A new non-profit escape room is launching in the Swansea Valley this weekend.

Valley Escape will launch on Saturday, July 16 at Cwmtwrch Miners’ Welfare Hall

Valley Escape is participating in the Welsh Government’s ‘Summer of Fun’ scheme, allowing young people to access the game for free.

The escape room will be an added attraction for the community and for visitors to the Swansea and Brecon Beacons areas. The attraction has been established to bring a unique form of entertainment to the upper Swansea Valley and utilise part of the historic welfare hall, that was founded in 1924 to provide a venue for cultural activities.

In 2015 a group of local musicians got together to form a band whose aim was to raise money for charity and local causes. Over the next four years they raised thousands of pounds, but the Covid pandemic stopped them in their tracks. During the lockdowns, the musicians realised they shared a love of escape rooms as well as playing music - so came up with the idea of launching a non-profit escape room in the local community.

An escape room is a room in which people are locked in order to play a game requiring them to solve a series of puzzles within a certain amount of time to accomplish a goal, typically finding the key to unlock the room.

The concept for the escape room has been in development since November and work started to convert one of the rooms at the Welfare Hall early in May.

Feedback from within the local community has been positive and supportive of the venture, and it is hoped that it will also attract the interest of escape room fans as well as tourists into the local area.

Josh Morgan is one of the founders of the escape room. At 19, he is one of Wales’s youngest town councillors having been elected to represent the Cwmtwrch ward.

Cllr Morgan said: “As newly elected councillors, we were given a tour of the Cwmtwrch Welfare Hall and shown a room that the hall committee were looking to rent out for community use.

As we were already developing the escape room idea, this seemed like a perfect fit, and the forward-looking hall committee quickly got on board with the project.

“We hope that the escape room will be a success and bring a long-term benefit to the local area.”

The escape room will also be hosting some free games for young people as part of the Welsh Government’s Summer of Fun scheme during the summer.

For more information, please contact Valley Escape on 07746 174218. Further information about the venture is available on their website: valleyescape.co.uk and Facebook page: facebook.com/ValleyEscape