The Llanidloes Resource Centre (LRC) is a local voluntary-sector organization providing a diversity of support services to Llanidloes and the surrounding area. Its users range from individuals dropping in casually to check their email to organizations renting fully-serviced office space. It provides too large a variety of services and facilities to list easily. Sometimes it's just best to contact us to ask: even if we can't help, we may well know someone who can.
LRC was founded towards the end of 1995 when a number of individuals came together to address an agreed need for a "telecottage" in Llanidloes. Small groups meeting informally in kitchens, pubs and other places gradually formed larger groups. A number of avenues were explored, rejected, argued over and rejected. Eventually a more substantial group, comprising interested individuals and representatives of various organizations (including Llani LETS, The Green Party, The Chamber of Trade and the Town Council) met more or less formally for a few weeks before collapsing in irreconcileable disagreement over how to proceed. The small group that remained, comprising the most determined individuals who had been discussing the idea for a considerable time, leapt into the project. By a stroke of good fortune and opportune timing, a local altruist (Dr. Andy Scrase, without whose generosity LRC might never have been started and certainly could not have grown and developed as it has) made available a shop building in a prime location in the centre of town. LRC has been there ever since.
After running for a few months with only an IBM XT (running DOS) and an unreliable 286 (which wouldn't boot up every day) a successful application to join the Powys Telecentres project (through which Powys County Council sourced a significant amount of European money to equip a number of town with ICT facilities) provided us with a pair of Pentium PCs, a scanner, two printers and, most importantly, an EPS-9 connection to Powys County Council's own network. So it was that almost a decade before the rest of the town had ADSL, LRC (in common with the Public Library and the High School) had a connection of comparable speed.
LRC began as one of the two smallest Telecentres in Powys and grew to become one of the largest, best equipped and most successful. Part of the reason for LRC's success was its diversity. While most Telecentres focussed solely upon ICT, LRC diversified into such areas as serviced office provision, an organic vegetable box scheme and the collection of tools for TFSR. Right from the start LRC provided support to other voluntary sector organizations (specifically to increase its own capacity to meet the objectives of community sustainability) and was instrumental in bringing organizations such as the credit union and the volunteer bureau into Llanidloes.
From 2000 to 2005, LRC benefitted from grant funding to employ staff (at various times a manager, an ICT support technician and a developmebt worker) but is currently dependent again entirely upon volunteers. This has not prevented its further development, however, and its capacity to support other organizations in its objectives of community support and development is considerably greater than at any time in its past.