CALSTOCK Hall and local volunteers are rallying residents and groups of Calstock to share ideas on how the community can support each other during these uncertain times through a conversation event.

The community drop-in event, Calstock in Conversation invites Calstock residents and representatives from local community groups and businesses to come together, promoting conversation about how resilience can be built back into the community.

The event will be taking place at Calstock Village Hall on Saturday November 26 from 2pm-4pm.

Matt Taylor, the administrator at Calstock Hall explained that the idea for the event came from the thought that communities were facing some difficult times due to the cost of living crisis.

He said people should not feel alone and this was a chance for everyone to come together and look at ways to help themselves and also build resilience into Calstock post-covid.

Matt said: ‘It’s not about politics, it’s about how the community can serve itself. The community can become aware of people’s needs and can see if it has an ability to respond to those needs.

‘It is about making sure that everybody in the community feels that they are part of the community.

‘The hope would be that if we start the conversation the conversation will continue.’

Residents and representatives from local groups such as Calstock Parish Council, the church, the social club, the pubs and other local businesses are invited to attend and share ideas with one another face-to-face promoting non-partisan conversation.

Phil Spurr, a Calstock Hall committee member said: ‘It can be a positive forum where people are joining things up and helping each other, coming together over coffee and cake, and the community hall seems the right place to do that.

‘A community should be able to look after its people and potentially more and more people are going to be vulnerable and we want to resolve this.’

An idea that Matt and Phil discussed was that the event could lead to new community clubs being created such as a lunch club or organising more activities for young people, and might even allow warm spaces to be identified in locations within the village, maximising community spaces.

‘We want to try and get everyone from different ages, trying to represent as many people as we can. If you’ve got and idea, bring it along,’ said Matt.

‘Even if you want to have a vent or a grumble and get things off your chest, that is ok too.’

Phil and Matt expressed the importance of the event being face-to-face as a way to promote healthy discussion and build trust and positivity in the community.

‘We would like people to come together face-to-face, it’s important. So many people are now working from home. It’s easy to forget that other people exist’, said Phil.

Matt added: ‘It’s always a good thing to bring people together.’

The event is an open-disussion. There are no aims just a desire to get Calstock talking and see what happens.

‘Maybe it will inspire others’, said Matt.