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Recent awards

Community Buildings

Stoke Canon villagers have been awarded £277,417 from the Big Lottery Fund to create a brand new space for their community activities.  Stoke Canon will be using the cash to transform part of St Mary Magdalene Church into a multi-purpose area that can be used by the whole community – for events, educational activities and meetings. The small village is currently lacking such community facilities for its 650 residents.

Also in the South West region, residents of Lanner in Cornwall are celebrating a  £250,000 investment in the life of their community. The Lanner project is set to benefit all 2500 residents of the small Cornwall community by providing a space for IT training, pre-school activities and general community events and activities. The project is particularly interested in supporting people in the village who live in social housing.

These villages received the funding as part of BIG’s Community Buildings programme, which handed out ten awards worth a total of £2,659,018 for bricks and mortar investments in village halls and community centres.

Reaching Communities

£155,000 will go towards Teignmouth Community Association’s ‘Healthy Hearts and Minds’ project which will provide a range of healthy living activities and courses to one of the most deprived districts in the South West of England.

Catching up with friends and keeping fit is the aim of a £93,000 grant to Somewhere To Go Ltd, supporting the elderly of Weston-Super-Mare. The Somewhere For Us centre acts as a meeting place for older people in the Somerset town that has a significant level of socio-economic deprivation. The project aims to tackle issues that adversely impact on the older generation such as physical and social isolation, poor health and economic disadvantage.

Bristol group Mothers for Mothers receives £139,809 to continue providing peer support for mothers experiencing postnatal depression from deprived areas of the city.

In Swindon, the Richmond Fellowship receives £119,902 to continue and expand the Therapeutic Work In Gardening Swindon (TWIGS) project, which supports people with severe and enduring mental health problems who are unemployed or on long-term sick leave.

Also in Wiltshire, Salisbury Trust For The Homeless receives £124,626 to continue and develop its work providing accommodation to homeless people who are often isolated in society due to a variety of problems such as alcohol and/or substance misuse, mental health issues and unemployment.

And in Gloucestershire, North Nibley Village Hall is awarded £67,958 improve the hall and make it more user-friendly and accessible through a range of renovations including increasing the useable size of the hall, providing an additional meeting room, creating a new entrance, and installing new toilets suitable for disabled access.

Read about the Sandford Community Stores Association award in 2006.

Awards for All

A total of £536,878 has been distributed to 82 groups across the South West in the latest round of awards.  

Take me www.awardsforall.org.uk

Community Assets

The Big Lottery Fund recently announced awards made through the Community Assets programme, which we are delivering on behalf of the Office of the Third Sector. This is not Lottery funding. Community Assets aims to empower communities by offering grants for refurbishment of Local Authority buildings in England, to enable their transfer to the third sector.  Two organisations have been successful in the South West.

St Werburghs Community Centre is already home to wide range of services and activities that involve fitness, accredited courses, IT, and training. Improved facilities will add to the existing provision and will provide advice services, adult learning, cultural and community activities.

Plymouth City Council’s new project will involve the refurbishment of the Grade I listed Devonport Guildhall, resulting in the creation of a high quality creative and cultural community meeting venue and office spaces in a heavily built up area. The creative and cultural centre will be rooted in the community and link a number of related groups who will work together.

You can read more about any of our recent grants, at our newsroom

People's Millions Year 4

The Big Lottery Fund is giving community groups in the region the chance to win the public’s support and share in up to £250,000 of Lottery good cause money. Five awards of up to £50,000 will be up for grabs to carry out projects that improve and enrich local communities.

Organisations have until the 15 May 2008 to enter the contest. The finalists will be screened on ITV West and ITV Westcountry evening news later in the year when people in the region will be able to cast their vote for the projects they want to win the Lottery good cause cash.

Since the People’s Millions contest began four years ago, a total of £13.6m has been awarded to 229 community projects and more than 1.1 million people across the UK have voted.

Take me to The People's Millions website.

Changing Spaces

Changing Spaces is an environmental programme focusing on three priority areas – community spaces, local community enterprise and access to the natural environment. It will invest around £200 million in environmental projects across England.

