Hackspace Secrets For Community Halls

What Can a Village Hall Learn from a Hackspace?

East Essex Hackspace wasn't one of the winners at this year's Village Halls Inspiration Awards — but it caught the judges' eye, and once you hear what they've built, you'll understand why.

Operating out of a former cricket pavilion in Essex, the Hackspace runs almost 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It's home to 3D printers, laser cutters, a jewellery workshop, a board game club, social nights, and a repair café where the whole point isn't just to fix your broken item — it's to teach you how to fix it yourself. They even built a battery-powered go-kart from scratch.

It's not a traditional village hall. But that's exactly why we wanted to talk to them.

In this episode, Marc Smith sits down with Tim from East Essex Hackspace to explore what happens when a community space refuses to think small. We talk about the membership model that keeps the doors open, the insurance questions nobody thinks to ask, and — crucially — which single idea from the Hackspace world any village hall could pick up and run with tomorrow.

If you're on a hall committee and you're looking for fresh thinking, this one's for you.

East Essex Hackspace was recognised by the judges of the Village Halls Inspiration Awards 2025. The awards return again this year.

Transcript

Hackspaces Explained

Marc Smith 0:01

Hello! My name is Marc Smith, and welcome to the Village Halls Podcast, sponsored by Allied Westminster, the UK's largest specialist provider of Village Hall in students, and the home of VillageGuard. So every year the Village Hall's Inspiration Award shine a light on the incredible work happening in community spaces across the UK, and this year one entry caught the judge's eye for a very different reason. But East Essex Hackspace isn't a traditional village hall. So I'm joined by Tim Neobard, who will tell us what a hack space actually is, why it works, and what a traditional village hall might take from it. Even just one idea from this conversation could make a real difference. So welcome to the podcast, Tim. Thank you very much. Now I think we'll have to get this one done right in the very beginning. What is a hack space?

Tim Neobard 0:48

Well, uh it's simplest. A hack space is a community workshop. Um you may have heard of men's sheds, very similar idea, except that it's open to everybody. Um, it's a place where people come together to make things, uh, learn new skills, fix things that are broken, share knowledge. You'll find everything from woodworking, metalworking to electronics, 3D printing, crafts. Uh, but the important bit isn't really the tools, it's the people. Um, it's a space built around curiosity and helping each other. We also have an active Discord, which is uh basically a chat platform where members are constantly sharing uh ideas, asking for help and offering advice. Someone might pose a problem that they're stuck on, and within minutes someone else is jumping in with a solution or offering to come down and help. And that ongoing conversation is a big part of what makes it work down there.

Marc Smith 1:38

So, how did you uh uh come by the building that because it's uh it's an old uh cricket pavilion?

