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Great news for the parish and Consett -
St Patrick’s Hall has been successful in securing more than L90,000 worth of lottery funding for Hall renovation and improvement.
Funders at the Big Lottery were suitably impressed with our recent grant application and, as a result, have awarded us L96,412 of grant funding. This is a fabulous achievement and one that we should celebrate.
This grant will go a long way towards meeting the total cost of the project and we are actively seeking additional funding to meet the balance of matched funding to meet the total cost of the building work and new facilities. We are progressing some interesting funding initiatives and this is an opportunity for more people to work with us to make sure this project is a big success. You have told us repeatedly that the facilities we plan to deliver are the ones you need – help us to achieve this last step. We know we are on the right road we just need this important push to reach the winning post.
To date we competed with more than 1,500 other projects to secure the funding and the Big Lottery Fund was so impressed with your ideas for improvements for community support for arts, music and learning that it plans to publicise the aspirations of our project in national and regional press articles next week. This is a tremendous achievement for a project in a small town in County Durham.
The Big Lottery recognised that we have long provided facilities for local people to access coffee morning, bingo, youth club activities, family celebrations, quiz nights, fund raising dinners and a whole host of other events, with helpers always on hand to provide a warm welcome and great activities at a reasonable rate. We have always supported those who need help and this project will enable us to continue to do so in the future by making new facilities and activities available. The new facilities we propose will make the whole hall accessible to all with new facilities including disabled toilets, more toilets, nappy changing facilities, a lift, plus a new youth club, music practice suite, drop in language and learning suite and an art gallery. There will be something for everyone.
Its good to reflect on how much has been achieved in the hall in recent years. Many of you will remember that it was not long ago that the hall was facing closure as it did not meet health and safety requirements. At that time the building suffered from under-investment which, in turn, had an impact on the kind of facilities we could offer.
When in 2004, improving those facilities became a priority for the Hall Management Committee members felt it appropriate to canvas the community. A set of four surveys ensued to garner opinion and innovate a set of services appropriate to modern day Consett.
The response rate was very high with one survey producing a staggering 70% response. This information gave the Hall Management Committee firm information on which to plan development of the first stage of hall development that saw dramatic refurbishment to 70% of the hall at a cost of L90,000; the majority of which was raised from successful grant applications.
Plans for refurbishment of the remaining 30% were also based on your views expressed in survey information. This is the final phase of hall development and this is the basis of the successful grant application to the Big Lottery Fund.
Your views fed to us in surveys gave us the credibility we needed when submitting our grant application because we could prove exactly what that the people St Patrick’s Parish and local people wanted. The part you played in the surveys has really helped us to be successful.
A significant and repeated request was for a Language and Learning suite to provide an innovative solution to complement traditional learning and thereby enable people working new shift patterns, carers, and people with complex lifestyles to access drop in accredited, non accredited and mentored learning, here in our Hall in the heart of Consett.
Another aspect that people wanted to see was new improved youth club facilities and a music practice suite, to enable children to develop their talents/gifts after school and to practice everything from jamming to brass band music. The aspiration is that, as their skills and confidence grow, the children can go on to give performances on the hall stage using its state of the art sound system. This youth and music aspect is an end to end system which will give our children lifelong hobbies and interests.
Similarly, plans for an art gallery will showcase local art talent from schools and from art classes run in the Hall. This all forms part of our bid and, while we are delighted to have garnered the support of the Big Lottery.
What we need now is as much support for our matched fund raising efforts as possible, so that we raise L116,000 towards the total amount of money to enable us to start building work as soon as possible. We are looking for fresh ideas and volunteer support to help us with this and I would encourage young and not so young alike to get in touch to help. In the coming weeks I will be arranging an open evening in the Hall to give everyone as much information as possible about the project and to let you know plans. It is wonderful and quite remarkable achievement that our efforts have taken us this far and with the help of the Holy Spirit and more volunteer involvement this project can succeed. Without the matched funding we need for this project we will be unable to take up the Big Lottery’s grant offer and further development of the Hall will not be possible. This is unthinkable and certainly not what any of us want to see. I strongly urge you to become involved. The time involvement will not be too demanding but with many people giving a little help I know we can achieve a great deal.
Anyone interested in knowing more about the project, joining one of our groups which are working on development of the project, or funding the scheme should call Fr Jeff 502196 or Sylvia Waters on 07788911791.
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