They'll be talking about Better Together, the local mental health services, and temporary service changes, particularly to the Minor Injury Units, Ready to Go Home Units and Rehabilitation Units.
There'll be tea and coffee available, and staff will be able to chat.
This was the third of the Citizen's Assemblies organised by Mike Eccles.
To open the proceedings, he gave us an update on what has been achieved so far.
Hay is now part of the South Powys Food Loop. Our part in that is to set up an online supermarket of local food, and to encourage local people to use it to buy their groceries as much as possible.
On the energy front, three consultants are working with the group in Hay - one from CAT, one from a group in Leominster, and I didn't catch who the other one was. Setting up our own energy company is complicated, so the target is to have it up and running by 2035. So far they are at the stage of mapping suitable local energy generation sites and having talks with the landowners.
This Assembly was on Mental Well-Being, and apparently it's something that has never been tried before. They are hoping that, if it is successful, a similar model can be rolled out across Wales, via the library services.
The slogan of the Assembly was "It's OK not to feel OK, but it's not OK to not talk about it."
The idea is that Hay as a community should be able to identify people who are struggling with anxiety or loneliness or low level depression, and give assistance before it gets bad enough to involve the NHS. NHS services have seen serious cuts in recent years, so even if someone is ill enough to need medical help, they can be a long time on a waiting list before they get it.
As part of the discussion process, they are trialing some new software to record and analyse the conversations on each table which is AI assisted. My comment was that AI is Evil - but this seems to be one of the more ethical uses of the technology, as it is not being trained on copyright material stolen from the authors, but just looking at the conversations in the room.
So the question we were considering was: How can we catch people before they need medical help? How can we create a supportive community?
Before we started the discussions, we were shown a short film from Cambridge, interviewing schoolchildren and mothers who were suffering from climate anxiety - the worry about how the climate is changing and how it will affect the children who are growing up now. One lady being interviewed said that, if people aren't worried, there must be something wrong with them - there's a lot to be worried about! Everyone involved seemed to think that doing something practical helped a lot, even if it's only something small and local.
Then we had a short speech from Marie Brousseau-Navarro, who is the Deputy Commissioner and Director for Health in the Future Generations Commission for Wales. This body ensures that decisions taken in the Senedd take into account the consequences for people in the future - more long term thinking than is usually the case in politics. They produce a report every five years assessing how well the Senedd is doing. Mike met Marie at Hay Festival, and she was so interested in what he was doing that she wanted to come along and see the Assembly in action.
On our table we had a mix of people who are long term residents of Hay, who know the history of what has been done before, and some newcomers, which was useful because we could compare notes on how easy it was to find out what was going on in Hay and how easy (or not) it was to access groups of fellow residents with similar interests. There's a lot going on in Hay, and that's one way to help people who feel isolated, if there is an easy way of finding out where those groups are.
During the coffee break, the lady who was filming the event set up her camera in another room to do interviews with volunteers. I went along because no-one else on the table felt brave enough to do it!
It was mildly terrifying, but I think I made sense, and the camera lady said I'd given her some useful content.
The last part of the process was for a person from each table to stand up and share what had come out of the discussions - each table had a note taker using post-it notes, and a moderator to keep the discussion on track and make sure everyone was heard.
Just about everyone agreed that what Hay needs is a central hub where people can go and meet and find out what's going on. At the moment the Library has this role - but Hay used to have a proper community centre, and that's really what's needed again. (there is a long, long history of Hay trying to get a new community centre which I will not repeat here).
Several tables also suggested that it would be a good idea to give some sort of training to people in the community so they could recognise people who were struggling and offer support.
One table suggested making Hay a Town of Well-Being, and our table suggested a group at the Thursday market called something like Happy in Hay that could share information and lend a friendly ear. (the British Legion has a very good Tea and Chat session regularly, but not everyone wants to go into the British Legion).
There was some worry about the younger people growing up in the community, and the need for inter-generational activities was stressed, as well as the suggestion that there should be a Young People's Assembly so that they could decide for themselves what they needed.
