Big Lottery Fund

Welcome from Mark Cotton, Head of Region

Welcome to the festive December update from the Big Lottery Fund in the South West! This month we will bring you the results of our Children’s Play evaluation report and also news of our new Communities Living Sustainably programme. We have allocated £10 million of good cause funding to jump start more sustainable living across the country, so if you are interested you have until 31 January 2012 to submit an expression of interest.

December has been a busy month so far, I've been lucky enough to visit not one but two World Heritage Sites (WHS), both of which have received significant funds from the Lottery. I was in Dorset on the 14 December at a seminar marking the 10th anniversary of the Jurassic Coast WHS designation. The Jurassic Coast has received a number of funding packages from Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and Arts Council England (ACE). Then on December the 16 I spoke at a ceremony to mark a significant construction milestone for Heartlands in Cornwall, the gateway to the Cornish Tin Mining WHS. Heartlands was awarded £22.3m of BIG Living Landmarks funding - both are fantastic places that I highly recommend visiting, particularly Heartlands when it opens to the public in the spring.

As well as visiting World Heritage Sites, I’ve also been down to see The Eden Project – we discussed a range of BIG funded programmes and initiatives, including the Big Lunch. This year, you can celebrate the Diamond Jubilee with a Big Lunch on the 3 June 2012. We will be bringing you regular updates on the Big Lunch over the next few months, but in the meantime Eden is going to be running a free 'creative planning camp' at its iconic site, to help residents and community groups with the initial stages of coming up with a vision for their area. You can apply online for a place at the workshop, which takes place from 5th - 7th February, or click through to Eden's neighbourhood planning pages to get inspiration from other communities that have made change happen where they live.

As always, you can keep up to date with what I am up to around the region on Twitter. Feel free to tweet me, go to http://twitter.com/markbigsw. You can also see what the South West team is doing in the region on Facebook at Fund South West and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TeamBIGSW

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a very happy new year!

Warm regards

Mark

Merry Christmas from all of us at BIG!

Take a look at our short Christmas video message, and see what we've been up to this year. This highlights just a few of the brilliant projects we've funded in 2011.

We also have a festive podcast for you! We visited the Tenovus - Sing for Life choir in Wales. This remarkable choir is helping people with terminal cancer feel positive and gain confidence through singing, giving them and their families something else to focus on and a real sense of belonging.

Thanks for your continued support and we look forward to working with you in the New Year.

Communities Living Sustainably

Big Lottery Fund (BIG) is investing £10million of good cause funding to jump start more sustainable living across the country and communities in the South West are invited to apply for a slice of the funding.

Spiralling fuel costs and food poverty are just some of the issues to be addressed through BIG’s Communities Living Sustainably programme which aims to inspire people to adapt the way they live, work and engage with each other to reap financial, environmental and health gains. Communities will be expected to introduce a range of different sustainable activities such as reducing waste, identifying alternative energy sources, accessing and growing local fresh foods or improving energy efficiency for individuals and in community buildings.

Community partnerships are invited to submit an expression of interest by noon, Tuesday 31 January 2012, with 30 areas likely to receive development funding of up to £10,000 to draw up detailed plans. The ten best proposals will then be funded with up to £1 million to deliver ideas for a period of up to five years, with the learning being shared to inform and influence others on how communities can become more sustainable.

Find out more about how to apply to this programme.

Hey! Hey! Its time to play!

BIG champions better play for kids in England!

Children across England want more diverse play opportunities according to an independent evaluation report of BIG’s Children’s Play programme.

The results show that while computer games are predictably high on children’s fun agenda, with close to 90 per cent regularly playing, more than one third of respondents said that they would like to try other activities with den and tree house building, martial arts and making things with wood or other materials coming top of their wish list.

The Children’s Play programme has committed £123million since 2006 to widen children’s access to good quality play across England.  During the lifetime of the programme 351 grants went to local authorities in England for play portfolios covering 1,466 individual play projects. In the South West, 45 projects benefitted from this funding with awards totaling over £11 million.

The Evaluating Children's Play webpage outlines what the evaluation found and includes links to publications. Read the full report

World Jungle – global play project wins National award!

The Playful Ideas programme forms part of our £155million Children’s Play initiative, which aims to create, improve and develop children’s play spaces, as well as supporting innovative, accessible and new ways of play.

