Aberystwyth was chosen as one of three communities to take part in a pilot project, “to imagine and plan for ‘Better Futures’”.

Aber was picked to take part in the six-month project, called Better Futures Wales: a Community Foresight project, hosted by Wales Council for Voluntary Action.

Aber Food Surplus, a group “facilitating surplus food redistribution for social, community and environmental benefits” in Aberystwyth, took part in the project and invited 22 other participants, representing a wide range of community group in the town.

The Better Futures Wales Project, funded by the National Lottery Emerging Futures Fund, “builds on discussions with diverse voluntary and community groups about how we can shape a positive future in the wake of Covid-19”.

Heather McClure, one of the founders of Aber Food Surplus, said: “Aber Food Surplus strongly believes in the power of imagination and creativity.

“If we can’t imagine solutions and imagine things differently to how they are at the moment, we can’t really deliver that.

“Thinking about the climate change and the environmental degradation due to our food system, we have to find exciting and inventive solutions.

“So for us, the opportunity to learn from foresight specialist, or imagination experts, was really valuable; to learn from them one approach to facilitate community visioning.”

Aber Food Surplus attended workshops to hear a “network of ideas” from various voluntary groups, to help develop their ideas on how they could support their community.

Heather highlighted four outcomes that represent the needs and desires of the community.

First, that there was a “strong desire for a community hub space”, secondly the need to develop “a more circular and participatory food system”, thirdly “the need to promote and develop a wellbeing system”, and lastly the need to create “resilience funds for local investments”.

Heather said the group has numerous projects in the pipeline as a product of the workshops.

She said: “We’re in the process of securing funding to go ahead with a project which is working towards the circular economy, so we’re going to be strengthening our food growing opportunities, horticultural training, and we’re going to be collaborating with the Aber Food Coop. That’s the most pending next step.

“Alongside that, Aber Food Surplus are desperately seeking funding for a larger premises. We envisioned our space being a community-owned space but at the same time our project is facing a real capacity issue with the size of our premises.”

Heather added: “Over the next six months we’re looking for project partners and collaborators who want to take these four themes to the next level; to say how we can make this imagination a reality.”

To get involved, contact Aber Food Surplus on aberfoodsurplus @outlook.com