Date & location
The Cross Keys, 7pm Thursday 26th May 2022
Agenda
- Energy Fair
- St Myllin’s Day
- Sunflower planting
- A recap of other upcoming events
- School project
- Local places for nature fund
- BRACE leaflet
Attendees
- Hannah Eddy
- Gwyn Brandreth
- David Brandreth
- Lesley
- Andrew
- Maggie
- Fiona Slater
- Alan Bridger
- Kerala
- Jenni
- Alison
Minutes
Energy fair
Lesley and Maggie had a meeting about holding a local event in Cae Bodfach with information for what people can do now to make their homes more efficient, focusing on low cost, quick fixes. It would aim to provide information about what’s out there from bodies like Warm Wales.
The event would need activities to keep people at the event and get them involved, such as demonstrations of haybox ovens, solar cooking etc.
PACE were working on the home energy audits and might be interested in collaborating and Montgomery Energy Group are holding an energy group in the Autumn – maybe they could use our event as a dry-run.
The new council administration is making a big push on energy efficiency and retrofitting old buildings, so might be a good partner too.
A provisional date for September was set. Lesley and Maggie will pull together ideas and welcome submissions.
St Myllin’s Day
BRACE and the CVRG are both having a stall. Dewi is providing materials for the CVRG stall, but won’t be present.
Andrew will host the BRACE the stall with Jeni, Alison, and Alan. We can use the barrow from the community for the stall and the BRACE gazebo. CVRG has a gazebo available through Arts Connection.
The event starts at 11am – so the volunteers will meet at 9:30am to set up.
We will ask for donations of plants etc to be dropped off at the community garden on Thursday evening via WhatsApp etc.
Sunflower planting
There is the possibility of using the planters under the wall next to the car planting – the council needs to approve it so that Tom doesn’t plant them up. Around 250 seeds have been sown, but have not germinated yet. The Russian national flower is Chamomile, so this could be threaded through any display of sunflowers.
There was a suggestion that we could give away seedlings and ask for donations at St Myllin’s Day with the proceeds going to BRACE and a charity such as Doctors with Borders. There would need to be some instructions provided for people to plant them up, or perhaps an offer to come along to the Maes-y-Dderwen event or the community garden to pot them up. There were questions about how much work this would be, and whether the focus should be on encouraging people to plant them out in their gardens at home.
There was also discussion about planting vegetables in the planters on the square, and the possibility of a corridor of sunflowers from Llanfyllin to Llanfechain – but we may not have enough sunflowers for this.
School project
We offered time on Fridays and Saturdays, but have not heard back from the school. We may need to set a deadline to trigger a response – time is short anyway before the end of the summer term. It may be best to limit the activity now and follow up again in the Autumn term.
Local Sites for Nature fund
Information about this was posted in the WhatsApp group. Scrub sites next to Stadco would be good candidate sites. But any thoughts or ideas from the group would be good if we can get an application together in time.
The deadline for this is 12th June, so the timing is tight.
BRACE leaflet
Designed and ready to go! Fi and Alan will organise printing and try to get it delivered in time for St Myllin’s Day.
Community fridge
Funding is in the account. There will be a meeting on 15th June at 7pm in the Cross Keys to look at all the options and other case studies, and talk about what other people are doing – talk as a group about what we want to do in Llanfyllin. It will be a small meeting, but BRACE members welcome.
There is additional money in the budget for food safety training. Everyone involved will need food safety training. The meeting will explore what’s available and what’s included in the funding.
The project has to run for 3 years.
Funding doesn’t specify when it starts, but plan is to start in August. Lots of set up required before then though.
Minutes from the meeting will be sent out to BRACE members.
All other business
There was a discussion about the possibility of expenses for people who contribute a lot. The idea was well-received, but there was a discussion about the complications of this in terms of ensuring sufficient funding is available, making things fair and equal, and the criteria that people would need to fulfill. General consensus to chat about this in more detail in future.