One project funded through Playful Ideas was South West based organisation, World Jungle’s Global Play project, and they have recently won an important national award for promoting intercultural dialogue.

The Global Play project provides a range of free play experiences from around the world to children in Bristol and Gloucestershire. It enables children and young people to have the opportunity to explore cultural diversity in fun and exciting ways, through the best traditional games from around the world that have been tried and tested over generations, as well as exploring modern cultural forms and the connections and influences from different cultures.

The Institute of Community Cohesion (ICoCo) launched the ‘Awards for Bridging Cultures’, funded by the Baring Foundation. These special awards are designed to recognise and celebrate grassroots projects run by community and voluntary organisations that help to build bridges between communities and cultures.

Jane Manning and Ben Ward from World Jungle attended the Learning and Award Ceremony and received a commendation for their work and a cheque for £5,000 by the Cabinet Minister Attorney General, Dominic Grieve.

They said, “We are completely over the moon! It’s great to be recognized in this way. It was also a brilliant opportunity to meet other groups doing similar work to us and we are really grateful for the cheque which will help us to keep doing the work we are doing.”

Find out more about the Global Play Project and World Jungle.

Your inspiring stories on the Community Channel

UK 360 is the Community Channel's new local news magazine show. It will showcase the most inspiring stories from your communities, made by community news reporters like you, across the UK.

The show is funded by the Big Lottery Fund and the Cabinet Office, with the aim of championing and inspiring community reportage in the UK. UK 360 recognises that all great stories start on the street and that you, those living in our communities across the UK, have the best and most interesting stories.

UK360 wants to encourage and inspire people to take action in their local area. So if you are a passionate community member and want to raise awareness of an issue or event in your community, make a video report about it and send it in to them. Remember, everyone can be a community reporter. They can broadcast your story to a national audience and it is a great opportunity to trigger public awareness or maybe even stir up a national debate!

Download their local reporter contributor pack to learn how to get involved.

Be inspired by local projects based in Wadebridge and Bristol that feature in episode 1 and if you do have any stories to tell or issues to raise then please let us, BIG SW, know as well, as we’d love to see them and possibly feature you on our regional webpage, Facebook page and via Twitter. Just email us at: events.sw@biglotteryfund.org.uk

Building Capabilities

Big Lottery Fund is launching a nationwide discussion asking voluntary sector and social enterprise managers working in both frontline and infrastructure support and development organisations to tell us how they think we should best use our funding to develop support to VCS organisations and social enterprises.

The Big Lottery Fund has invested spent more than £200 million on capacity building for VCS organisations and social enterprises over the last ten years; our nationwide discussion is intended to stimulate debate and thinking to shape, influence and inform our future thinking and investment.

To begin to gather ideas and responses, we have posted an online survey. We will also be organising discussion events in 2012. A paper setting out the principles behind our future investment plans and an on-line survey is available on our website

The deadline for responding to this discussion paper is 15 March 2012. We will then publish a revised paper which responds to and incorporates your comments. We look forward to having this discussion with you in the new year.

Latest news and events....

Reaching Communities awards

BIG helping hand for Swindon families this Christmas!

This time of year can be a challenging time for many parents as they try and hold the family unit together for possibly one last Christmas. The BIG Lottery Fund is providing £249,983 to mediationplus in Swindon to help support separating or divorcing couples to continue to co-parent.

Mediationplus shares in over £912,000 awarded to four projects in the South West including support for survivors of domestic abuse in Salisbury and Trowbridge. Today’s good cause funding is from BIG’s Reaching Communities programme which aims to build stronger communities and help those most in need.

Find out more about the projects.

Awards for All grants

Grants help children communicate in the South West!

Deaf children and those with Down’s syndrome are amongst people to benefit from a National Lottery good cause cash roll out. Over £370k from the Big Lottery Fund’s Awards for All small grants programme is shared between 50 projects across the South West.

Find out more about these projects.

Your Value

New tool helps community organisations demonstrate social value!

Voluntary and community organisations have long argued that the added value they bring to their beneficiaries and neighbourhoods should count for something when they’re competing for funds or contracts. Recently revised Best Value guidance for Councils and a successful Private Members Bill on social value should help make this a reality and may finally mean a more level playing field for the sector.

Read more about Your Value and how you can assess your social value contribution.