Growing community projects

There is a wonderful example down here in the far west of Wales of how people can pool their often meagre resources to create something very special for the community

 

An update on the project was given to participants this week – and progress is good.

Back in 2010 more than £200,000 in share capital was raised by locals in the Cardigan/Aberteifi area towards the purchase price of a large redundant site in the centre of town. The are had included a farmers’ coop outlet, and included in the sale were a large yard, a cottage and various other buildings.

At one time there had been a plan by developers to turn the area into a shopping mall. Thankfully this failed to gather much support.

But with the help of a loan to top up the funding raised through local shares the site was bought by the local group,  which is known as 4CG (Cymdeithas Cynnal a Cefnogi Cefn Gwlad / Society to Sustain and Support the Rural Countryside). www.4cg.org.uk

Some of the shareholders were able to secure their stake, at £200 a share, through a loan from the local bank, the Credcer Credit Union - http://credcer.co.uk/ 

So a truly local project, with hundreds of local shareholders was born. Many people just bought one or two shares – but everyone has a vote.

Initially, the main objective of the communal purchase of the Pwllhai site was to facilitate cheaper, convenient and accessible parking for the town, for the benefit of shoppers and tourists.

The parking fees are much less than the car parks run by the local authority, Ceredigion County Council.  Convenient and affordable parking was seen as a basic requirement for the prosperity and survival of the nearby high street. This was set up first and is working well, bringing in much needed income to help pay the mortgage.

4CG made a loss in its first year, largely due to start up costs and legal fees associated with the purchase of the site. But this week shareholders heard that in the first six months of the current year there is a net surplus of income.

This was what we said about the scheme when it started a couple of years ago: ‘The intention of the 4CG enterprise is to also support fishermen, farmers, growers, artists and to offer all local producers an outlet for their goods.’

Well, we are doing all that already -- and we have gone even further than that now.

Loads of local veg every week

There is a market at the site every Thursday throughout the year featuring top quality and reasonably priced produce, including fruit, veg, award winning cheeses, meat, cakes, eggs, garden plants, crafts and fish and seafood from local fishermen.  This market is celebrating its first year in business this week. It has a great atmosphere and there is always music from the guitar makers who have a stall there. There is coffee and takeaway food on sale all day and tables and chairs are always set out for customers to use.

The Old Bike Store at the Pwllhai site was renovated and is now leased to the Jig So children’s centre, which provides services to local families on a daily basis.

The former co-op store has been renovated by volunteers from Cardigan’s own Eco Shop, and now provides a large area for sales and information on sustainable living. Another building on the site has been opened by CADAMM, the Cardigan maritime and agriculture museum.

More work is due on site clearance and removing some of the buildings to open up the car parking facility even more.

Local cheeses in the produce market

Many grants are being applied for to help develop various projects and the possibility of buying another nearby building is being investigated. There are also plans to set up alternative means of energy generation for the benefit of local people.

As was pointed out at the shareholders’ meeting this week, that it took a lot of people each putting in a little bit of money to get this going, mostly what it has taken to maintain and grow it has been the huge enthusiasm of local people.

There are other similar enterprises either already growing in this area of south Ceredigion and north Pembrokeshire  – energy schemes, community-owned shops and maybe a community-owned farm.

As one 4CG shareholder said: ‘This is the only way to secure our future in today’s world – to own the resources and the means to produce our food and energy locally for the use and benefit of local people. This is how we will survive.’

Power of the press: part two

 

Further to my last blog about the Broadband provider that cut me off after my partner died, because I didn’t have his password….  and reconnected me ten minutes after I threatened to put the story in my local paper -- here’s a similar tale about another of the major Broadband suppliers.

After that earlier experience as soon as I moved house, I switched supplier.

Not long afterwards there was a problem and Broadband speeds for all of us on our local exchange dropped alarmingly in the evenings, and we don’t get good speeds around here in rural Wales anyway (that's another issue). 

Many local businesses were having difficulty with signals dropping out in the evenings.

Three journalists, including me, and a press photographer, were affected by this problem, which went on for a couple of weeks.

Once I had some evidence, i.e the details of all the journalists affected by this who had complained to the supplier and got nowhere, I called the company's press office.

I was told: “Oh it’s one of those things we probably won’t be able to do anything about very quickly. It’s a line problem.” I asked for an official comment on the problem for my story about how local businesses were suffering.

Later that day, within three hours, the regional director for this supplier personally phoned one of those journalists and promised the problem would be resolved within the day. It was.

