a lot to me, because I've always felt this is where I belong. All my life it's been my safe place - my sanctuary - and now I live here."

* In the main/top photo, Jayne is pictured next to a model of the quarry incline made by the Talyllyn Railway's Steve Bowers and his father, now on display at Y Ganolfan Abergynolwyn.