There was also mention of the perennial problem in Hay of groups needing to collaborate more - and publicise the fact that they exist better. The Hay Community Facebook page is a useful resource, but not everyone is on Facebook, and there needs to be a way of communicating without being online as well.
Finally, there was an emphasis on the benefits of nature - getting out walking, working with farmers to improve local biodiversity, and creating nature based projects.
When I went along to the Assembly, I wasn't sure what I'd be able to contribute, but it turned out to be a very useful session and I'm very glad I went.
Well, I'm physically and mentally back in Hay now, and this morning was market day. I was getting all my usual treats - grapes for tomorrow morning when I watch Star Trek with a friend (we're just about to start season 2 of Star Trek Deep Space Nine), delicious cakes (pear and red berry) from Bernie, bread from Alex Gooch.
There were leaflets about the Well Being Assembly at the Swan on the Primrose Farm stall and the stall next to it, which was for a fasting retreat in Craswell. The lady at that stall said she wanted to meet the locals in Hay, and the best way to do that was to come to the market - but Craswell is a bit too close to Hay for anyone living here to want to go there for a holiday!
I also saw Mike, the organiser of the Well Being Assembly, going round with leaflets (I already have my ticket). He's at the nervous stage of wondering whether anyone will turn up, though the previous two Assemblies were packed out.
Help make Mike less nervous by booking a free ticket now!
https://hayresilience.org/ is the website to go to. The Assembly takes place on Saturday 10th May at the Swan from 1.30pm (to start at 2pm) until 5pm, and the tickets are free. (Tickets are needed in case there are more people interested in going than there are seats in the function room).
This is the third of the meetings to discuss the Hay Community Resilience Initiative. Previous meetings have been focussed on local food and local energy production - now it's the turn of Mental Health.
The keynote speaker at the meeting will be the Deputy Commissioner for Future Generations for Wales, Marie Broussau-Navarro.
Part of the discussion will be about defining what we mean by mental health and well-being, and then trying to work out what we can do as a community to improve people's mental health and well being.
Questions that the Assembly will be asking include how we, as a community, can catch people suffering from anxiety or mild depression before they need medical help, and how can we build a supportive community?
Tickets are free, but limited by the size of the room at the Swan, and the meeting will be held on Saturday 10th May from 2pm to 5pm.
The Food Assembly was held last year, and the ideas put forward then have evolved - now the Hay group is working closely with Bwyd Powys Food, which is developing a South Powys Food Loop, inspired by a scheme that is already running in the South East of England. So Hay would have a Hub linked to that Loop of local food producers, to get the food to local consumers.
There was also a speaker from Llangattock Green Valleys, near Crickhowell, Simon Walter. Now, I have a vested insterest in them, because I am a share holder. I signed up with them when they were doing a stall at a local event - I forget what it was now. They've been in existance since 2009, and have several micro-hydro electricity generators in the hills around Llangattock and Crickhowell, as well as a beekeeping project, a woodland project and other things.
I think it was Simon who warned that setting up a local community energy company was a long, slow process, and it had to be done one step at a time - so our first step is to get as many people involved and enthusiastic about the project as possible. Green Valleys did it by holding events in the five communities that their area covered. This will be easier in Hay, because the population is much more centralised.
Another thing they did was to have maps where people could mark where they thought were suitable sites for e.g. solar panels, and where were the "cherished spots" where they didn't want to see anything to do with energy generation.
In the last 18 months or so they've been trying to take their energy production to the next level, and the Green Valleys volunteer who came along was very enthusiastic about it. Peter had started with very little knowledge about renewable energy, but he's got up to speed very quickly over the time he's been volunteering.
We'd run out of time for the film on solar energy, so we went straight into the second part of the meeting, which was to discuss the question put to us by the organisers:
"In an ideal world what do we, the people in this room, think are the best ways for us to gain community support and participation in generating community owned renewable energy locally and in setting up Hay Energy?"