Covid Making And Recognition

Tim Neobard 1:44

It is, yes, yes. Well, we didn't start in a cricket pavilion. Um it was a bit of a gamble uh from from the word go. Um essentially the way that we we started was um meeting up in uh a local scout hall, so almost a village hall basically, um, and that quickly moved on as we grew. We did regular events, people getting more interested, and we were lucky that um one of our um one of our local uh uh councils was running something called the King's Head, which was uh an old pub that's been converted. It'd been renowned, I think, for being a bit of a bit of a bruiser pub, and uh it'd been converted into like a respite shelter above, but underneath it had been converted into meeting rooms, and we sort of built up a following of about about 10-12 people that sort of would regularly come along. We had about six trustees um that sort of kicked off with the the whole idea of starting this as a as a as a charity, and uh it was actually through my mum we identified the uh cricket pavilion. The cricket pavilion was uh had been sort of highlighted by the local U3A, um U3A University of Third Age, it's like a club for sort of retirees looking to sort of socialise. But they realized that because it'd been shut for eight years, it was falling to pieces, uh kids had set fire to the roof, uh really all the all all the sea the ceilings had collapsed inside. Uh the council had been using it to store grass seeds in for a cricket pitch that no longer existed, so there was an awful lot of uh rat doings around the place, and um, but from our perspective it was perfect because um whilst we're sort of relatively young, um we we were able to sort of go in there and do a lot of the work, uh clear the whole place out and um make it livable again, sort of plaster plaster the walls and redo the ceilings, put in new electrics and all that sort of uh things. But um really our greatest achievement was the fact that uh at the time there was only six of us and we'd applied to this to the council, and the council had agreed to give it to us uh a pound a year, so uh peppercorn rate. And helped us kick off, and um uh you know, and from there onwards it just grew better and better. Um, I think we were we were lucky in some respects because the pandemic hit us exactly the same time as we were looking to open, and it pressed to the council and they they got the lease to us um about about nine months after they gave us the keys, which is very rare for councils, they tend to want to do everything by the book. Yeah, uh, but we were helping out, we were doing things like face shields for the NHS and and earsabers and things like that. So they wanted to get us in there, right? Yeah, and um and and that basically sort of encouraged them. They went, hang on a minute, these guys are doing us a lot of real good stuff here. They need somewhere to be able to get on with this. So I I was running laser cutters out of my um uh out of my garage and you could hear them from three streets away because of the noise of the the impellers. Uh so they moved us into the they moved us in there first without giving us a lease, they just trusted us, said here, have the keys, get on with it. And uh very odd situation to be in when you're in a basically a wreck of a building doing it up, spending money um that you uh you you don't have and actually getting money out of people during the pandemic was uh was was fun as well, getting all the grants in place and and even finding bags of plaster. I mean it was an absolute shortage of everything. Um a big challenge.

Marc Smith 4:57

Forget about that. Yeah, there was a shortage of everything, materials, yeah.

Tim Neobard 5:00

And we couldn't have anybody down to help us. So uh I mean for it for me, I I learnt to plaster, um, and all the walls in the hack space have been replasted by me. So uh friend of mine sort of gave me the basic ideas, and uh working in my bubble, I went down there and I blasted it. So uh yeah, it was it was great to get it all open again.

Marc Smith 5:19

So that that initial group of six, that was your bubble uh al alongside your family.

Tim Neobard 5:23

Yep, yeah, and that that's how we worked. We did it in shifts. We weren't 10 to working alongside each other, we would come down in shifts on our own, because obviously we still had our families, we were trying to work as best we could within it. Um, but I basically we had quite a lot of police and other people that were involved uh in the hack space and were interested, and they said, Look, you know, we can see what you're doing, you're producing things that are of great worth to all of the the key workers, so you know you need to get on and and and carry on down there, um, just in case we have another bout of it.

Marc Smith 5:51

Alright, so what were you uh creating? And I assume they were much better quality than Michelle Moons.

Tim Neobard 5:57

Not necessarily. I mean, the uh the rules on face shields are I think you have to be able to fire a ball bearing at them and have it to sort of deflect, and these things were a lot of people. That was the criteria, was it? That was one of the criteria that we have the BB gun to uh to test the we didn't know. No, we knew that it wasn't gonna pass. What we were doing was providing sort of very basics uh in terms of kit, and in in terms of this, it was things like um OHP film that would go over the face. All right, and we what we realized quite quickly on was that uh we started off 3D printing, there were quite a lot of 3D printing initiatives going on. Uh we saw another guy that was doing this in South End, um, and he had um raised, I think it was about 14,000 pounds to all this 3D printing, and I contacted him and said, You you obviously don't have this number of 3D printers, you cannot spend 14,000 pounds on uh filament. Uh, can we help you? Um and he was a little bit cagey about it, but he did give us give us some filament and uh we started printing to sort of help him out. Um, and we realized that we just weren't going to be able to get the scale and the numbers that were needed because it would take us you know almost a day uh to get you know two or three of these things out. And uh so we we appealed out to the local community, did a similar thing, asked them for money, uh it was enough money to buy us a laser cutter. Um I had to had to source a laser cutter with all of the customs uh shutdowns that were going on at the time. Um managed to source one, get it delivered to us, um, and then essentially um we cut about 14,000, 15,000 uh face shields and uh equipped all three local hospitals, all of the travelling nurses, the doctor surgeries, um, all the key workers in terms of butchers and um greengrocers um and care homes as well, because of course they were quite key for for maintaining um hygiene.

