Centre 'making a difference' at heart of community

Staff, volunteers and users of a community centre in mid Cornwall say it has become a huge part of village life.

The Clay Area Training and Work Centre (ClayTAWC) in St Dennis has been running for more than 25 years.

The ClayTAWC team said more than 10,000 people used the facilities last year, making 2025 their busiest ever.

The creation of the centre kept the old school building in local hands, and there is still a strong educational theme to the sessions staged there, it said.

Centre manager Kerry Merrifield admits the building is "an absolute rabbit warren" but the rooms and corridors are bustling and busy.

"There's yoga, qi-gong, we have been doing pilates, we've got an art group, we've got adult education who deliver Maths, English and IT," she said.

"You can still feel that it was a school which is nice, a lot of people in the village come in and say 'oh, I can remember coming to school here!' which is really nice."

St Dennis Ukulele Club started at ClayTAWC in 2022 and is one of the centre's success stories.

Founder Steve Clegg said: "I put an advert on Facebook to see if anybody fancied playing the ukelele with me.

"It was four of us that turned up in lockdown, that was when you were allowed to have small groups.

"Five years later there's nearly 30 of us, it's just gone from strength to strength.

"Apart from myself, the bass player and the drummer, nobody else had probably played an instrument ever before," said Clegg.

"Some of them very rarely get out. Tom, one of our oldest, I think he's missed one rehearsal in five years, 'it's his life' he says."

The ClayTAWC team believe the age range of users runs from people in their 90s to six months old.

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