We have appointed five organisations to deliver the grant programmes on our behalf (we call these award partners). The award partner programmes are:

Local Food programme (run by RSWT) – this programme opened to applications on 17 March 2008. It funds a range of organisations who want to carry out a variety of food related projects to make locally grown food more accessible and affordable to local communities. For more information visit www.localfoodgrants.org.

Community Spaces programme (run by Groundwork UK) – this programme opened to applications on 19 March 2008. It funds community groups who want to improve local green spaces such as play areas, community gardens, parks, wildlife areas and village greens. For more information visit www.community-spaces.org.uk.

Access to Nature programme (run by Natural England) – this programme is due to launch in Spring 2008. It will fund a range of organisations that want to encourage people from all backgrounds to learn more about and enjoy the natural environment. For more information visit www.naturalengland.org.uk/accesstonature.

Community Sustainable Energy programme (run by the Building Research Establishment) – this programme is due to launch in Spring 2008. It will pay for community-based organisations to install renewable energy sources and energy saving measures. For more information visit www.communitysustainable.org.uk.

Ecominds programme (run by Mind) – this programme is due to launch in spring or summer 2008. It will fund a range of groups who want to encourage people with experience of mental distress to get involved in environmental projects, such as improving open spaces and wildlife habitats, designing public art and recycling. For more information visit www.ecominds.org.uk

If you have a project that you thinks fits under one of the programmes visit the websites listed on this page or call the Changing Spaces Advice Line on 0845 3 671 671 (textphone 0845 6 02 16 59).

Take me to the Changing Spaces webpage.

myplace

myplace aims to deliver world class youth facilities driven by the active participation of young people and their view and needs. The Big Lottery Fund is delivering myplace on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). This is not Lottery funding.

The programme will open for applications on 6 May -- and up to £160m will be available in year one.

Funded projects must deliver the following outcomes:

• more young people, parents and communities feel that young people have exciting and safe places to go in their leisure time where they can get involved in an attractive range of activities;
• more young people, particularly the most disadvantaged, participate in positive leisure time activities that support their personal and social development;
• more young people have access to information, advice and support services from within places they feel comfortable;
• stronger partnership working between local authorities, third, private and public sector partners to plan, deliver and operate financially sustainable youth facilities with and for young people.

myplace will only fund projects that will deliver on all four of these outcomes and demonstrate evidence of the real participation of young people, particularly disadvantaged young people, in the development, design and future of running of the project. All projects will need to demonstrate genuine cross-sector partnership between public sector bodies and third and/or private sector organisations.

Further information including application and guidance materials for the first funding rounds will be available from 6 May 2008 on our website.

Evaluation & Research

Big Lottery Fund undertakes evaluation and research to enable it to improve funding impacts and processes; to promote wider sharing of such learning in order to improve practice and influence policy; and to support public accountability.  Big Lottery Fund's first national conference on evaluation, 'Tidy findings in an untidy world', was held on 1 November 2007 in London.  

The aim of the meeting was to share the experience gained over 12 years of evaluation and research by BIG and its predecessors, and to discuss new approaches.

Evaluation plays a key role in achieving BIG’s mission of being an intelligent funder rather than simply an efficient grant-maker.  

Read more about the Conference...

BRISTOL + BATH 08

Countdown to UK School Games…

Over 40 teachers from schools across Bath, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire attended a day of workshops at Bath University on Tuesday 1^st April, to explore the many different ways in which they could involve young people in the UK School Games, whether this meant inspiring them to qualify as a competitor through the relevant National Governing Body of Sport pathway, write school newspaper articles about their own school teams based as inspired by the UK School Games, or attend the four day event itself to sample the atmosphere and excitement of a major multi-sport event.

The UK School Games in Bristol and Bath take place between the 28th and 31st August this year.

Find out more about the UK School Games…

South West office

If you have any questions about the work of the South West office email us.

If you have general enquiries please call the BIG advice line on 0845 4 10 20 30.