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Club History & Background
Club History & Background
The club started 40 years ago as the South Wales Branch of the Miniature Armoured Fighting Vehicle Association (MAFVA). We started with just four of us, meeting monthly in each other’s houses.
Over the intervening period, as numbers increased, that arrangement was superseded by meeting in community spaces until moving to our current venue of St John’s Church Hall Danescourt Cardiff in 2009.
More recently the modelling interests of members widened to include subjects other than armoured fighting and related vehicles.
Accordingly, in February 2025 we changed the name of our club to South Wales Modellers, to have a wider appeal to modellers in South Wales. As a result of this change, we have already attracted more members. The club now has a membership of around 26 with anything between 15 to 20 members attending our monthly meetings.
Membership Information
Membership Information
Anyone living within South Wales is able to join our club, although we have occasionally had members from outside of Wales as well. They just have to come to our meeting hall on the first Monday of the month, and join in. We do not charge a membership fee, although we do ask for a contribution of £1.50 at each meeting to cover the cost of the hire of the hall from St. John’s Church, and for refreshments.
We also have our own magazine The Dragon with a subscription fee of £10 for club members and £12 for non-club members, £16 for outside the UK. The Dragon is an entirely voluntary subscription and club members do not have to join it if they do not want to. There are currently 42 subscribers to The Dragon.
There are also currently 237 subscribers to our Facebook page, South Wales Modellers, although this is not the same as actually joining our club and taking part in it. We always encourage people to join us at our club meetings if they can.
Mission & Purpose
Mission & Purpose
South Wales Modellers uses a caricature of a Welsh dragon as the club logo. This is intentionally light-hearted to show the aims of the club, which is to promote the interests in all types of model making throughout the South Wales area in an easy going manner so as not to be unduly onerous in what we expect from each other. There are no set standards within our club for anyone’s models.
The club holds monthly meetings that are currently held at St. John’s Church Hall, Rachel Close, Danescourt, Cardiff CF5 2SH from 8 pm to 10 pm on the first Monday of the month, except for Bank Holidays when the following Monday is used.
We have our own annual model show, The South Wales Modellers Model Show that is currently held in Y Pant School, Cowbridge Road, Pontyclun where we invite other clubs from South Wales and the West of England, with some from further afield.
As a club we also attend a number of shows held by neighbouring clubs, currently about 9 shows a year where all club members are encouraged to attend.
The only criteria that we have for people displaying their models on our stand at shows is “Are you happy with this model?” If the answer is yes, then display it, if you think the answer should be “No” then work on it a bit more until you are happy with it.
Benefits of Joining Our Club
Benefits of Joining Our Club
By far the biggest benefit in joining our club is to be able to meet other model makers with similar interests so that you can see their models, and through talking to them, find out exactly how they have made their model, and also to get tips about how to make up a model that you are making. We also have a number of former soldiers all of whom are extremely generous in explaining details such as stowage arrangements or camouflage.
The club attends about 9 model shows each year that are held by neighbouring clubs. All members of our club are welcome to join us on our club stand at any of these shows. We encourage shared car usage, to keep the number of cars going to shows to a minimum, and help each other with fuel costs.
At the monthly meeting, we discuss what shows are coming up in the following month, which may include other shows where we are not attending as a club, but may do so as individuals, such as the Miniature AFV Association’s National Competitions, and the IPMS Scale Modelworld shows.
We have also occasionally put on other club activities, or have got together as individuals, such as visiting military museums such as the Museum of Army Flying, or attending Army displays, such as Royal Logistics Corps Open Days.
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