Marc Smith 7:45

I hope you're recognized for your work that you did there. Uh are you anything in the paper, the local paper?

Tim Neobard 7:51

I'm assuming uh your your people can't see uh what's going on behind me in my rather messy room, but uh I do actually have uh a gum from the Queen uh just before she passed. So uh I got a I got a BM. Yes.

Always Open With Key Fobs

Marc Smith 8:02

Ah would you mind uh do you have any photographs or a scan of that that I can put onto the web onto the page where uh excellent. So you will be able to see it, listeners. But yeah, that's that's very I'm glad you're recognised for that uh incredible work. So that I suppose that obviously that was six years ago now when COVID started. Yeah, doesn't feel like it, but yeah, six years. So you've come on quite a bit in there because you were saying that you're you're basically open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and that for for I I know you're not specifically a village hall, but it there's nothing really to say that you know, like I I think the term village hall can change, I think it's not ever set in stone. And your entry into the inspiration awards, uh it was like, Oh, there's so many good ideas that you do within the community. Uh and that's how do you get to the stage where you're you're open all the time? Uh how do you do that?

Tim Neobard 8:52

Well, um, I think it all comes down to access and uh ownership, really. Um, the main enabler for us uh was to have electronic door access with key fobs, and once members are inducted, they can go down, access the space uh without needing anybody to unlock it. And we're quite lucky that one of our members works for Big Yellow Storage, which is probably a company you've all heard of, managing their access systems. So um we had a very simple system, uh very powerful setup uh that that ties the access and membership together, and um that also rolls out to other groups as well, so all the other groups that use the space. Um, you know, they don't generally hire it, we don't tend to uh have commercial arrangements with them. Uh we let them sort of donate. Um we like we we try to make it feel like it's theirs as well. And um, once you've got multiple groups and different interests and people working on their own projects at different times, um the usage just naturally fills it out and uh it stopped being a scheduled space and becomes more of a sort of a living space. Yeah, and uh and don't forget that uh Christmas isn't important to everybody. Um I wouldn't expect to see 20 woodworkers down there uh of a weekend. So um yeah, it's uh you know it's it's an interesting place. You never know what you're gonna see. Uh I mean today I've just seen we've got like a a bring and buy sort of page where you can sort of post up things that you want to get rid of or you're you're to sell. And uh someone has literally just posted up a section of an aeroplane with the windows. Um no idea what anyone's gonna do with that, but uh someone up there's got one and uh uh it's available for purchase.

Membership That Stays Affordable

Marc Smith 10:29

Excellent. So yeah, if you're looking for that, you know you know where you know where to go. So you're saying there you they've got a k a key fob. Uh do you I I take I assume you don't charge per hour, you just the person pays like a monthly membership and they can go tap the key tap the key code, a key card, sorry, and just wander in.

Tim Neobard 10:47

Absolutely, and um the model sort of definitely evolved over time. Uh I think at the time we were filled in the forms we were charging about £10 a month, but um uh you know we we started with that fixed fee and quickly realised that can cost can be a barrier, uh especially uh people that would probably benefit the most. And uh so we've actually moved to a lower cost. We now charge uh five pounds a month, so we dropped it down, uh, and we've introduced an additional donation on top, which obviously gives us the benefit of gift aid as well. Um, and that's uh that will continue to evolve um as well as we've grown. So some people pay the minimum, some contribute more, some contribute less, uh, but it all balances out. And um the key thing for us is accessibility. Someone wants to be a part of it. Um money shouldn't be the reason uh that they can't, and and we don't treat it like a gym membership. So people can turn on and off their memberships, uh, they go away, they can come back. We quite often people will say, I haven't made any use of it in the last two or three months. Uh and I've I've refunded them, and uh they they then come back in when they're ready and we see them again come round. So we're we've got about 365 members now. Um really all right. 200 of those are actually paying at the moment an average of around about 12-13 pounds uh a month to to be part of it.