We all thought that the map was a brilliant idea, and our table was also keen on "love bombing" the community - getting as much local publicity as possible for the project.
As well as a facilitator and a note taker for each table (we got through a lot of post it notes!) the Assembly was also trialing some new tech which recorded each table's conversations via mobile phone, so there was a record that could be looked at later.
Our table also discussed some of the more practical ideas for energy generation, and the way that there's really nothing new in having micro-hydro schemes - there were several watermills locally in Victorian times, and one of them, up Cusop Dingle, was used to supply electricity to Brynmelin in 1911!
At the end, each table presented its findings to the wider assembly, and the organisers will go away and collate those findings and see which were most popular.
In May, there will be another Assembly, this time on Mental Well-Being. The date, May 10th, was chosen so that the Welsh Commissioner for Future Generations (I think it was) could be present. Mike Eccles met her by chance at another meeting, and she said she'd be very keen to come along to see what we were doing in Hay.
Last year, at about this time, there was a citizen's assembly in the Swan to talk about food security in the Hay area, and lots of good ideas came out of that. There was a bit of a delay in implementing some of those ideas, simply because it was too much work for the volunteers who were trying to get it going, but they have now been able to access funding for help from paid staff, so now things are starting to happen behind the scenes.
So it was time for the second of the three planned assemblies - this time on Energy. The idea is that Hay could set up its own energy company to generate renewable energy for the local area.
We were shown a short film from the Orkneys, where one island now runs entirely on renewable energy, which also brings in income to improve life for the islanders. Wind power goes into the National Grid (there is a power line to the mainland) and is also used to store energy in the form of hydrogen, which heats the school. They're planning to move into tidal power next.
Then we had a speaker from Ynni Teg Cyf, Jonathan Townend, who talked about community energy. There are thirty or forty groups around Wales which are already generating energy for their local communities in a variety of ways, and the technology is improving so fast it's hard to keep up with it!
He did say that he was a bit worried on his way up to Hay from South Wales because of the lack of charging points for his electric car, but Hay has several charging points, so he would be able to get back home. That's one of the infrastructure problems that needs to be addressed nationally.
His own group has a wind turbine and a solar array - though half of that blew away in recent gales and hasn't been replaced yet! Even so, they have an annual turnover of about £400k - this is variable because of the variation in wind and solar output and the variable price of electricity wholesale.
As Hay is on the edge of a National Park, it is difficult to get planning permission for a wind turbine, but Hay is in a hilly area, and micro-hydro power is good in the smaller streams - though here there is the issue of getting extraction licenses for the water (even if it comes out and goes straight back in again!).
Solar panels are easy to set up, especially if a company can get enough people with suitable rooftops involved to install the panels - though there is the problem of rainy and cloudy days to consider.
Then there's the legal position that has to be considered - there are certain statutory requirements that have to be met, and there's the matter of how the company gets paid for the energy it is supplying.
There is help out there, though, from Community Energy Wales, the Welsh Government Energy Service, the Development Bank and Ynni Teg, who have a website at www.ynniteg.cymru.
I was going to wait until after Christmas to post this, but tickets are going fast, and space at the Swan is limited.
Last year, there was a citizens' assembly at the Swan on the theme of Food Resilience. Lots of good ideas were generated, and the organisers have spent the last 10 months working with Welsh governmental and non-governmental agencies to get support and funding. So it may have looked as if nothing much was happening, but there was a lot going on behind the scenes to set things up. In the course of this, they've joined 35 organisations working on the Climate Issue in Wales, on Food, Energy and Well-Being, which are the three most important areas they want to concentrate on in Hay.
There is now funding in place to employ a Project Co-ordinator, who will provide professional support.
One of the visible results of last January's meeting is the Tuesday evening food market at Hay Castle. They also want to support local growers and farmers, and grow the market for local produce.
So now it's time to launch the second "pillar" of the initiative - the Energy Assembly. The idea behind this is that Hay can generate at least some of its own energy for local consumption. The aim is for Hay to become self-sufficient in clean energy, and the Assembly is a means of getting all the interested parties in one place to come to a consensus about how to achieve this.