Needless to say, we were all pleased to get a result, but all of us were pretty angry that we had to use the threat of bad press,  yet again, to get somewhere with one of our huge corporations.

We all deserve good customer care for the services we pay for. The threat of bad publicity should not be an issue, but sadly, it is.

Power of the press, part one

This is the first of three little stories that show how big corporations and organisations can suddenly react to customer complaints when faced with the prospect of bad publicity. Sadly, I have found that even a suggestion that there might be a story about bad service in even a small local paper can produce immediate resolution of problems.

Some of my widow and widower friends will identify with this first story as I know of similar experiences.

The scenario: My partner died, we shared the Broadband account at our house. It was in his name. I phoned the helpline about taking over the account. They wanted the password, I didn’t know it. So they cut me off that day. But they wouldn’t give me the code that I need to set up a new account with a new supplier. I hit the brick wall, in more ways than one.

He had only died a week or two before and I had an enormous load of sorting out to do of utilities/accounts/all kinds of business, most of it done online.  This happened over three years ago, but I heard recently of a friend who had a similar experience, so wanted to write this up.

At the time I felt like I lived in a Kafka novel. It would be bad enough if I hadn’t been dealing with the trauma of just having lost my partner of 20 years.

I spoke to a friend at work, I was in tears. She said: ‘Call the press office.’  Well I am a journalist after all. So, I called the broadband firm’s press office, told them about a widow in our area who was going through all kinds of grief because they had cut her Broadband and I asked them for a comment on this scenario, since I intended to name them and shame them and write a story about it for the local paper.

About ten minutes later I got a call from the Helpline offering to set me up with a new account, completely free for three months and very cheap thereafter, with a promise to reconnect within 24 hours.

It was a great result for me. But this sort of thing makes me so very cross. I know many people who have been in similar situations with suppliers, banks and others and they are not able to use the method that I did to get a positive result.

Companies and other powerful organisations should provide the best possible service at all times for all of us – not just those of us who can threaten to publicly expose their poor practices.

I have more examples of this sort to come, watch out for more on the power of the press.

Is your local newspaper a 'community asset'?

Sad to hear today that Johnston Press plans to close five more of its local newspaper offices in South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire as cutbacks at the company continue.

http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/ tells us that the regional publisher is to shut the main offices of the Matlock Mercury and Ripley and Heanor News together with those of the South Yorkshire Times in Mexborough and two satellite offices of the Mansfield Chad in Mansfield town centre and Sutton-in-Ashfield.

Of course, this is a trend that we have seen across most of the local newspaper publishers all over the UK in recent years – and every announcement is bad news for local democracy. Just when you think these companies really can’t make any more cuts without affecting the quality of their products they find a way to chip away at resources yet again.

Those papers in south Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire that are to close their local offices, will still continue. But taking away the office in the local area is an important link with the local community cut.  Local journalists (of which I am one) continue to work against the odds to defend and campaign for their communities and for local democracy in the face of continuing cuts.

One of our local MPs here in west Wales, Plaid Cymru’s Jonathan Edwards, who represents Carmarthenshire East, has called for local newspapers to be given protected status as ‘community assets’ in order to protect their “often unique and historical blend of community news and investigation”. 

Questioning the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport recently, Mr Edwards expressed concern about the decline of the print newspaper industry, including local papers, which he said are “represented by many excellent talented journalists who are embedded in their community”

He adds:  “The Localism Act created a form of ‘community assets’ which could not be sold off without consultation. If local papers could be included in this definition then it would recognise their local importance and prevent owners from closing down newspapers overnight and give time for new owners to come in, perhaps including a takeover by the local community

“As the powers for this are in Westminster, I have pushed the Secretary of State to expand the category of ‘community assets’ to include local newspapers and allow the Welsh Government to be able to do this to save any newspapers in Wales which come under threat.”

As more offices are closed, more newspapers merged, or produced from a distance from the communities they are supposed to represent, I wonder just how much longer our local newspapers will deserve the title ‘community asset’.

100 Key Words in Welsh?

Fascinating statistics given about the English and Welsh languages by linguist David Crystal at the Gŵyl Lenyddiaeth Dinefwr 2012 / Dinefwr Literature Festival 2012 last weekend.

He talked about his latest book, ‘The Story of English in 100 Words’, which represents the formation of contemporary English and illustrates the development of the language in 100 key words.

