Youngest-ever Bangor mayor on hopes for city:
22-YEAR-OLD ON‘HONOUR’OF BECOMING BANGOR’S YOUNGEST-EVER MAYOR
THE thought of councillors and mayors may bring to mind images of retired people of a certain age – but local government is fast becoming a stamping ground for a younger generation.
One who stands as a testament to this is 22-yearold Bangor University graduate Owen J Hurcum, recently voted in as the youngest ever mayor of Bangor.
Owen, who is originally from Harrow but has lived in Bangor for nearly five years, was unanimously elected as the Gwynedd city’s mayor.
Having served as the city council’s deputy mayor for a year, the proud “Bangor Aye” said it was “an honour” to be given the top job.
“I came here as a student five years ago, just because it was a place to study and it looked quite nice,” Owen said. “Within a week, I fell in love with it and tried to throw myself into the city’s culture. The city means a lot to me and I feel so privileged I have been entrusted to represent my community on a national and international stage. Bangor has a lot to offer and I hope I can do a good job of showing and embracing that.”
Due to the coronavirus, the mayoral role’s start date is undecided but Owen expressed pride over the community’s efforts: “I’m incredibly proud of how our community is rallying together to get everyone through this, from those who set up Bangor Emergency
Resources for Self Isolators (BERSI) to our key workers keeping our community supplied and healthy.
“I would also like to stress the good work all our local councillors are doing, so please, if you need anything, any level of support, contact your local city councillors and we’ll all be ready to help.
“My first steps as Bangor’s mayor will be reaching across the different divisions of the community, continuing the good work of the departing mayor, and trying to get more grants in to develop the city.
“I really want to work on bringing more funds to improve the high street, push for more green spaces and promote the interconnected communities between the university and the city itself.
“I’ve always been into politics, but it definitely intensified when I came to university. Politics, ethics and community are all connected, but politics affects and decides everything in a community.
“You can have experience in politics and you don’t have to be old. I’m 22, and yet I’ve been a councillor for four years, a deputy mayor and chair of the committee for the council and other sub-groups for a year. I have enough experience and enough experienced people around me that I can be making decisions.
“I think sometimes, with experience comes the inability to want to change things too much, because that’s the way it has been done for years.
“I hope I can offer fresh ideas and deliver them a new way, which will essentially be good for Bangor.”
In the past, Owen has been involved in numerous protests in the area: “I’ve always considered it as an act of defiance – the system might change, but it won’t change me.
“People have come up to me and said it won’t make a difference on the wider scale of things, but it’s not about the bigger picture. It’s about this city – we have refugees, people at the university that have run away from extreme prejudice, and hundreds of Catalan students. It shows we are not complicit, that these people feel supported or feel a bit safer in our city, and more importantly, that they know it’s OK to exist.”
Being different is something Owen can identify with.
“I came out as genderqueer nearly a year and a half ago,” they said. “I prefer to use the pronouns ‘them/ they.’ I know I’m not a bloke, but I know I’m not a trans woman either.
“For a long time, I was confused, and this conflicting stuff meant I was missing a lot of things.
“I’m not blind to the fact that, when there’s a new system, especially when the head of that system is a 22-year-old, gender-queer and purple-haired person, people are going to notice that. If that’s what will attract people to Bangor and see how great it is, I’m more than happy. I think in this system, being a bit different does help. It’s never a bad thing. We’ve got to celebrate people and their differences, and I want people to understand it’s OK to be different and that your feelings are valid.
“But saying that, Bangor is a fairly progressive and kind-hearted city, and I hope I can use my position to celebrate that.”