Marc Smith 12:03

That's a really good business model like business model or a way to be. I suppose essentially these things are businesses, despite being you know, they're charged you still have to make money, pay for heating, and do everything else that everyone else every other business needs to do. That's a really, really lovely business model, and it you can tell you care about uh the community that you're in, because that's you know, if you if you how many people can say they reduce the a membership fee, uh especially just now, um is is very very good. Uh see when you did that, uh did your memberships go up?

Tim Neobard 12:36

Uh it was well, I mean the the the fun part is that we've done an awful lot of stuff on social media recently. Um one of the things that I can uh sort of announce is that um we're looking for for a new space, we're looking for somewhere bigger. Um we've grown to that point. We've only got a small cricket pavilion. These this is not a huge, vast village hall, this is a very small space. Uh, and we've got uh roughly a footfall of probably six, seven hundred uh a week that are going through there. So that's that's a that's a lot of lot of movement for a very small place. And uh so essentially we've been looking for somewhere else, and it's very difficult to to find suitable spaces and still engage with the community, and um essentially what we're we're looking to always do is to try and engage that community, and if you move yourself too far away, uh you won't be able to engage. Our space at the moment is very rural. Um we are we whilst we've got a village around us, uh or two villages, they're kind of merging into sort of one town now. Um, you know, we're out in right on the very edge, we're surrounded by fields, um, we've got a leisure centre nearby, we've got a lot of dog walkers, but there's no part in traffic. So we're not like a normal community hall that may well have you know a frontage to a main road or or anything like that. People have to know we're there. They go down a quiet residential street that get to the end, there's a a set of metal gates and a small car park, uh a little to a tiny children's playground, uh, and that's it. So everybody we have to get in comes in through initiatives that we run. And um one of the spaces that we're currently looking at is a much, much about 11 times the size, right next to a train station, right in the centre of a town that's one of uh one of the deprived on wards in the uh country. Um, and that's where we can start to provide real sort of social value to them. Um, even where we are now, um I've calculated that we we we push out about um almost 300,000 pounds a year in social value just for the the efforts and the works that we do where we are by moving us into a you know a much more densely populated area with easier access and and more visibility, we'll be able to do much, much more as well.

Programmes For Kids And Adults

Marc Smith 14:48

I think you get your two like all age ranges, you know, like the most vulnerable I suppose even just get getting teenagers through the door. I think you cover all there's ever basically something for everyone in your space.

Tim Neobard 15:00

Yeah, I mean we we start um we we do run sessions for um very small kids, so we do things like Minecraft and engineering challenges for them. So we've got a set of computers they can come in and use. We also do um sort of sets of stuff that we'll do when we go off to um fates. So I've got like a rocketry kit for making uh rockets out of pieces of paper. It doesn't sound very exciting until you see them go two, three hundred feet up in the sky. Oh, really? Right, all up through pressure, yeah. It's all properly functioning paper rockets. Um we do ant weight um sort of robot fights. So if you remember Robot Wars from years ago, yes, yeah. We do all of that sort of stuff. We've actually got a guy that was uh on seven seasons of the original Robot Wars that comes down there and helps us build stuff, so it's uh we've got a real diverse community of people. That's really cool, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And uh, you know, so we'll go out to and we'll go out into the community and we'll join the freight fates and we'll help them and we'll do run sort of exciting, engaging activities with the kids there that are completely free. So obviously, when you go to a fate, it's all about raising money and s and spending money. Uh so having something that's completely free sort of means that even if they're not able to take part in the fate uh fate activities, they can come and you know go build a rocket, fight a robot, and um it just adds to that sort of fate atmosphere of not just trying to bleed every penny out of you sometimes.

Marc Smith 16:19

Yeah.

Repair Cafes That Build Confidence

Tim Neobard 16:19

So uh yeah, and then we go up to we we do evening sessions, so we do things like sewing clubs, um, we do we've got a guitar group that runs that's really successful now. Uh, we do board games clubs, we've got lectures on a Thursday, we've got a social night where people come down and shelf what they're working on. Um, and then we've got other groups that come in to run things at weekends. We've got a a company uh well a CIC, I think called Eco Essex. They come in and they sort of do things like teaching people about different types of period products and insulation benefits, and we've got uh a Radio Ham group that comes down and runs radio sessions for people, so there's all sorts of these little areas of things that bring more people in from lots of different age backgrounds, um, and then on top of that, obviously we've got the hack space itself. Um, we ourselves provide also all these other services, and we'll get people from 18 to you know, I we used to have a guy I used to call the young Mr. Grace. Um certain members of age that all recognise that, yeah, and he was quite happily shuffling around doing his woodwork, and uh, he'd all go down there and make him a cup of tea and have a chat with him. So you sort of see right from the very beginning, the very youngest kids all the way up to you know the oldest kids, as it were, uh, that are down there working on stuff. So, yeah, it's absolutely fantastic.

