A World War 2 evacuee is encouraging people to vote for a Cardiff Music Awards nominee who took inspiration from her personal story.

Christian Punter from Ferndale in the Rhondda, also known as Otto, announced the award nomination for his EP Post with a short video from World War Two evacuee, Mary Shotton.

Taking to Facebook to reveal the news, he said: “Post has been nominated for best EP/single at Cardiff Music Awards. Had a wonderful chance to film Mary saying a few words about her song ‘Safer Out the City’.
“I sprung it on her last minute so thank you for writing and saying those lovely words in front of my bulky camera. If you think the concept EP is a good’un, go give it a vote here: http://www.cardiffmusicawards.co.uk
In the video, Mary said: “The song Safer Out the City is written about my experience as an evacuee in 1940, at the beginning of World War Two.

“It has been written with such love, compassion and care by someone so young it gives me such a feeling of warmth inside me.
“So please go vote for Otto ‘Post’ for the best EP.”
Explaining the inspiration behind the EP, the singer/songwriter said: “I thought outside of myself and thought what I am actually doing as an artist, and I thought I’m sort of sending love letters from an old post office.
“I thought it would be even deeper and better if I could get stories from local people and have them send them in via the post and sort of build the whole concept around that.”
The 21-year-old took the idea further by incorporating images of the individuals that participated in his post project.
He said: “When it came to finishing the EP I thought it would be a really lovely element to be able to show people in the audience photos that the songs were written about, so I kindly asked all the people who sent letters and stuff to send in any photos of themselves of their loved ones that the songs were written about.
“Fortunately, all of them were really up for it so now I have cue cards of the people the songs were written about, and also some cue cards of where I live as well.”
The Cardiff Music Awards will take place on Thursday 9th April at Tramshed, Cardiff.
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