A celebration has taken place at Cardigan’s Small World Theatre to celebrate 10 years of the town’s community bookshop.

Since it opened the bookshop has donated over £50,000 to more than 30 local community groups ranging from the food bank, the oxygen therapy centre, local schools and the recent successful Lantern Parade.

An evening to celebrate a decade of the shop took place last Thursday, 22 February.

When the second-hand bookshop run by Mary and Colin Sullivan closed in Cardigan, a group of local residents led by Zosia Kobylinska decided that they would establish a community run bookshop. Mary helped by donating her remaining stock to the venture.

The purpose of the shop was that all monies over and above running costs would go to support local community groups.

Ten years later, the shop is thriving with donated books growing in number each year, sales are higher and even more money is being ploughed back into the local community.

In the early part of January this year, the bookshop revealed that - adding up all the donations since inception - £50,000 had been donated back into local projects.

To date, 38 different organisations have benefitted in cash or in kind from the bookshop’s success.

To mark this milestone, the bookshop volunteers invited those that had donated, some of those that had bought and some of those who had received donations to join them in the Small World Centre in Cardigan to celebrate.

Between readings by local authors Carly Holmes and Glen Peters and a rousing finale from the Blaenporth Male Voice Choir, those attending snacked on volunteer prepared snacks and learnt more about the shop, how the donations had helped and the community value of what had been achieved.

Cardigan’s mayor, Cllr Sian Maehrlein attended with her husband, Cllr David Maehrlein, cut the celebratory cake and paid tribute to the volunteers.

Current chair of the volunteers, Guy Stoate said: “Without the support of the volunteers who have given so much time, the residents of the area who have given so many books to help raise funds for our communities and those visitors who have come from far and wide to buy our books, we would never have been so successful.

By 2034 it would be nice to say that we have been able to give twice as much as the last 10. That and supporting other communities who would like to open similar ventures should be our aim.”