Wales in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018

Wales announced on 9 May 2018 that they would debut at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018 to be held in Minsk, Belarus. Welsh broadcaster S4C is responsible for the country's participation in the contest.^[3] A televised national selection process, Chwilio am Seren (English: Search for a Star), was held to select the Welsh entry.^[4]

Wales previously took part in the contest as part of the United Kingdom between 2003 and 2005, with ITV being responsible for their participation. S4C had also shown interest in participating in the 2008 contest, but in the end decided against participating.^[5]

Chwilio am Seren

Chwilio am Seren (Search for a Star) was the national selection process that was used to select the 2018 entrant. Auditions took place at Venue Cymru in Llandudno, Aberystwyth Arts Centre and at Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre during June 2018 with mentors Connie Fisher, Stifyn Parri and Tara Bethan as the judging panel. The four-part series, produced by Rondo Media for S4C, was aired on Tuesday nights with a repeat broadcast on Saturday afternoons.

The first two shows covered the nationwide auditions. Following a masterclass round at Llandaff's Memorial Hall (part of The Cathedral School), the final twenty singers were whittled down to the top 12 who then performed in public at Quadrant Shopping Centre in Swansea. The jury decided at the end of these performances who would perform during a final round live on television.^[6]

Table key

  Participant who was selected to progress to the national final

National final

The national final took place in Llandudno's Venue Cymru on 9 October 2018, hosted by Trystan Ellis-Morris and broadcast live on S4C. The first round saw the six live finalists performing cover songs. Regional juries (Aberystwyth, Llandudno, Carmarthen, Cardiff and London) consisting of two adults and two children awarded stars (points) to their favourite three performers which were announced by a spokesperson. The three mentors, Fisher, Parri and Bethan all gave their opinions on the performances but could not vote. In the second round, the three superfinalists each performed a different arrangement (folk ballad, funky pop, piano ballad) of the official Welsh entry "Hi yw y Berta", written by Ywain Gwynedd. The televote alone selected the winner from the second round, this being Manw.^[1]

The national final opened with a performance by the six finalists, performing a Welsh version of the anthem of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2017, "Shine Bright". During the televote window, a summary of the various winners of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast.

Final – 9 October 2018

Draw	Artist	Song (original artists)	Stars	Place	Result
1	Ella Georgia Thomas	"Hallelujah" (Leonard Cohen)		1	Superfinalist
2	Gracie-Jayne Fitzgerald	"Rhywbeth o'i le" (Huw Chiswell)		4	Eliminated
3	Lily Mai Duncan	"Adre" (Caryl Parry Jones)		3	Superfinalist
4	Manw Lili Robin	"Fy nghariad gwyn" (Ywain Gwynedd)		2	Superfinalist
5	Lauren Mia Jones	"Angel" (Elin Fflur)		6	Eliminated
6	Misha Parry	"O Gymru" (Rhys Jones (m.), Leslie Harris (l.))		4	Eliminated

Ratings

Manw

Manw
Background information
Birth name	Manw Lili Robin
Born	2004 (age 19–20) Rhosgadfan, Gwynedd, North Wales, United Kingdom
Occupation(s)	Singer
Instrument(s)	Vocals
Years active	2014–present

Manw Lili Robin^[12] (born circa 2004) is a Welsh singer from Rhosgadfan in Gwynedd, North Wales. She represented Wales at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018 with the song "Perta".^[13]

She performed at the National Eisteddfod of Wales and Urdd National Eisteddfod a number of times, most recently in 2017,^[14][15] and attends Ysgol Glanaethwy in Bangor. In 2014, Manw played the part of Awen in the Welsh version of the animated film, The Secret of Kells (Cyfrinach Llyfr Kells) which was broadcast on S4C on 24 May.^[16] In 2015, Manw was a member of the Welsh choir Cor Glanaethwy, who reached the live finals of Britain's Got Talent.