Marc Smith 17:32

That's great. One of the things that caught my eye in the entry and when I was looking over your social media page is that you have like a like I suppose it's kind of like a workshop where if someone has a broken item in the house, say uh I I think it was a light that was watching on your uh your Facebook page, they can bring it in, but it's not really just for the a person to fix it, it's for them to be taught why it's gone wrong, how can you fix it? Obviously, you don't want to play with electrics if you don't know what you're doing, but it's it's good that you get to see how the person fixes so you you can then maybe once it clicks, you know, once the light bulb moment, there we go. The light bulb moment that's a I think it's a great idea to not just fix it, but to show people how did that I how did that idea come around?

Tim Neobard 18:17

That not just I I think repair cafes are sort of that they're quite widespread. Everyone's seen sort of repair shop on the BVC, so they're certainly becoming more widespread and well known about. Um from our perspective, it's all about reducing waste. It was the fact that we've got a lot of technical skills there, um, and from a community outreach perspective is a really good way to engage and bring people in. Anyone can run a repair cafe. Um, you you think things will be really technical, but actually, sort of most of the stuff we're doing is gluing stuff back together and sticking it back together, and it's maybe just having the confidence to be able to do it. So showing people how we do these things helps inspire them with a little bit of confidence. You you don't realise how many people have never picked up a drill and drilled a hole in the wall, um, and and you know, giving people that sort of level of confidence they can come down and maybe try something out. Uh, it also means that they get a chance to come to us and they see around the space as well. We give tours, we feed them cake and cups of tea, uh, and that helps get them engaged, they feel part of the community a bit better uh a bit better. Um, and they also realise that they don't actually have to wait for a repair cafe, we're more than happy for them to come down on a Tuesday night with something. If it's a relatively simple fix, they can come down, bring it down, and we'll we'll help them fix it. So rather than us do it, so we'll do it at the repair cafe and then say if you've got this, why don't you come down on Tuesday? And we'll actually you can sit there and do it yourself and we'll be there to hold your hand. Uh I mean, even I sometimes, you know, uh there's there's a project that will be too much for me, and I'll go down there and there'll be a group of people that will come out and give me a hand and uh and fix it. I mean quite often they end up doing it for me because I have to go around and show people around and and tour them. The you know the thoughts there. I do I do turn up for them to specifically do that piece of work with them.

Marc Smith 19:55

That's really good. Yeah, I think it's uh it's one of my favourite things about about that your entry was was that was that part. Uh it's a shame I don't have I've got a broken subwoofer. It's a shame we can't do this uh live on uh a podcast.

Tim Neobard 20:08

Get your soldering iron out.

Marc Smith 20:09

Yep, yeah. Uh so one of the things is as well I wanted to ask you about um it hacky racer.

