A hidden gem for all but knowledgeable Newport locals, head out of the city centre over the railway…read morebridge near the central train station and a short walk into the mainly residential suburbs to find this. It's worth the trek. The restored, beautiful old Llanthewy Road Baptist Church is home to the Burleigh Academy, a performing arts organisation set up by a former touring soul/rock singer to teaching dance and music. There are various spaces and studios, but the building's main area is Burleigh Hall, a 300-capacity room with a small, functional bar. An intriguing occasional gig venue covered in jazz memorabilia, unsurprisingly the smoother side of musical sounds are usually the staples of the programme, with regular jazz nights the main attractions. Although once in a blue moon, outside promoters provide intimate shows from rock-leaning acts. It also hosts wedding/civil partnership ceremonies, conferences, birthday and christening parties and theatre workshops.

Teachers and school is very high standard, only downfall is the parking especially when there is a…read moreupto a 25 minute difference in collection time between infants and junior, we have one in each !!)

Are you looking for a new University to go to? I recommend this one in Newport; although, perhaps…read moreit depends on what you want to study exactly...? I went here for an open day and was pretty impressed..., but I did find that what I had in mind for accomadation standards where possibly a form of standard, that for me did not quiet reach my satisfactional level of requirement. That and I was already convinced and fixed with the exact type of University that I wanted to go to... But I was almost convinced to change my mind partly because the Media and Film departments in particualar looked really impressive and they nearly changed my mind as to what type of degree I wanted to do, especially since I had already done a National Diploma course at Coleg Glan Hafren in Cardiff. Newport is about twenty minutes to half an hour from Cardiff and by the use of public transport there are some buses to get back and forth from Cardiff to Newport, if you should need too... but the trains are alright to go on as well and you may find that you need both forms of transport. We met either the Vice Chancelor or the Headmaster of the University and he was really welcoming and was full of information about the Media and Film course and they did show a variety of different short films that some of the students the year before that open day had created. The short films weren't bad. The quality of them I thought was the best. If your thinking of studying a Media and Film degree in Wales then I certainly recommend this University as they are much more flexiable towards who they let into their University and the actual building of some of the buildings on this Campus in Caerleon looks fabulous, like an eighteenth century house or something... And the staff seem very supportive, friendly and helpful... Mind you if I had gone to study here I would have stayed living at home, but then I wouldn't have learn't how to live independantly... which I have found to become very useful.

The thing about selecting a university to attend is that most undergraduates-to-be want to escape…read morethe humdrum of their upbringing to climes unknown to them. Newport, on the face of it, isn't the tiniest backwater (although nobody's saying it's a sprawling cosmopolitan metropolis). But anybody not from the area should beware, because University Of Wales, Newport is split into two campuses: Allt-yr-yn and Caerleon. The former is less problematic, a suburbs base due to be replaced by the new City Campus in January 2011. The latter is entirely outside Newport, however, a good 10-15 minutes away by road, hardly ideal for convenient trips to the city and an even lengthier scoot over to Cardiff's more stimulating surrounds. Business, media and arts-led courses are probably the chief reason to attend the university. And on a positive note, with less nearby nightlife to readily splurge your loan and fairly dirt cheap rental housing in Caerleon, at least skint students can make their cash stretch a little further (if they don't spend it all on travelling to Newport/Cardiff anyway).