'Pride anthem' debuts at festival after LGBTQ+ row

"I want my children to grow up in a kinder world."

Ian "H" Watkins has made no secret of his desire to promote inclusivity and kindness.

The Steps star set up Cowbridge Pride three years ago, with the aim of bringing his own hometown community together to celebrate difference and nurture local talent.

Now he has worked with children from the area to create the Urdd Eisteddfod's "official Pride song", which he described as a "ground-breaking" move for a festival steeped in history.

Bydd yn ti dy hun - which translates as Be Yourself - was taught to others and then performed by the young singers at the Urdd Eisteddfod in Meifod, Powys, this week.

It comes after a row broke out at last year’s event in Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, over a specific LGBTQ+ area being introduced.

Critics accused the Urdd Gobaith Cymru, which organises the annual Welsh-language youth festival, of "pushing this ideology" on young people and labelled badges encouraging people to display their pronouns as "disgraceful".

"The whole event is steadily becoming more progressive. Diversity is celebrated now," said Mr Watkins.

“Small things to some people are momentous to others.

"It’s no biggie for me to wear my pronouns, but to somebody else that’s a massive deal so why shouldn’t I make that person feel included and loved and that they belong.

"It’s baby steps. Nobody wants to change the tradition, it just has to get in line with where we are today and where we are in the world. It’s a place for everybody, and sometimes people don’t feel that."

To put together the song, Mr Watkins and Welsh singer Caryl Parry Jones asked pupils from Ysgol Iolo Morganwg in Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, to make lyric suggestions on the themes of kindness and self acceptance.

"You realise when you go to meet young people that young people aren’t the problem… [they] were so articulate and creative and positive, and that comes across in the song," said Mr Watkins.

"It’s the parents that need educating. It’s what I wished for when I was a child, I never had that.

"There were a lot of dark times, and there still are dark times for a lot of people. But hopefully this song can be a little rainbow."

Ms Parry Jones said the song meant so much to Mr Watkins as a gay dad with school-age children, but also to her as the mother of a son with autism.

"Neurodiversity is also celebrated and that meant a lot to me personally, but skin colour, religion, everything is celebrated under this one umbrella. And it’s a happy song.

“The Eisteddfod, especially in the last couple of years, has made leaps and bounds to include everyone."

The pupils from Ysgol Iolo Morganwg were joined on stage by peers from Ysgol Ponardawe in Neath Port Talbot, where the festival will be held next year.

Mr Watkins said it was a symbolic passing of the baton, adding: "The aim is to get every child in Wales to know this song and to sing this song, and it will become an annual event here at the Urdd Eisteddfod."