On 23 November, S4C broadcast a 30-minute documentary Manw yn Minsk, which followed her journey to the contest.^[17]

Perta

"Perta"
Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018 entry
Country	Wales
Artist(s)	Manw Lili Robin
As	Manw
Language	Welsh
Composer(s)	Ywain Gwynedd, Ifan Siôn Davies, Richard James Hooson Roberts[18]
Lyricist(s)	Ywain Gwynedd
Finals performance
Final result	20th
Final points	29
Entry chronology
"Calon yn Curo" (2019) ►

"Perta" (originally called "Hi yw y Berta", later "Berta") is a song performed by Welsh singer Manw. It represented Wales at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018. The song underwent a revamp ahead of the contest in Minsk,^[19] with the official music video released on 16 October.^[20] Ywain Gwynedd stated in an interview that the lyrics were written with a focus on sounding nice to non-Welsh speakers, with a repetitive chorus that was easy for viewers to sing along to. The song finished in 20th place with 29 points.^[21]

During the opening ceremony and the running order draw which both took place on 19 November 2018, Wales was drawn to perform eighteenth on 25 November 2018, following Armenia and preceding Malta.

The final was broadcast live in Wales on S4C, with commentary provided by Trystan Ellis-Morris in Welsh. English commentary by Stifyn Parri was available via the red button.^[22][23] It was the joint 14th most watched show that week on S4C with 23,000 viewers.^[24]

Voting

The same voting system that was introduced in the 2017 edition was used, where the results were determined by 50% online voting and 50% jury voting. Every country had a national jury that consisted of three music industry professionals and two children aged between 10 and 15 who were citizens of the country they represented. The rankings of those jurors were combined to make an overall top ten.^[25]

The online voting consisted of two phases. The first phase of the online voting began on 23 November 2018 when a recap of all the rehearsal performances was shown on the contest's website Junioreurovision.tv before the viewers could vote. After this, voters also had the option to watch longer one-minute clips from each participant's rehearsal. This first round of voting ended on Sunday 25 November at 15:59 CET. The second phase of the online voting took place during the live show and began right after the last performance and was open for 15 minutes. International viewers were able vote for a minimum of three and a maximum of five songs.^[26] They were also able to vote for their own country's song. These votes were then turned into points which were determined by the percentage of votes received. For example, if a song received 10% of the votes, it received 10% of the available points.In the contest, Wales received no points from the professional juries; they received 29 points from the online vote.^[27]

Points awarded by Wales^[27]

Score	Country
12 points	Australia
10 points	Georgia
8 points	Malta
7 points	Russia
6 points	Poland
5 points	Ukraine
4 points	Macedonia
3 points	Azerbaijan
2 points	Albania
1 point	Netherlands

Detailed voting results

Detailed voting results from Wales^[27]

Draw	Country	Juror A	Juror B	Juror C	Juror D	Juror E	Average Rank	Points Awarded
01	Ukraine	6	3	7	10	15	6	5
02	Portugal	10	17	14	5	16	13
03	Kazakhstan	18	9	19	17	17	17
04	Albania	7	13	5	13	8	9	2
05	Russia	2	1	2	11	5	4	7
06	Netherlands	8	12	9	6	11	10	1
07	Azerbaijan	9	6	12	8	7	8	3
08	Belarus	17	14	16	19	10	16
09	Ireland	12	16	17	16	14	15
10	Serbia	14	11	10	15	13	14
11	Italy	16	8	13	9	12	12
12	Australia	1	2	4	1	3	1	12
13	Georgia	3	5	3	2	1	2	10
14	Israel	11	19	18	14	19	18
15	France	15	15	8	7	9	11
16	Macedonia	13	10	6	12	4	7	4
17	Armenia	19	18	15	18	18	19
18	Wales
19	Malta	4	4	1	4	2	3	8
20	Poland	5	7	11	3	6	5	6

• Wales in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018 at BBC Online
• Official website