The Conigre Mead Volunteers have set up a blog to keep friends and supporters up to date with developments at the project.

The volunteers, who help to maintain Conigre Mead Nature Reserve in Melksham, which is owned by the Wiltshire wildlife Trust, are using their £47,710 Community Spaces grant to improve the reserve.

Work include new surfaces to paths, new gates, new notice and information boards, and new seats. It will be carried out during the next few months and will be finished by June 2012.

The work will make the reserve more accessible and friendly to all users, particularly those with disabilities. Wheelchair and buggy users will be able to use the reserve all year round.

Seats will be installed suitable for all ages and will be useful for school groups and others.

There will be up-to-date and seasonal information about the site and its wildlife

There’s still a couple of weeks to nominate your favourite playing field for adoption as a Queen Elizabeth II Field, safeguarding it for future generations.
As part of the The Queen Elizabeth II Fields Challenge to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Fields in Trust launched the Save a Space for Me campaign with a special video message from the charity’s Patron Prince William.
Until November 18 you can vote to protect 2012 parks, playing fields and playgrounds. As well as being protected for the future, Queen Elizabeth II Fields in England and Wales can apply for a grant from the £1 million SITA Trust fund to make these spaces even better.
To vote, visit www.qe2fields.com and search by your postcode or look under the local authority list. When you find one you know and love, or even one you just like the look of, you can click to show your support. If there isn’t one in your area you can complete the form on the page, the Call to Action.
So get voting!

The play area, funded mainly through a £49,997 Community Spaces grant, has been many hard years in the making and thanks to a huge amount of effort on the part of the West Rainton and Leemside Community Partnership. In particular a small group of volunteers, including the young people of the village have helped to make this happen.

There is now excellent play provision where there was none before and in a village that is cut off from others by busy roads and has often felt isolated in terms of help too.

There was a particular word of thanks to community partnership member Cathleen Carr, the main driving force for the project and many other things in the village.

Congratulations all.

Here, Don Crabtree, communications rep for the Friends, explains how the group takes advantage of traditional and modern methods to let the world know what’s happening in their green corner of Doncaster.

I act as communications rep for the Friends of Sandall Park. Sounds grand but it’s not – it just means that all our communications strands are tied in together and any conflict of info is kept to a minimum.

It is fair to say that the fortunes of our group changed for the better when we developed a communications strategy for the group that linked our website to the park noticeboards – we have three.

Usually whatever appears on the website will appear – If appropriate – on the park noticeboards. Each noticeboard has the website address – www.sandallpark.org.uk – emblazoned across the top and we find that park visitors often read an article and then follow it up by visiting our website to send us a comment.

“Feeding” the noticeboards is by the far most time-consuming activity – but it is worth it as not everyone has a computer. Actually updating the website only takes minutes a day if the information is to hand.

We are on the second version of our website. The first was a DIY effort, which worked (just) but was hard work. We struggled with it but it showed us exactly what we really needed. Armed with this information we were in a position to approach a local company to design us a web site VERY, VERY cheaply. Because they were local they had a local interest and supported us accordingly. The company no longer exists but the owner and employees (now in a different business) still sponsor us.
 
Anyone that views the site will realise that the website is really a blog and the home page is the blog page. This is different to most websites. There are other standard pages but the key is the blog page as it is so easy to update and is the first thing people see and realise it is bang up to date. We try to put something on every day.

We monitor the viewing stats daily and can easily tell what is popular and the impact that an absence of items has. For example, if the web master goes on holiday we put stories on the blog in advance so they ‘pop up’ every day as we noticed that if there was a gap of week without an item visitor figures dipped dramatically and were hard to recover.

Figure-wise we get about 200 genuine visits a day or just short of 6,000 a month. These figures increase/decrease depending on park events. For example, concerts in the park attract massive numbers of visits, especially if the weather is dodgy. Likewise following events we get double the usual visits from people viewing photographs of the event or leaving comments – good and bad!

We also put updates on Facebook and the website (via Blackberry) from the actual events to let everyone know what people are missing in the park!

It is interesting that visitors to the site include Doncaster Council (which owns the park), the police and importantly the local press who use it a first port of call for stories. We actively encourage the council and the police to tell us of both good and bad news in the park – this helps to keep an interesting flow of information and different stories.

