EISTEDDFOD director Sian Eirian will view the end of this week's festival at Carmarthen with mixed emotions.
She will be pleased the week-long event will have passed without major controversey or incident. But this will be tinged with sadness as her 25-year career with the Urdd ends when the final competitor leaves the stage on Saturday evening. Later this month she starts a new job with S4C as head of Children's Services.
Sian has been overseeing the Eisteddfod for the past six years. Before that she was the movement's director in North Wales after starting as a development officer in the then West Clwyd.
She has happy memories of all the festivals she has organised not least the first one which never really took place.
"It was 2001 and I took up my duties in January and was looking forward to the Eisteddfod in Cardiff not realising that within six weeks I would be in negotiations to cancel the whole event because of the foot-and-mouth outbreak. After taking that decision we were faced with the logistical nightmare of organising a mostly televisual Urdd festival which took place in Cardiff and Caernarfon.
"Its a good job we don't know what's ahead of us because if I had known before had about it (the foot-and-mouth outbreak) I wouldn't have taken the post. It was a baptism of fire but an incredible experience and a pioneering experiment," she recalled.
The most memorable of the festivals organised by Sian was the 2005 Eisteddfod staged at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.
The movement has a stake in the building with one of its residential centres an integral part of the ambitious project and the Urdd plan to stage the Eisteddfod in Cardiff Bay every four years. It was confirmed this week that the 2009 and 2013 festivals will be staged there.
"It was an incredibly complicated event to organise. We usually deal with just one authority and normally one landowner but in the case of the Millennium Centre there were about a dozen, some of whom were in London. The logistics of closing off streets in a capital city for more than a week was another problem we had to contend with.
"But I am the sort of person who looks on the positive side of every challenge and I think we succeed with that sort of attitude. I hope that my period at the helm will be seen as one of experiment and change and that the Eisteddfod has moved forward," she said.
In the past four years master classes for talented youngsters have been introduced on the Maes and all the preliminary tests are now held on the same site.
Sian noted: "It is wonderful to see the prelims being held on the site and not in the corridors of a school as was the case in some past Eisteddfodau."
Staging this year's Eisteddfod in Carmarthen has cost £1.7m.
It takes four years work to prepare each Eisteddfod and we know where the festival will be held up to 2013. After next year's Cowny Eisteddfod,which will be held on land near Ysgol y Creuddyn in Penrhyn Bay, we go back to Cardiff in 2009. The 2010 Eisteddfod will at Ceredigion and fund-raising has already started there.
"We are discussing the location of the 2011 Eisteddfod with a South Wales local authority and in 2012 we will stage the event in Gwynedd before returning to Cardiff again in 2013.
"Much of the preparation work for next year's Eisteddfod in Conwy has been made. It would have been nice to have been at the helm of that Eisteddfod because I am from the area. But I will be there," she added.
Sian is convinced of the benefits of the Urdd's policy to move the Eisteddfod around Wales
"We leave a rich legacy in the area and this is an important part of the Urdd's work. The feedback we receive from the communities which have hosted the Eisteddfod confirm the benefits, especially the boost it gives the Welsh language.
Sian admits to being a "child of the Urdd" and started work with the movement after being an active member of Aelwyd Bro Cernyw in her native Llangernyw near Llanrwst. The won numerous prizes at the Eisteddfod.
"I didn't compete individually in the Urdd Eisteddfod but I did at smaller Eisteddfod singing and reciting but I did't concentrate on that and really enjoyed my spell with the choir at Aelwyd Bro Cernyw.
"The Aelwyd was incredibly strong at the time - there are highs and lows at every Aelwyd and I was lucky to be involved during one of the stronger times and I am very grateful to the leaders for the opportunities I was given."
She starts work with S4C on June 18 and says the decision to leave was the hardest of her life.
But she relishes the challenge the new post of head of children's services will bring. Cautiously avoiding any reference to her new job she said the prospect of a new children's channel on S4C was particularly exciting.