Tim Neobard 20:17

Can you tell me a bit because I Keegan will have to I have to send Keegan a link to this now. So uh yeah, hacky racers.co.uk um basically the the the the the idea of this is that um obviously we see a lot of fun sort of big racing events going on and um uh and Keegan and and Co. started this event which was sort of I think paired up with uh one of the big EV shows um where they show stuff off and it was making essentially small uh toy cars, uh so children-sized cars, and um basically making them electric that an adult could ride. So our particular one that we've built, our hacky racer, we call it the Velociraptor and uh it's modelled on the Jurassic Park Jeep, and we uh we we basically have taken a small child's Jeep, ripped out all the insides. There's not much of it left if I'm totally honest, mostly just the shell, reinforced it with steel. We've built a battery based off of a guy who builds uh experimental uh motorbikes to beat the land speed record, and he donated really no that really did the their cells off one of his motorbikes uh from an experimental battery build that he he made. Um we've welded you know welded all that up ourselves and um added in uh a couple of uh 2000 watt motors. We've got a 3D printed gearbox, which sounds mad, and it probably is. Uh it's not really been properly tested yet. Um and the guy that uh I mentioned earlier on, he's been helping us. He's even sort of 3D printed new lights with our Hackspace logo in basil embossed into it, and you can um uh you can indicate with it and it all all the headlights now work and all the buttons that's fantastic existing for so it indicates and it breaks and it's got the uh all the functions you could possibly want. And it it it does 20 25 miles an hour. Um it's probably got about a 30 mile range on it. There's not much more yeah there's not much more we need to do to make it road legal funnily enough and um a number of us that drive it you unfortunately we can't drive it without having a uh Clubman uh grass track race uh license so I now can have on my C V uh race car driver because I am a fully registered race car driver now for this little tiny EV. So uh yeah and it goes around the country. Um ours not so much because uh we've been having problems with differentials and other bits and pieces but yeah it's been a fun technical challenge.

Marc Smith 22:45

That's really cool.

Tim Neobard 22:46

That was really cool I think I think the real benefit of it was for the kids when we we took it to the last uh last event was uh I was in an inflatable dinosaur costume and I drove it around the site uh so I was the dinosaur driving the cheap uh roaring at the children as well good fun yeah that it does sound like tremendous fun uh so you mentioned the 3D printer there I'm a big fan of 3D printers uh because uh uh essentially I've animated for the last maybe 18 years so I can design I can well I can design things in Blender.

Marc Smith 23:17

So how how do you manage all the filaments? Do you do you charge extra for like if you say if they're using a special filament that maybe costs a bit more or is it all you can I just say well you know limit what you're using or we we used to when we first started up we used to charge I think about a pound an hour for people to come and use the filaments.

Tim Neobard 23:34

Yeah yeah it's you know not too bad but that's really it's now free. And uh the reason for that is that so many people send us filament all the time now that we don't we we need to get rid of it more than we actually do um need to charge for it. And we get lots of bizarre filaments donated to us as well. So because we've become so big uh I mean I've got a roll of medical filament uh down there which is using for printing what is medical filament and it is and it's if it's some I don't know it's got antimicrobial properties and it's good for making prosthetics. And I think it's about 300 pounds a roll this stuff. And it's yeah yeah for a kilo. Really yeah so it's it's you know there's a lot of specialist stuff that we get given that people either can't print or struggle with or bought for one specific job that never happened and then we end up with it down there and uh just trying to find ways to get rid of it quite often.

Marc Smith 24:24

So right so if I it's fantastic would you see the 3D printers obviously you can have lots of fun with them but if someone was to come in with the would they come to you and say like I've got this this part that I can't uh then you can design it then print it for them.

Tim Neobard 24:39

It will show them obviously show them how to do it then yeah yeah and and we do it a range of different ways depending on the sort of part and where it fits we we can use very simple software there's things like um Tinker CAD out there which is you know it from from my perspective is is CAD for idiots. I can do it. So if I can do it everybody can do it. And then we've got um sort of Fusion 360 if it needs to be sort of remodeled and we'll fit um we've even got now a a really nice 3D scanner that was uh donated by Love Essex which is like a it's it's a thing sponsored by the local um waste groups and uh they give away uh money to get things recycled and take it out of landfill uh and one of the things that they that the the grant purchased was this handheld 3D scanner uh one of the best on the market at the moment about £2,000 and that allows us to scan everything from things that are tiny the size of a pin to cars to an accuracy of 0.2 millimeters. I was gonna ask how accurate is it yeah very accurate and and and they get more accurate all the time um but so we would show them the different versions of how we could do things or how we would go about sort of um getting that model into the computer and then we teach people how to 3D print so all of the equipment um obviously in in the hack space needs some form of induction with people especially if they've never used something before even if we have an experienced metal worker coming and say I've used lathes all my lives well they've not used our lathes so we'll give them an induction and it's the same with the 3D printers. Most of the time it's more protection to the the actual machine than it is to the person. Occasionally things like lathes and and table saws and things like that you're you are more worried about the person than you are worried about the machine.

