Bringing the planet to the heart of a Welsh town

Susan Holmes
6 February 2024
3 minute read

After many months of planning and negotiation, Carmarthen Together finally opened the doors to its new Community Environment Centre, set at the heart of Carmarthen Town Centre.

The centre aims to bring the concepts of resilience, regeneration, circular economy and community building to life and help people from across the whole area to come together, learn new skills and support each other through these challenging times.

Projects happening already include a regular Repair Café, a Library of Things and New2U, a children’s toy and clothes swap.

A woman in the foreground works at a sewing machine and overlocker on a table. Behind her are lots of other repair stations and members of the public who have brought items to get fixed at Carmarthen's repair cafe in the Sero centre. — *Sero creates a home for many of Carmarthen Together’s projects, as well as a space for other groups and collaborations – such as hosting Carmarthen Repair Cafe.*

We have just started running regular monthly film nights and have just launched a series of workshops, run by local people, teaching skills and crafts, many of which are fast becoming lost.

Sero also provides a physical home to Carmarthen Together’s many other projects, which include working groups focussing on growing food, energy, waste, water quality and education.

Carmarthen has a significant Welsh speaking community and one of our challenges has been how to ensure we are respectful of the language and culture of the area when none of our original core team are first language Welsh speakers.

In spite of this, we made a commitment to ensure all of our communications are bi-lingual, which was quite difficult until we managed to attract a small, but very pro-active, team who now do all of our translation work and who have opened some doors into a part of our community that had, thus far, been closed to us.

A packed audience at a Sero event is addressed by a young man on a microphone at the front of the room. — *Offering events and activities in both Welsh and English has helped Sero connect and engage to a wider community*

Our town centre location was extremely important to us. We know that lots of people are caught up in the consumerist trap and we wanted to go head to head with this way of living by bringing an alternative option to the High Street, rather than something that’s tucked away in a back street somewhere.

So far we have been incredibly encouraged by the response we’ve received. We have already spoken with many hundreds of people who, without our centre, may never have come across Carmarthen Together and its work.

Our hope, for the future, is that centres like ours become commonplace in High Streets across the nation and we’re always keen to talk with others who are either already doing something similar, or who are just at the stage of thinking “What if?”

Find out more (in English and Welsh): https://carmarthen-together.vercel.app/en and https://sero.org.uk/