South West Foundation

Gloucester City Community Researchers

A new Community Researcher training programme is currently taking place in Gloucester, the researchers have decided to look into the needs of the Podsmead Community. They are currently carrying out the research, interviews and focus groups in the community following the training sessions they have undertaken in the last few months. Their presentation will be taking place on February 15th 2012 at The Museum in Gloucester - places can be reserved through contacting South West Foundation.

LOTTERY PEOPLE'S MILLIONS - Windmill Skatepark Project in Torbay

The Foundation is particularly delighted to see that this project has made it through to the last 6 finalist as two people, Jenny and Donna who took part, trained with the Foundation to be community researchers and have been doing amazing activities in their community ever since. They succeeded in securing funding to build this bespoke concrete skate facility from The Lottery in the heart of Torbay. People of Torbay had been campaigning for the park for the last 2 years.

Litchfield Play Park

Recently we heard the news that work is well under way on the play park on the Litchfield estate brought about by the hard work of the residents and previous Community Researchers. After 15 years of having no play park (well just only one swing), the Community Researchers campaigned firstly to save the land from being sold off for development and secondly managed to obtain a grant to build the play area - a huge well done to all of them!

Community Researchers go to Parliament

The recent trip to Parliament included many people who had taken part in the Community Researcher training. A bus of about 50 of us from small voluntary/community organisations headed up to London for the day to look inside Parliament and to attend a workshop run by Naomi Kent Parliamentary Outreach Officer. In the afternoon there was an opportunity to meet with some of the MP's including Ben Bradshaw MP, and to raise some of the issues currently affecting small community groups. We were advised to send the research by the Foundation on this topic to all Mps. It is already in the post!
We had a great day!

Information on another recent events:

Community Researcher Celebration day at The Commodore Hotel in Weston

To celebrate the ongoing achievements of the community researchers, the Foundation organised a celebration day at the Commodore Hotel in Kewstoke Weston Super Mare. This was the venue for the very first training course. The morning had involved an enjoyable visit to the Oldmixon Community shop. Then at the Commodore, previous researchers from different projects met together, for lunch and for an afternoon of various presentations. We listened to people's achievements and celebrated the last few years of many successful training projects together. We found out what challenges previous researchers had tackled and what they had achieved. We also heard from more recent researchers such as the SEEDS Group (survivors of domestic abuse) who are now undertaking a major research project with other service users in North Somerset. (Link to film on this websites home page to see highlights of this day)