Category: Wenvoe Community Hub

Welsh Learners at Clwb Clonc

Meet the tutor 1-3pm 04/09/2019

Canolfan Wenvoe Community Centre

Dewch am sgwrs â’r tiwtor

If you pop into Pugh’s garden centre on a Monday morning you might notice a group of people chatting in Welsh over their coffees. Some may speak quickly and others throw in English words to keep the conversation going. This is because this self-organised group is attracting Welsh learners and speakers alike. Last May a few Wenvoe library volunteers decided to start a Clwb Clonc (Chat Club) and posted an advert in this magazine. This advertised that learners and speakers would be welcome to meet at 11 a.m. on Mondays in the garden centre’s café. Janet Tabor says, “We are going from strength to strength. There are usually around 10-15 people each week. Although most come from Wenvoe village itself this popular group has people popping in from other areas in the Vale. We have a lot of fun. I would like to see more joining us. In my opinion it is wonderful to have an opportunity to use our Welsh locally. You never know how many people can speak Welsh in your area!”

Learn Welsh. The Vale wants to start a fast track class in the Community Centre. We hope to attract enough learners who wish to learn quickly by attending Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 1.00-4.00 p.m. 9 hours a week for £90 for the year. Wenvoe resident Brenig Davies says, “Learning Welsh has allowed me to see a parallel world” and “I have made lots of new friends because of my classes”. If you want to discuss learning Welsh further call the office on 01446 730402 or pop along to the meet tutor event on the 4th September.

 

Os ewch chi i ganolfan arddio Pugh ar fore dydd Llun efallai y byddwch yn sylwi ar y grŵp yn sgwrsio yn Gymraeg dros eu coffi. Efallai bydd rhai yn siarad yn gyflym ac eraill yn taflu geiriau Saesneg i gadw’r sgwrs i fynd. Mae hyn oherwydd bod y grŵp hwn yn denu dysgwyr a siaradwyr Cymraeg. Mis Mai diwethaf penderfynodd ychydig o wirfoddolwyr llyfrgell Wenfô gychwyn Clwb Clonc a phostio hysbyseb yn y cylchgrawn hwn. Roedd yr hysbyseb yn rhoi croeso i bawb gwrdd am 11 a.m. ar ddydd Llun yng nghaffi canolfan Pugh. Dywed Janet Tabor, “Dyn ni’n mynd o nerth i nerth. Fel arfer mae 10-15 o bobl bob wythnos. Er bod y mwyafrif yn dod o bentref Wenfô ei hun, mae pobl yn dod i mewn o ardaloedd eraill yn y Fro. Dyn ni’n cael llawer o hwyl. Hoffwn weld mwy yn ymuno â ni. Yn fy marn i mae’n hyfryd cael cyfle i ddefnyddio’n Cymraeg yn lleol. Dych chi byth yn gwybod faint o bobl sy’n gallu siarad Cymraeg yn eich ardal chi !”

 

Mae Dysgu Cymraeg y Fro am gychwyn dosbarth cyflym yn y ganolfan gymunedol. Dyn ni’n gobeithio denu digon o ddysgwyr sy’n dymuno dysgu’n gyflym trwy fynychu dydd Mawrth, dydd Mercher a dydd Iau rhwng 1.30-4.30 p.m. Bydd 9 awr yr wythnos yn £90 am y flwyddyn. Dywedodd Brenig Davies, un o drigolion Wenvoe, “Mae Dysgu Cymraeg wedi caniatáu imi weld byd cyfochrog” ac “Dw i wedi gwneud llawer o ffrindiau newydd oherwydd fy nosbarthiadau”. Os dych chi am drafod dysgu Cymraeg ymhellach, ffoniwch y swyddfa ar 01446 730402 neu galwch heibio i’r Ganolfan

 

 

Wenvoe Village Show

 

Wenvoe Village Show

Saturday 7th September from 12.00 noon until 2.00pm in Wenvoe Community Centre

After the official opening at noon, home-made goodies may be sampled by the public. The Community Centre will be open for entries on the Friday evening before the show between 6:30 and 7:30pm and between 08:30 and 10:30 on the morning of the show after which the Community Centre will be cleared for judging. Further details, entry categories and rules are available in the library.

We always need volunteers to help in running the show, so if you have an hour or so to spare please contact us.

 

 

 

 

 

Library News Update

WENVOE COMMUNITY LIBRARY
Tel: 02920 594176 – during opening hours or wenvoelibrary@outlook.com
Like and follow us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/WenvoeCommunityLibrary

Our library

At this stage we envisage that we will be staying in the existing library building for at least this winter. Therefore, we are endeavouring to make the building a brighter, warmer and more inviting place to visit. We would welcome suggestions from the village to help us achieve this.