The Energy pillar is a vital part of the plans for the future. If Hay decides to go for its own Community Energy company, within five to seven years, there should be enough money to create a Wealth Fund from the profits. So energy will be cheaper than the big companies, and there will also be money to fund locally produced food and other initiatives.
The meeting will be at the Swan Hotel on Saturday 18th January, between 2pm and 5pm. Space is limited, so the event is ticketed, but the tickets are free.
There will be a third meeting, in May for the third pillar of the initiative, on Mental Well-Being.
So, the question we were considering, in our groups around the tables, was this:
"How might we support Hay-on-Wye, as a community, to become as self-sufficient as possible in sustainably-grown local food? Eventually producing enough to feed the town and its environs, much as in the 1950s and 1960s?"
Around our table, the farmer (Richard, I think?) had recently joined a group of farmers called the Hay-on-Wye Cluster - he farms near Painscastle. The group mostly produce meat, but they are applying for a loan to buy a grain mill for locally produced grain to make local bread, which would also include something called the Social Loaf. They don't have any members that grow much in the way of vegetables yet. I asked if Primrose Farm was involved, but they haven't been approached yet. There was some discussion of the possibility of Keiran at the greengrocers being able to co-ordinate vegetable growers, since he sources as much as he can locally, so knows who is doing what.
It was felt, around the table that it was important to involve the small shops in Hay like the greengrocers and Small Farms butchers - building on a framework that already exists. Geraint Powell had said in his short speech that he sold meat direct to the public - but none of us around the table knew how to find out who was doing that or how to get involved as customers.
Allotments and market gardens were also felt to be very important. John the retired farmer was very keen on the idea of getting as many local people as possible to grow their own food, whether on an allotment or as volunteers in a CSA or other model of market garden. One thing that nobody wanted was for some outside group to come in and start a market garden - this was something that had to come from the grassroots of Hay as a community. Someone mentioned that there are around 300 market gardens across Wales at the moment, but to have a good chance of feeding the majority of the population, something like 1,000 are needed. Allotments and market gardens can produce much more food per acre than conventional fields with single crops.
We talked about the HADSCAL plans for the community hub around the doctors' surgery, and how their plans for allotments could start right away, without waiting for any of the other parts of their plan.
After about half an hour of discussion, each table was asked to provide three main points to the assembly.
Table 1 had been talking about vegetable boxes and Incredible Edible.
Table 2 suggested vending machines around Hay for fresh produce, and stressed the need for co-ordination between everyone who wanted to get involved.
Table 3 wanted more CSAs, but access to land is a problem, so their next point was to communicate with landowners to identify land that could be used. They also wanted to see more education around food and cooking.
Table 4 wanted to map the assets that already exist, and find out what the demand is locally, as well as the needs of local people. They were also keen on education in cooking and growing food.
Table 5 mentioned sourcing land, and education.
Table 6 wanted to see a co-ordination of information - networking, as well as upscaling from any small initiatives, and mentioned access to land, especially for allotments. Planning law is also a problem for market gardens, because of the difficulty of getting permission for growers to live on their land while they are working it.
Table 7 also liked the idea of vending machines, finding ways to create more demand for local food, and support to growers.
Table 8 wanted to see children involved in cooking, which they said was no longer part of the National Curriculum, and to see more communal eating opportunities, like Bethesda Chapel's communal meals.
and Table 9 wanted information sharing and investment in infrastructure.
After that, we all filled in forms. One was to indicate what we could do to help practically, and one was for the Welsh government as a requirement for them releasing the second half of their funding. The other sponsors of the event were Extinction Rebellion.
I always have problems thinking about what to say to open ended questions, but for the question about getting more involved I mentioned that we needed a more frequent bus service, and for the question about what was stopping people from getting more involved, I said that people need enough time and energy to commit to something like this, and getting a Universal Basic Income scheme off the ground would help a lot!