The third strand to the communications strategy is Facebook. We have a Facebook page. There are 360 ‘Friends’ signed up. We find this useful to prompt interest in park ‘happenings’ as the website relies on people initiating the visit, whereas using Facebook forces the information out to the ‘Friends’ and if worded correctly will attract them to the website for further information.

Linked to the notice boards we have most bases covered.
 
From a technical point of view the whole website is in WordPress and is free (always a bonus). It is simple to use and although I have only an average knowledge of computers I find it very easy to use and administer.

We try to make items attractive with photographs wherever possible – hard work to start with as you need a bank of standard photographs to feed the story – but once photographs have been captured they can often be reused and supplemented with up to date photos of incidents such as damage, litter or more importantly improvements made in the park and the latest work of our group.
 
I will probably regret saying this but the website is four years old and has never let us down. It is literally our shop window to the world as we get inquiries from expats all over the world but more importantly prospective funders can see we take our role in the community seriously and all our meeting minutes and key policy documents are there for the world to see and scrutinise.
 
We feel the key to the success of the website is the link we maintain between the low tech notice boards, the website and the ability to “force feed” information via Facebook. We could Tweet but we don’t.

Why not visit www.sandallpark.org.uk to see what can be done? And if you have any experiences to share about your adventures in communication please get in touch with us at Community Spaces.
* The Friends of Sandall Park received a £21,400 Community Spaces grant in 2009 to help with their work of “designing out” crime from the park.

The project during construction

A Birmingham suburb has a new heart after a £660,000 project to create a village square.

Accompanied by dancers, drummers and choirs, the new square in Kings Heath – a Community Spaces flagship project – will be officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Coun Anita Ward, and the Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt Rev David Urquhart, on Saturday October 15 at 10am.

The project has been masterminded by the All Saints Community Development Company in collaboration with All Saints Parochial Church Council. The group secured a £430,000 grant for the square from Community Spaces, £210,000 from Birmingham City Council and £20,000 from Kings Heath Centre Partnership

The Village Square brings together three separate areas of ground into a place for meeting and relaxing and where a regular programme events and activities will take place.

Major features in the square include:

- A ‘bubble pavement’ water feature which symbolises refreshment, new life and Christian Baptism

- A paved labyrinth, designed by artist Alison Ogle in consultation with local young people and community groups and which includes mosaic inserts and quotations on the theme of ‘Cherish Creation and Community’

- A paved Threshold/Swirl feature, which spirals outward from a restored Edwardian lamppost at the outer corner of the square toward the centre of the labyrinth and in which is cut a poem by local poet Rosie Miles who was a finalist for the title of Birmingham Poet Laureate in 2010

- A re-sited and renovated War memorial with seating

- Landscaping and planting

During the opening ceremony, the Bishop will switch on the water feature and bless the venue. Music and song will be preformed by the Kings Heath Brass Quintet, the Eritrean church and the Sing Live! choir.

Landscape architect Simon Watkins and site construction supervisor Peter Smith will “top out” the paved labyrinth by laying the final piece, a centre steel inlay circle.

Vivien Thickett of the All Saints Community Development Company said: “It’s been hard work putting together such a complicated project but the results make it all worth while. We now have a beautiful square for all members of the community to enjoy.”

Wendy Jenkins, programmes director at Groundwork UK, which manages Community Spaces, said: “The Kings Heath Village Square is one our flagship projects and I am delighted to see how the vision of the local community has become a reality.”

Once you have registered, the site will provides access to thousands of funding and finance opportunities, plus tools and resources to help you make your organisation financially viable.

Anna says: “Funding Central is a great resource and the weekly newsletter keeps you up to date with new funding opportunties.”

So why not give it a try – and let us know how you get on?

And don’t forget to let us know how your launch went… we love seeing your photographs, videos and reports.

Share the joy!

Community Spaces Programme Development Co-ordinator Philippa Neate has produced a document to give you and your group some guidance on the different project roles after Stage 2 approval – facilitators, council officers, lead professionals. It offers advice on how you can manage these roles effectively to achieve a successful project.

Philippa says: “The project delivery phase can be difficult for groups who may not have previous experience of managing a capital project on site or of liaising with contractors and landscape architects.

“Our step by step guide should make things clearer.”

You can read the document here

Please let us know how you get on. Your experiences can be a real help to other groups who are just starting out on the process.

