OUR VISION
What Motivates Us?
Public Libraries Transform Lives™ and we challenge the State’s current status quo to abrogate from their responsibility to provide Free Public Libraries as a fundamental building block of our Welfare System. We believe in challenging the status quo and we reach out to all those who share our belief to join us - that means you!
(This is a community initiative - Contact us - Join our Mailing list - Scroll down to 'We Need your Help' - below - and see what we are up to.)
How will we do this?
We challenge the status quo by partnering with the State and innovating the very concept of the Public Library so it becomes a pivotal link between members of our community and their collective search for knowledge, and connectivity. Our Public Library needs also to be re-invented and recognised as the primary local interface between our Community and the State.
What are we intending to do...
We will be supporting the provision of Public Library services, and here is our current thinking:
OUR PRIORITIES :
Our C.I.C. STRUCTURE:
The C.I.C. (Community Interest Company) was set up to be as lean and mean as is possible, limited by guarantee with a small membership. In our case with two director/members with differing skills from our Community. Currently serving are:
Directors

Anita Wright, Dip.Ed, B.Ed
Community Activist
Anita has served as the Chair of HOWLS (Hay-On-Wye Library Supporters) since its inception on 17 October 2016.
She has also served as President of the National Assembly of Women - a British women's rights organisation founded on 8 March 1952

Mike Eccles, BA (Dunelm), MSc./MBA (DBS)
Social Entrepreneur
Michael has extensive experience in running charities and non-profits in Europe and the USA. In 2005, he founded the first CIC in Powys (only the second in Wales) - The Department of Enjoyment.org - the legal structure behind David Eveleigh's legendary Hay-on-Fire. He went on to set-up the charitable and non-profit legal structures for Hay2Timbuktu : Jump4Timbuktu and Tuareg Relief for the twinning between Hay on Wye and Timbuktu.
OWNERSHIP :
The driving force behind the Hay Public Library.org CIC's activities has to do with community ownership and local community democracy: ownership by the community which is raising money from its own pockets to attain five years of security for our Library; ownership of the activities we collectively innovate in re-inventing the modern Library; and ownership of the administrative relationship between the Powys CC and the Community - where the first physical port of call for both parties becomes our Public Library.
What is a C.I.C. (Community Interest Company)?
It is a community company regulated by Companies House with a commitment to social change and with locked assets. Specifically it has no shareholders to benefit from profit-making, and in our case, it's director/members work for free. It's purpose is to provide resources for community activities, organisations and groups. Any assets held on the winding up of such a company, must be gifted either to a Charity or another C.I.C.
History: - The need to formalise the community organisation structure came from the NVCO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations) in London in the late 1980s. The problem they had was how to create an organisation owned by a Charity which could be permitted to ‘trade’. Up until then Charities were trading illegally. Mike Eccles, one of our directors, was informally part of the discussion, led by Lindsay Driscol, then Head of the NVCO Legal Department. Mrs Driscol went on to write the legislation for the Charity version of the C.I.C. (the C.I.O.) and was later appointed as a Charities Commissioner. The success of the C.I.O. was in part the driver which eventually resulted in the C.I.C. company structure being rolled out for non-charity community organisations in 2005. [ It took 27 years to materialise, however by 2017/18 14,000 companies were registered as CICs, and the numbers are growing ].
The C.I.C.’s Company OBJECTS - what it is legally permitted to do
- The objects of the Company are to carry on activities which benefit the community and in particular (without limitation) to support the provision of Public Library services including but not limited to educational, heritage, arts, media, cultural and other services and activities designed to benefit the wider Welsh and English community and specifically the local community and schools and residents of Hay On Wye and the wider surrounding Welsh/English border area including residents of Herefordshire and Powys.
We Need Your Help!
There are many ways in which you can help us - here are just a few:
- SUPPORT OUR FUNDING CAMPAIGN : We are raising donations to keep our Library open, with security for 5 years.
- SET UP A WORKSHOP : Would you or a group wish to run regular workshops/meetings that we could support in the Library?
- LEAD A WORKSHOP : Would you like to lead a workshop or a series of workshops/classes?
- VOLUNTEER : Would you like to become a qualified Library volunteer? We will support your training.
- IDEAS & SUGGESTIONS : Do you have ideas which you would like to implement or see implemented in our Library?
- STAR IN OUR VIDEO PROJECT : Would you like to make a video for our Public Libraries Transform Lives project™? We are seeking members of our community who will help us increase the numbers of people we reach on Social Media with these videos, we need more - lots more. This project has the possibility of going regional and national - become part of it. It's a discussion or story telling project - your story.
- VISIT ONE OF THE UK's GREAT LIBRARIES : Would you, or your kids, like to visit one of the UK's great Libraries and be shown the secrets of accessing hidden knowledge and how the Library works in the modern era by one of their Librarians?
- JOIN OUR TEENAGERS' CLIMATE CHANGE CLUB : We are supporting our teenagers in setting up their own Climate Change Club in the Library - let us know if you want to join. It's a teenage club, you decide what it is and what you might need from us, and we will support you, as will XR.