24/11/2025
Last Thursday (20th Nov)PAVO organised a ‘Community Connectors’ event at the Metropole Hotel. The Community Connectors idea is that local residents of Mid Powys can be put in touch with any group that is of interest to them. A problem has been that few knew how wide a choice of activities or interests was available in the area.
Many local organisations were represented at the morning ‘set out your stalls’ session and there was a good circulation amongst those members of the public attending and the represented organisations now have a much better understanding of what is being offered locally. This will allow them to point any enquiries from members of the public in the right direction.
The Haven had a small team attending the event and consider it to have been very successful. It was an opportunity to show off a model of our planned ‘Makerspace’ and explain what we are setting out to do in 2026. Making a model of the workshop facilities made it much easier to imagine how it will work in practice.
The Haven also had a notice board to allow attenders to tell us what they would like to see happening in the Makerspace.
At first analysis it seem there are 4 main area of activities that are of interest and could provide the base for an activity group. If you have a different one please let us know!!.
These were:
‘Yarn Crafts’ – including spinning, weaving, knitting, crochet, lacemaking, felting, tapestry, needlepoint, sewing, tie dying, dressmaking, and upholstery. One or two groups could allow all to take place whilst sharing the space (and the skills)
‘Wood Crafts’ – including furniture repair, carpentry, cabinet making, garden furniture, walking stick making, community project work, wildlife shelter production, wood turning and wood carving. Again mall groups sharing the space would benefit from sharing ideas and skills transfers
‘Paper Crafts’ – including Origami, card making, calligraphy, scraperboard, foiling, scrapbooking, card modelling, story writing, book club(?), sketching and drawing, watercolours, acrylic and oil painting
‘IT and Engineering Crafts’ – including ‘Safe Surfing’, shared social media use, radio controlled model boats and aircraft, Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Manufacture, 2 dimensional work on the laser engraver and cutter and 3 dimensional work using the CNC router and the 3D printer. The CAD/CAM process involves the use of specialist software to produce a technical drawing (80% or more of the effort), the conversion of the drawing into a set of instructions for the computer, and then watching the machine do its thing (it can take a long time but you can only watch)
With potentially over 20 sessions a week available there is room for more.
Please message us for more information or if you have another interest to share and help by spreading the word – many of those who might enjoy a session don’t have access to social media like Facebook.
