Hello blogreaders,
Please forgive me for not updating the blog as frequently as I would like to have done recently. It's testament to the progress of the project that I literally haven't had time over the past few weeks, everything seems to be happening in a pre-holidays rush!
So, exciting updates:
Keys:
The CCT have agreed with our suggestion that making one of our New Saints members an official keyholder for All Saints church will show that the CCT believe in the whole 'youth empowerment, giving young people responsibility and trusting them'. The project has been designed from the start so that the young peoples' involvement doesn't remove anything that the church was providing already (for example, whatever combination of new uses, the building will remain consecrated and available for worship), so rather than take the keys from another local keyholder, the CCT are investing in a new set just for us!
Noticeboard:
We have been working for a while on a plan to replace the current noticeboard outside the church with a bigger, shinier, new one. This will be a good, early, physical change to the building that will show followers of the project that we mean business, that we're proud of our community's building, and that we want to make it an inviting place to be used by the community once more. These plans are going ahead with the knowledge and approval of the parish council.
Cinema Night:
...and speaking of the building being used once more. The next event that New Saints are managing is a cinema night at the church (probably at the end of January). We don't have all the details ironed out just yet, but the idea is to bring people into the building that might not have been in before, for a fun family film; but also so that the community can meet the New Saints in our official roles, put faces to names that they've seen in our newspaper articles. The public events will also be a good opportunity for New Saints to continue speaking to the local community about ideas they have for the future uses of the building.
Abseil:
New Saints had a very exciting meeting recently with the Fundraising Officer at the CCT, to look at the possibility of holding a sponsored abseil down the tower at All Saints. The professionals went up and had a look and gave us a thumbs up in their risk assessment. The CCT have held a good few sponsored abseils in the past and they've always been very popular (and raised a lot of money). This event will take a while to plan, but that also means that our intrepid abseilers will have a long time to raise money! (get in touch if you want to abseil and raise money too!)
HLF Application:
Last week was a momentus occasion in New Saints history, we sent off our Heritage Lottery Fund application to be read through by our HLF contacts. If we succeed with this funding application (and we'd like to think we will) we'll be able to hold many more events over the next two years, to celebrate the heritage of the building and it's links with Langport, open the building to visitors, tourists and the local community, build the capacity of the New Saints so that events in future run so smoothly and have much more communication with that community that will be using the building after the regeneration so we can work together on defining the new uses. Good times!
Constituting Ourselves:
As you may have seen from excited tweets on our twitter, the New Saints are making great steps forward to constitute ourselves. This means that we'll have much more power to make decisions quicker, we'll also be a more attractive offer to funders when we ask for support, and the group will have much more independency from the CCT (for example, having our own bank account). We haven't yet finalised what sort of formal group we'll be, but hopefully that's a decision for our next meeting and we can keep moving forward from there!
So, that's a lot to digest, isn't it! Keep checking back for updates :)