Then there was time for a few questions from the floor, and Michael mapped out what would be happening next. The points recorded by all the note-takers were going to be taken away and analysed, and they would be looking through the forms for practical help which would give an indication of what it was possible to do, given the people who were available to do it.
One lady from the audience invited people to contact her so that she could get something started about a vending machine.
So that's what the state of play is at the moment.
I arrived a little early at the Swan, to drop off my donation of biscuits to go with the free tea and coffee that was being provided. Michael was giving some last minute direction to the facilitators who would be working with the rest of the people there during the afternoon.
Inside the function room, there were 9 or 10 round tables to sit at - I found a place just under the TV camera, at table 6, along with Janet from HOWLS, the Hay Library group, and a lady from Swansea who was acting as the note-taker for the table - she'd come up with some others because a group in Swansea wanted to try something similar, so she was seeing how it worked in practice. There were also a couple of farmers on our table (one retired) and a lady who just wanted to see what was going on. And Wayland, our facilitator, of course, who was there to keep the conversation going and stop anyone who was speaking over other participants. (we were a very civilised group, so he didn't need to do much to keep us on track!).
There were a couple of tables at the back for anyone who didn't want to be filmed or photographed.
The idea for the forum came out of Hay Library CIC, and this is the first of three forums on different topics - the others are energy (can Hay do anything to generate our own energy?) and well-being (intervening with mental health problems before it gets bad enough for the NHS to become involved).
So this one was about food. Can Hay get anywhere near self-sufficiency in food? It used to be the case that local farmers fed local people, but now the supply chains can be very long indeed. Even Kieran at the greengrocers has to travel to Birmingham to get some of his stock, though he tries to source as much as he can nearer to home, and some of the produce he buys in Birmingham will have come from much further away (we still can't grow bananas very well in the UK!)
The meeting started with a series of short films or speeches about the sort of things that are happening around the country to improve local access to fresh produce.
First, the Mayor of South Yorkshire gave a quick introduction to how Citizen's Assemblies work - he organised one in his area to get an idea of what the local communities needed to be done.
Then there was a short film on Permaculture, which is a way of designing the landscape to provide food and shelter and all the other necessities of life in a sustainable way.
Katie Hardy spoke about Growing Local, the 20 acre site near Hereford where she's Head Grower. This is a CSA - a Community Share Agriculture scheme where share holders pay in advance for food boxes, and the market garden grows the food. They're also planning a cafe and a learning garden for schools.
The next film was for Incredible Edible, showing a scheme in Wrexham where volunteers plant fruit trees and vegetables in public spaces for anyone to harvest. The council allowed them to plant on a piece of waste ground in one of the housing estates, on the basis that they couldn't make it any worse!
Then there was a film about LEAP - an organisation that provides loans for all sorts of growing and farming projects. Funding can be a real problem for initiatives like this, but as well as LEAP there are grants available if you know where to apply for them.
Finally Geraint Powell, from Cabalva Farm, talked a bit about Regenerative Agriculture and what they are doing at Cabalva.
So, the audience now had an idea of what was possible - the next stage was to discuss it around the tables....
I've just come back from an afternoon at the Swan. The function room was packed (and there was a waiting list for the free tickets, which is why I didn't publicise it here ahead of time), but it was a fascinating meeting, and I'll be writing more about it over the coming days.
Last night I was invited to a book launch at the Swan. I was asked not to publicise it in advance, because they could only cater for a limited number of people, but it was a fascinating evening.
The book in question is called The Scandal of the UK Housing Market, and is written by local author Henry Charles Pryor. In it he lays out the roots of the current housing crisis in the UK, and offers some possible solutions.
I'm particularly interested in the subject, because I was directly affected by the housing crisis last year, when I was subject to a no fault eviction and found it incredibly difficult to find another place to live in Hay. I was extremely lucky to have been offered the flat where I now live.
Nearly everyone I spoke to last night had stories to tell about the difficulties they had faced with the rental market, both local to Hay and in London, though the problems are widespread across the UK.