Marc Smith 26:18

Yeah. That's amazing that you've got all this stuff there. And did I see possibly on maybe the website that you you can loan out tools as well.

Tim Neobard 26:27

Yeah we've got a tool library and that's so cool. And the way that works is it's it's free. We don't have to pay anything to to take anything out we we make sure that we've got your details obviously we want to be able to call you up if you if you run off with something no library fines but uh we do ask that they return the tools uh and the way we do it is we hire things out on a Tuesday and then people bring it back by the following Tuesday so we can check it over and get it back out again. That's a good amount of time as well rather than just weekend to be fair I mean it's not massively well used um for a lot of stuff um the things that get used the most um is the metal detector so we've got a metal detector in there um people losing wedding rings we've had a a a seven out of seven success rate so far people finding them that's good that's very good so uh yeah that's good um we've got a induction heater uh which is um you know in terms of sort of rusted on bolts on the bottom of cars and things like that um I know what you mean yeah yeah you you sort of hover it over it and it just heats that particular bolt up rather than using a a um a blowtorch and I think the rule goes that uh if it's liquid it can't resist you anymore. Um so it works quite well and uh we've also got um like a a heat sensitive camera so that you can sort of look at your entire house look for sort of insulation issues um look for damp uh and we've even had someone using it for tracing down mice nests in their loft uh because they put out quite a lot of heat funnily enough and you can actually see where they're missing.

Scaling Up Without Losing Community

Marc Smith 27:52

That's right. Yeah so um those are the things that get used the most but we've got all sorts of other tools we've got toolboxes for people so if you want to work on a bicycle we've got a bicycle toolbox you want to do some uh woodworking we've got a woodworking toolbox so all the hand tools are in there for you to go off and and do things with uh electrical and plumbing toolboxes and then we've got a whole range of power tools that have been donated by the local co-op as well that's really good because I I spoke to um a guest on the podcast and they had a consortium and one of the things they did they did uh and I'm and imagine you'll do this as well but they did like a community pack testing so rather than paying someone to come in once a year they bought their own PAT tester and the qualification see but you've kind of gone on steroids on that because you obviously you do that which I knew you would do that but you've done everything else as well you kind of got together and and you know it's the 3D printer the two the tool thing I think you're saying is not as well used but I think that's a a brilliant idea because it obviously I I enjoy buying tools actually want yeah yeah exactly exactly uh I think it's a a brilliant idea and there's nothing to say um obviously uh the idea around the podcast was other village halls would uh you don't have to do everything because it's it's you know if you're not a hack space but it's it's a really l little sections of what you do they can take that inspiration and do it you know themselves uh I would love the heat gun I I swear I obviously I you can well podcast audio you won't see I'm bald but see if I cut my hair I'll feed every draft in the house and again where is that draft coming from and I did have I once had a smoke machine and I put it into the living room but it was that much draft it just swirled around I've got no idea but that type of thing would be it's it's such a good use of uh of your space and so when when do you move it or or had have you got the new space locked in or are you still in the process of we're we're in an expression of interest um we're we're one of the areas that's got this uh local government reorganisation going on at the moment and there's a lot of transfer of assets going around uh in the local area so I think it's probably something that uh quite a lot of uh councils will probably parish councils and whatnot will be aware of uh in the case of our uh district council that's uh being removed they're sort of transferring their assets to the parish councils and now the parish councils who have never managed these large spaces uh and car parks and all these other bits and pieces have suddenly become custodian co custodians of something much much bigger than them and that they they are now sort of panicking a little bit looking around like how are we going to sustain this how are we going to have the money in place to to deal with these things uh so our one at the moment is uh looking to to get rid of what is a an absolute huge building it's always lost money um I think they were losing roughly speaking about £110,000 a year of uh of taxpayers' money and that's because they used to have uh two members of staff that would be sort of down there to manage it because it's a big building you people would get lost they've got fire regulations and all this sort of thing uh and uh from our perspective we look at that as a bit of a challenge because you know our model works and we think it scales um we don't have permanent staff on site but you know we've been very specific with our safety inductions um and the way that we work and uh we hope that we can put that lesson to work in a much bigger building uh so that everybody can make use of it and the community gets some real benefits out of it as well. I really hope you get a so do I so do I bigger because it seems like you've run at the pace. But it I think you what you're doing is is really really pretty amazing. You can detect every box that uh that a community needs. You know that it's it's actually because that's that's the hope.

