A lively meeting of the Action Group was held on 18 April.

There is still plenty of chance for anyone, whatever your skills and interests, to get involved with this major long term project to improve a vital village facility – contact Trevor or Jane Roberts.

Experience from other villages
Guy Duxbury, also Herbert and Eileen Witherington, have been in touch with several villages where the village hall has been rebuilt or renovated. All teir contacts stressed how difficult it is to obtain funding, and warned us not to be disappointed if we do not succeed first time. But this shows how critical it is to have an application which shows quite clearly that improvements are needed and justified; and that the community is fully behind the scheme.

Guy Duxbury is arranging for a small group of people to visit Melmserby and Gamblesby to see for themselves what has been achieved and to pick the brains of the people involved. If anyone wants to go, contact Guy.

Information from village organisations about their existing and future requirements
This information is needed (a) to feed into a brief for the architects if necessary and (b) to demonstrate clear evidence of the need for the village hall. Steven Oldfield and Ron Horne have circulated a questionnaire to as many organisations as they know of. If any organisation has not received a questionnaire, get in touch with Steven urgently. If any village organisation has not responded, please do so – without these responses we will not have evidence of need, and without evidence of need we will not get a grant.

Community fund raising
We have set a target of £15000 to be raised from the local community over the next two years, over and above the normal Public Room fundraising activities and without impinging on the established fundraising of other village organisations. So a Village Hall Revitalisation Fund has been set up.

Dot Benson, Una Cowper, Sandra Hewitson, Pat Knifton and Ros Shirreff have come up with a mass of suggestions for fundraising, and a lot of things are being planned. The most important date to note now is the Threlkeld Extravaganza on Saturday 18 August – an afternoon and evening of activities for all the family. Details to be announced.

Anyone who wants to help out with fundraising activities, please get in touch with Dot Benson or Sandra Hewitson.

Donations
Some money for the Revitalisation Fund has already been raised via sales of the Threlkeld Recipe Book and from the teas provided in the Public Room for the Milestone Project. But as well as this we have had two important donations:

Threlkeld Art Society has very regrettably decided to wind itself up after 50 years in existence. Herbert Witherington has informed us that the Society's money after meeting its outstanding commitments is to be donated to the Revitalisation Fund – a sum he estimated at £750-1000.

Threlkeld Sports Pavilion has made a donation of £2000 to the fund from the money generated by its bar sales and other activities.

These donations are acknowledged with great gratitude. They enable fundraising to “hit the ground running”.

School input
The schoolchildren have discussed the future of the village hall in the School Council. They seemed especially keen on the idea of a mini-gym and an after-school club. Some children are doing drawings of what they would like to see. We hope to do be able to exhibit them sometime in the summer.

Architects brief
The plan is to ask three or four firms of architects to discuss their ideas with a small group of people, and to submit estimates for the production of a full scale feasibility study, including presenting their ideas to a public meeting. On the basis of this we would select the architects who we will work with on the feasibility study and then, assuming we can raise the funding, on the overall scheme.

The general brief for the scheme is almost done, but is still open for change if anyone thinks we have missed anything.

What we have in mind is building which retains the basic character and structure of the existing building, but which includes a second floor, and possibly extensions at the rear. It would include a big room much as at present, but one which could be sub-divided; plus smaller rooms and good storage.

It would incorporate a coffee shop facility; good kitchen and toilet facilities, including showers (this can be useful if the hall is used by overnight groups, a valuable source of income); a room which can be run as a mini-gym; and the basic accommodation for a pre-school group, for which there does appear to be a need in Threlkeld.

The specification also refers to energy efficiency, use of recyclable materials, disabled accessibility etc. .

If anyone is interested in seeing or in contributing to the all important brief for the project, or in being involved in the discussions with architects, contact Jon Trotman.

Website
Caroline and Steve Dobbins have now set up the new Threlkeld community website. Details of this are given elsewhere. Proceeds from advertising and links on the website are to go into the Revitalisation Fund.

Meeting
Another meeting of the full group is scheduled for 4 July 2007, when hopefully we will have been able to make progress. In the meantime people are getting on and doing things. Much depends on success in an initial grant application for funding to do the feasibility study. If this is successful (we should be informed by the time of the next edition of Beneath Blencathra), then we will be able to really get things moving. Ideally we would be looking to have a public meeting where possible schemes can be displayed and discussed sometime in the early summer.

Thanks
Many thanks to the number of people who have pitched in to support this project. It is going to take a long time, and there will be setbacks, but we must not let either of these stop the enthusiasm and determination now being shown by a lot of people in Threlkeld.

Trevor Roberts