Project Bawdeswell

Enhancing our Community

The Village Hall Development Committee has turned the project on its head. Instead of just looking at developing the village hall and providing facilities we need to find out exactly what the community wants and then seek funding to provide the right sort of building and other infrastructure to support this. The project has been renamed to reflect the change in emphasis as we will be looking at other areas of village life as well as issues raised in the recent Village Appraisal. A door to door survey of the village will be undertaken based on individual responses (including children/young adults) and not just by household. The reason for this change is both to satisfy the requirements of the various agencies that we will be approaching for funding and to ensure that we are doing what the whole village wants/needs.

Project Bawdeswell is about the WHOLE community and village infrastructure.

Over the last few weeks members of the committee have continued with visits to other local halls to gain from their experiences and have attended the Norfolk Area Village Halls Association Annual Conference. A large amount of useful information has already been gathered and some further visits will be undertaken in the future. It is interesting to note that Little Ellingham, a village of some 250 people (compared with 870 approx. in Bawdeswell), managed to raise some £51,000 themselves and were awarded grants of £250,000 for their new village hall.

The web site for Project Bawdeswell is being redesigned and the new version will be on line in a week or two. It will carry full details of our progress, minutes of the meetings etc. You can link to this site from the Reeves Tale Home Page. If you have any queries or wish to offer help to the project please contact “The Secretary, Project Bawdeswell, c/o High Windows, Meadow Loke, Bawdeswell, NR20 4TG” or Email to PBawdeswell@aol.com

The next meeting of the Project Bawdeswell Committee, which is open to all, is in the Village Hall on June 4^th at 10am.