Summer Reading Challenge

We are delighted with the number of entries for this year’s challenge. Children can still sign up at the library and read six library books of their choice to complete the Challenge. There are exclusive rewards to collect along the way, and it’s FREE to take part!

London trip Saturday Nov 30th

Tickets are now on sale in the library. The cost of the trip is £22

Off the Shelf – Normal People by Sally Rooney

This book has been in the best sellers list for quite some time. It is a well written coming of age novel and an easy read. Set in a small town in contemporary rural Ireland young people are trying to make sense of themselves and their peer group. We follow Connell and Marianne’s journeys of self-discovery from school through university in Dublin. The vulnerabilities and uncertainties of developing young adults are explored. The characters are well developed, and the author describes how their social interactions and lives in the two places are almost reversed. Some of us rated it higher than others, but all thought it an interesting read. We gave it 8/10

 

 

Library Events for August

Library Events for August

Trip to Cheddar and Street, Somerset

A good time was had by all on July 13th. We spent a few hours in Cheddar for lunch and a browse/walk around the village before our visit to the outlet centre. You can see from the delirium on Paul’s face that many of us found the shops irresistible.

 

The Summer Reading Challenge 2019 has been launched. The initiative encourages children aged 4 – 11 to read at least six library books during the summer holidays. Thursday July 18 saw the launch of the Challenge during the morning assembly at Wenvoe Primary School. This year the Challenge focuses on the theme of ‘Space Chase’ – an adventure featuring aliens and a family of astronauts inspired by the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. Children are challenged to read at least six library books over the school holidays and collect rewards, such as stickers and book marks, on their way to receiving their challenge certificate and medal.

Amazing Spectacular Space, Wednesday 21stAugust from 10 am ‘ll 12 pm, in the Library – A Special Library Event to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the first landing on the moon. The workshop will be run by David Breen who worked at Techniquest for many years. This is a drop-in activity for families, but adults interested in space are most welcome. Find out about the planets in our solar system and exoplanets. These are planets which orbit distant stars. Control a hydraulic robot arm and wear our version of space gloves to complete simple tasks. How does gravity affect the weight of a simple object on different planets? Handle meteorite samples and small samples from the Space Shuttle and Apollo space capsules.

Family History Sessions – Tuesday mornings

Have you always wanted to trace your roots and learn more about your ancestors? We are holding weekly drop-in sessions for beginning and more experienced genealogical researchers. On-line genealogical sources via Ancestry and FindmyPast are available for in-library use. The library has free Wi-Fi so you are encouraged to bring your laptops/tablets to share your research with others. There is no need to book. Fee £2 a session.

Help with IT. Wednesdays – all day

Digital Champions – Get FREE 1-to-1 help with your phones and tablets. If you aren’t yet connected to the Internet, there’s a lot you’re missing out on. That’s why we are offering a range of FREE support sessions to help you get you started, increase your

confidence, or build on your existing skills in using your mobile phones, laptops and tablets. Sessions need to be booked in advance so why not call in or ring us to find out more.

Sharing experiences: Each month we’ll be inviting people to share memorable experiences of places they have visited. Your contributions are welcome.

Readers’ recommendations: We are asking readers to let us know whether they have particularly enjoyed a book that they can recommend to other readers. We are putting these recommended books on a separate shelf in the library for the attention of other borrowers. This initiative is really popular so please let us have your suggestions.

Pop-up Book Stalls: We continue to hold our successful pop-ups. Look out for us outside the Village Stores over the next few months with a selection of good-quality donated books at reasonable prices. All proceeds go to keeping your library open.

Book donations: Many thanks to those who have donated books. We are always grateful to receive good quality books. We can always collect your books if you find it difficult to drop them off at the library.

Clwb Clonc: Our Welsh conversation group continues to go from strength to strength. Learners and first language Welsh speakers who want to practise their conversational skills can join us for an informal chat. Weekly meetings are held on Mondays in the café at Pugh’s Garden Centre at 11 am, and at 7pm on the second Thursday of the month in the bar of the Wenvoe Arms. Croeso i bawb.

Welsh Language Book Club: We have had a few requests for a Welsh language book club. If you are interested in joining, please send us an email and we’ll put you on the list.

Book Bags: We have some lovely grey canvas book/shopping bags for sale in the library at £5 each,

 

 

Meet the Author

‘WRITING IT IS THE EASY BIT’ by David Simmonds

 

Many people enjoyed a lovely evening with journalist, novelist and genuine raconteur David Simmonds, who gave of his time to support the Friends of Wenvoe Library.