Crystal speculates about how a similar exercise in Welsh would look.

Most of us who use English as our main language will have a vocabulary of 50,000 to 60,000 words, he reckons. Even though he is credited with inventing many new words and phrases in English Shakespeare had a vocabulary of around 30,000 words, the King James Bible has 20,000.

Crystal reckons the size of the Welsh language is smaller, mainly because it is a pure language, largely unadulterated by others. While English has been ‘messed up’, or influenced, altered and added to by many other languages over the centuries, Welsh has remained untouched.

So, Crystal wants to know, which are the really key significant words in the Welsh language?

He suggests maybe ‘iaith’ (language), ‘Cymraeg’ (Welsh), ‘hiraeth’ (tough to translate this directly, maybe ‘longing’), cynghanedd (my translator gives ‘harmony’, but some of these words just don’t have easy translations into English).

Interesting exercise for anyone interested in the Welsh language – David Crystal is asking anyone who has suggestions for the Welsh 100 to contact him. You can email him direct from his website: www.davidcrystal.com

Meantime, his English in 100 words brings us the very first recorded word in the language – ‘roe’ , surprisingly; and one of the latest, for all those Twitter addicts – ‘twitteria’.

You can also have ‘blogeria’, so we’ll stop right there!

Wonderful Wendy

One of the highlights of the  Gŵyl Lenyddiaeth Dinefwr 2012 / Dinefwr Literature Festival 2012 last weekend for me was an hour spent in the company of the wonderful poet Wendy Cope.

She read from a wide spectrum of her work, much of it from her best seller ‘Two Cures for Love’; and some from her collection ‘Family Values’.

Technical brilliance and great humour are of course keystones of her work. Witty and subversive, she gets under the skin and into the heart of the human condition and while doing so makes us laugh at ourselves and our lives.

Inspired by listening to her and afterwards meeting and talking briefly with her about her work, I penned this little thing while I sat in the courtyard …

Ode to Wendy Cope

I think I want to be Wendy Cope
But I really don't believe I have a hope...
in Hell, of writing funny verse.

Words that scan and rhyme and make you laugh
Are really very hard to, um design/ no... craf(t)...
And mine don't always fill the line ___________.

In fact, some of my verse couldn't be worse,
But Wendy copes (haha!) and always hits the spot,
I will forever strive, but somehow, I can - not.

No hope for me really is there!

The Endless Journey

Review

The Endless Journey (Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan, Saturday, June 30, 2012)

Four musicians from four different tribes in Niger, one of the poorest countries in Saharan Africa, played their ‘Endless Journey’ show at Cardigan’s Theatr Mwldan on Saturday.

It was a real treat of live desert music played to a backdrop of atmospheric visuals. The underlying sombre message about the threat facing their own cultural heritage gave the performance an added edge for me – this was a rare opportunity to experience this sound and this stunning collaboration – how much longer will this be available to us, or anyone?

The story of how these talented and committed musicians have worked in their own country, teaching children about their musical and cultural heritage, was told at free film showings earlier in the week. Let us hope their work brings the necessary change and that young people will pick up some of their instruments and learn their traditions and techniques. This sound is much too good to lose.

Just how rare and how precarious is this cultural heritage was illustrated by the fact that one of the musicians -  Mamane Barka - is the last person in his country to master the playing of the Biram. This is a traditional instrument created by the fishermen on the edge of lake Chad -  a type of harp with five strings - played only by initiated masters and used by the Boudouma tribe in Eastern Niger. For such a simple looking instrument, the sound was astounding.

Two of the other musicians at the heart of The Endless Journey are Alhousseini Anivolla and Bammo Agonla from the desert supergroup Etran Finatawa - a combination of the Touareg and the Wodaabe nomadic tribes.  Etran Finatawa’s hypnotic musical groove evokes the breathless heat and shimmering horizon of the Sahara, with laid back guitars, driving rhythms and compelling voices – and some amazing and rather disturbing ‘eye music’ – I bet we never saw that at the Mwldan before!

The fourth member of this desert ‘supergroup’ is  Oumarou Adamou, a grand master percussionist.

Together, their swirling strings, driving rhythms and haunting vocals evoke the vast open spaces of the desert and the very soul of nomadic life.

Wherever it originates, and whatever language its composers and players speak, music communicates to us all in a language of its own. It would be a tragedy to lose any aspect of that communication, wherever it comes from.

Do go see if they are in your area. For more on the tour see: www.worldmusic.co.uk