Tim Neobard 31:30

I mean and and from my perspective from a a model perspective you know um the community makes us uh and we give back to the community. If it was the other way around we could go off and get a you know an industrial estate sort of place a lot of hack spaces are based in industrial uh units all around the country um it's it's a fantastic idea because you know as as long as they're insulated and they're away from people as most industrial estates are that's where they go. But then there's no community there. And they won't grow. So most hack spaces that I I know the small ones sort of 75 80 regular people um that are are paying and that's how they sustain themselves and they have to charge quite a lot of money to be able to do that you know £30 a month you know £40 a month and again that restricts the sort of people they're gonna have uh in there. Us with our model you know we're trying to base ourselves right in the middle of the community you know we get a lot of help and a lot of support we get a lot of grants and uh you know that helps sustain us helps us buy new equipment makes us an exciting place to go to um you know kids come along we get uh you know we're we're an absolute bastion of of autism I always say because we've got so many people with sort of uh disabilities or social uh uh uh uh disabilities that come along to us and everywhere's got provision for sport but very few places have got intellectual pursuits so from from that you've got another area that we cover.

Marc Smith 32:55

Yeah that's very true. Yeah well number that is that you've d you've honestly you're doing s you're going the the the direction that everything every everyone should go in regardless of being a village hall or not uh everyone should be going in that direction um there's there's so many things that you can include everyone it doesn't it was like for me it was always rugby I hated rugby but it was always rugby but I grew up but I would have loved to learn the electronics and and and just anything you know all the stuff that you're doing that's why it your your your entry did uh stand out uh and I want number one I want to thank you for your entry because it has it's it it's shown me quite a lot of what you can actually do um with these spaces uh but also thank you very much for coming on the podcast it's your time is is massively appreciated uh and it's I could probably talk for ages on this I'm sure you could as well it's it's a a fascinating uh world the hack space and I will I it won't be the last time I hear of it anyway.

Tim Neobard 33:50

No worries. No worries at all. And uh if the people have got questions and whatnot they're more than welcome to reach out to us. We've published some of our uh expressions of interest and things like that where we've got things started and we also work with a part called um uh the UK Hackspace Foundation uh they've got new sort of uh lots of resources on how to get started with these sorts of things um so if you are looking to set up kind of these maker spaces or hacker spaces you can do so in your own areas and they give you sort of tips on insurance and safety and all that sort of stuff which is that's good yeah whole different bowl game as well like you do an entire podcast on safety so uh if you imagine going to a uh a group of counsellors like we did and I have to say they did take a bit of a punt on us when they gave us the first place and we said yeah we're gonna get a bunch of people that are basically untrained let them run around with power tools in a small space and they went yeah that's a great idea let's let's go for that you know in the same way that the insurance company you know finding an insurance company and and the first year's insurance I have to say was less than my professional insurance uh for what I do as a day job sitting at a desk yeah yeah absolutely hilarious yeah imagine that's not though you're the only uh community company in the world that's the money's gone the cost has gone down unbelievable you've done very well there yeah yeah yeah wonderful thank you very much for having me on many thanks to our headline sponsor and specialist village hall insurance provider Allied Westminster the home of Villagecar for making this podcast possible and to online booking system provider Hallmaster who also sponsor our podcast and can be found at hallmaster.co.uk You've been listening to the Village Halls Podcast a unique listening community for Britain's village, community and church halls and anyone interested in the vital community services they provide.

Marc Smith 35:41

We'll be back again soon with another episode. For more information please visit the Villagehallspodcast.com where you'll also find links to our social media pages. Thanks again for listening in and until the next time goodbye for now