David’s career in journalism took him from the newspapers of the South Wales Valleys to BBC Wales in Cardiff, where he worked as a radio and television producer and director.

After retiring, David embarked upon writing and has recently published his novel ‘Jake’s Progress’.

David shared his own experiences of writing creatively, and suggested some advice that he found invaluable.

  1. Write about a subject you are familiar with. ‘Jake’s Progress’ is set in the South Wales valleys where David himself spent many of his formative years as a journalist.
  2. Weave a plot around key events/experiences that you and others find interesting and/or entertaining. David was looking forward to writing about a rugby match in the South Wales Valleys.
  3. Research to ensure accuracy e.g. decimalisation, the flooding of Capel Celyn and the IRA activities all feature in ‘Jake’s Progress’.
  4. Be consistent in the time you allocate to writing every day. David found the National Novel Writing Month which is held in November each year a very useful tool. Participants have 30 days in which to write 60,000 words. Being a journalist, David was familiar with working to a deadline. He got up 2 hours earlier each morning to write and was kept on target by a graph indicating progress. The focus is on writing and not editing.
  5. Join a support network to challenge yourself to write about unfamiliar topics, develop your confidence and receive constructive feedback from other like minded people. So many suffer from doubting their own abilities; this is known as ‘Imposter Syndrome’. John Steinbeck himself abandoned a book he had written and then embarked upon a period of writing which led to the publication of the Pulitzer Prize winning ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ (1940). It was during this period that Steinbeck concurrently wrote a diary which ‘stands, above all, as a supreme testament to the fact that the sole substance of genius is the daily act of showing up’. For David, the Creative Writing Workshop at Cardiff University led by Lynne Barratt-Lee was instrumental in his progress. He has been successful in writing stories which have been purchased by national magazines and winning the 2017 Artists and Writers’ Short Story Competition.

As the title of the talk suggests, in the end the writing of ‘Jake’s Progress’ for David was the easy part. Publishing a book today is extremely difficult and in the end David decided to go down the route of self-publishing. Publishing companies usually look for an author with a high profile or insist that you have 2/3 books in the pipeline. By choosing the self-publishing route you pay £75 to publish a book and each book is printed individually to order.

The ‘Meet the Author’ evening concluded with David’s thoughts on themes raised by the audience, including free speech and citizen journalism.

Our thanks to David for an entertaining and informative evening.

 

 

Three Year Report

A Report After Three Years

Background

Your Community Library took over providing the library service in September 2016 and this is a review of the present position.

Volunteers are the backbone of the service. They work in pairs to open the library; the detailed opening hours are on the inside page of “What’s On”. They offer as many hours as they wish, some doing 2 sessions a month and others 2 sessions a week. Their numbers have fluctuated over the 3 years with 22 at the moment.

We can always use more Volunteers; you do not need any special skills and training is provided. If you would like to help your community and become a Volunteer please contact the library on 02920 594176.

Present position

We have a wide stock of books, talking books and CD’s to lend. There is a separate Children’s Section with books for toddlers up to teenagers. Any resident, young or old, can use the library. We also have two computers for use by the public, one only for the library Catalogue and the other to use the internet.

While the books, shelves and computers are provided by the Vale Council we have to pay our way in other areas. The library building is owned by the Wenvoe Community Council and we pay to use it including heating costs. We also have to pay for insurance, burglar alarm, telephone and running costs.

We have started a range of new initiatives to raise money:

  • Regular coach trips to London. The next one is in the Autumn.
  • Coach trips to Bath and Cheddar/Clark’s Village. The coach trips have proved very popular.
  • Raffles at Christmas and Easter. The prizes for raffles are donated by Volunteers and members of the public.
  • Sales of donated books at the library, at 2 local pubs, the Horse & Jockey and Wenvoe Arms, the Copthorne Hotel, and pop-up book stalls outside the Village Shop.
  • Sponsorship of the Wenvoe Village Show in September.
  • Family history tutorials at the library.
  • Welsh conversation meetings at the Wenvoe Garden Centre Restaurant.
  • “Meet the Author” talks at the Wenvoe Arms organised by our newly formed Friends of the Library Group.
  • A one-off initiative with Waitrose at Barry.
  • We were successful in being awarded a grant from the YMCA (1910) Trust to purchase a replacement colour printer and other items of equipment.

 

We invite Wenvoe Residents to take part in our fund raising initiatives so that we can pay our way and keep our Community Library.

 

We hope to have a new building in due course and welcome people to visit us there.

 

Community Library Management Team

 

 

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