Court Hey Park, on the border of Liverpool and Knowsley, is one of Knowsley’s best-loved parks. Its 14 hectares contain the National Wildflower Centre and, until the 1950s, a mansion house owned by Robertson Gladstone, elder brother of Prime Minister William Gladstone. It has a fine selection of mature trees, a bowling green, cricket pitch and play area, topped off with a Green Flag Award.

Another of the park’s great assets is a Friends group dedicated to improving the park and encouraging an appreciation of its history. Earlier this year they organised a theatre event in the park telling the story of the mansion house, based on a book by one of the Friends, Dave Roberts.

How do you improve a park like this?

One way is to make sure that people know that it’s there and can walk round in all weathers without getting muddy!

Some of the paths in the park were unsurfaced and turned to mud in the winter. A key entrance was hidden away so that you could walk past without knowing a park existed and there was a wicked chicane to get past. The problems this caused became obvious when one of the Friends started using a mobility scooter and could no longer get into the park using that entrance.

A £49,999 Community Spaces grant paid for new paths, new entrances and signage that will help more people get in and enjoy the park. It will enable local residents to walk across the park to school, even in winter, and creates a circular walk for all visitors to enjoy.

An activity and celebration event on September 14 saw children from three local primary schools helping to put the finishing touches to the project, planting hundreds of wildflowers in the park with staff from the National Wildflower Centre and Knowsley Ranger Service. Their hard work was rewarded with an afternoon of fun activities. Knowsley’s Mayor, Coun Christine O’Hare, declared the new paths and other improvements officially open.

Rita Walker, Chair of the Friends of Court Hey Park, says: “The Launch was a great success with the children enjoying the planting in the morning, they collected loads of conkers too which added to their pleasure. My thanks to Jan Pell and her team from The Wildflower Centre for organising it so successfully.

“The afternoon was enjoyed by the children all getting a turn at the various activities: card making, face painting (teachers too), circus skills and storytelling. The event ended with refreshments and congratulations from the teachers for a great day.

“The Friends are delighted with the improvements to the park. I have enjoyed talking to park users to get their reaction; everyone is very pleased with the improvements. Many thanks from The Friends of Court Hey Park to Community Spaces for giving us the opportunity to make improvements so sorely needed. It has made everything worthwhile for us.”

You can follow the Friends on their website www.courtheypark.co.uk

From Thomas Skidmore,

Twitter is great for keeping up to date on the latest things happening nationally, near you and in your sector. The networking opportunities are endless and it gives a direct link to many important organisations. When tweeting yourself, it’s good to update your status regularly and make sure you interact with other users.

If you’re new to Twitter, Podnosh provide a helpful guide to getting started and the basics here. There’s also a simple list of 10 things to tweet about here.

The advice from Nick Booth of Podnosh is “be useful, be helpful, be generous, then Twitter will return all of that by the bucketload.”

Following on from my blog about websites to visit a couple of weeks ago, here are my favourite Twitter accounts to follow (and a few others to get you started).

@GrantsOnline is good for all community groups after funding. It gives regular updates on new funding available and which type of groups it’s for. It’s free to follow them on Twitter, but unfortunately there is a charge for using the website. You can get a free seven-day trial though, so use that wisely!

For up-to-date information on play news, @playengland is worth a follow. It also gives good links to research, which can help support funding bids. Play England director @cathprisk also provides interesting updates on the play sector.

My favourite chief exec to follow is @peterwanless from @biglotteryfund. He provides a good mix between work-related news and general insights into the life of a chief executive (mainly involving Somerset County Cricket Club).

Of course, @groundworkuk gives sound updates linked to our environmental generation work focusing on boosting life skills and promoting greener living and working. Most Groundwork Trusts also have a Twitter account, so look up your local trust too.

@woodlandtrust gives interesting updates on issues regarding woodlands (unsurprisingly) and @btcv is good for news about volunteering (although your local BTCV twitter feed might be better for offering volunteering opportunities close to you).

@guardianeco is a new favourite of mine. It promotes lots of interesting articles on green news and the ‘Week in Wildlife’ feature brings together excellent wildlife photos that week.

And just for a laugh, @madeupstats. It lists its strengths as ‘Stats’, but its weaknesses as ‘Checking stuff’ – it sums them up well.

If you want, you can also follow me, @nelsongrhum I Tweet on things that interest me, so often Community Spaces will be mentioned and other issues affecting community groups. I can’t promise not to occasionally rant about Birmingham City FC or local politics though.

Let us know which accounts you recommend.