I haven't read the book in detail yet, but it's only short - 42 pages - beautifully put together by Seza Eccles under the imprint Silent Impressions. The author was an estate agent for many years, and has also invented a cricket bowling machine which has been used by the England Cricket Team!
[Edited to add: the first printing is now sold out - a second printing will be available soon!]
I was invited to join a party of friends to do the guided tour of the Arthur's Stone dig yesterday.
We met at the Swan for lunch, in the garden. One couple had driven up from East Sussex, and were meeting us on the way to visiting family in Presteigne, so they turned up a bit late. We ate from the sandwich menu, and the portions were generous, and came with crisps, some of which ended up going to the blackbird who was hanging around watching us - who can't have been really hungry because we watched him wrestling with a huge worm when we arrived. I had the pulled pork and mozzarella on ciabatta, which was delicious.
Then we realised that nobody actually knew the route to the dig - I'd been before, but I only knew the bus route to get to the bottom of the hill, and Julia wanted to avoid driving up that hill if she could. I was in the second car, following Julia, and we lost her at the Hardwicke turn into the Golden Valley, where she went straight on. I guided the second car via the bus route, and we got to the dig a little bit late for the start of the tour. Fortunately, Julia turned up shortly after that, so we joined Amber from English Heritage, who was explaining what they found last year in the field below the monument before moving round to this year's trench.
The archaeologist in the picture is drawing a section of the dry stone wall in front of him, which was part of the monument. Beyond him is the passageway into the main chamber of the tomb - the bit that looks like the Stone Table in Narnia (and CS Lewis did visit the site, so it had to have been his inspiration).
Another famous visitor I wasn't aware of was King Charles I, during the Civil War, when he used Arthur's Stone as a rallying point for his troops in the area - so it was a well-known landmark back then. King Arthur, despite the name of the site, is not known to have been a visitor, and in any case he could only have visited it about 4,000 years after it was built.
The rest of the stones in the picture (I think I've got this right) are the remains of the collapse of the drystone wall, which was sealing off the passageway. They think the passage way was quite a bit deeper than it now appears, and of course had capstones covering it, under an earth mound. As it appears now, it would have been pretty difficult to get the remains of the dear departed into the main chamber, as anyone would have to crawl down the passageway. However, the main stones are not being touched by excavation - the trench here is as close as the archaeologists are allowed to get.
One of the students on the dig had just completed emptying out this depression in the stones, which they think may have been a kist, or secondary burial within the mound, rather than depositing the remains in the main chamber.
Finds have been pretty rare, but they did find a piece of something that isn't quite obsidian, and which came from either Scotland or Northern Ireland, around the Giant's Causeway area, since it is volcanic rock in origin. This is proof that people were moving around, and trading, over those distances. They also found a rather nice flint arrowhead.
All the finds, from all the years of the digs, are being kept together, so they can be analysed at the end of the dig.
Across the road in the field there were two more trenches (one with a plastic pipe running through it!) where the archaeologists were trying to find the extent of the monument. There's a rise in the road as it passes the Stone, indicating that the monument may extend under the road, but they didn't know how far it might have gone. Some similar sites are very big, so they were hoping to find an edge to it.
Further off in the field there was another, much deeper trench, cut through a depression in the field with parch marks, indicating that there was something underneath the grass. This turned out to be small quarries of the same flat stones that were used for the drystone wall around the Stone. There are small quarries all over the place locally, but this one was not marked on any maps, and there haven't been any finds yet to give a date. However, any quarries from the Romans onward would have taken all the stone that was useable, whereas these quarries had a lot of stone left behind, as if they were choosing just the stones they could use for one project and rejecting the rest.
It was a fascinating tour, and Amber had a full schedule - earlier that afternoon she'd taken the Woolhope Group around (the Woolhope Group had a dig at the Stone in 1901, when regrettably vague notes were taken on their findings) and as we left, she was guiding another group around the site.
Then it was back to the Swan for tea and scones in the garden - a really enjoyable afternoon, with some lovely and interesting people!
