A Community Hub for Thurso
The Drill Hall, Sinclair Street, Thurso.
We’re spoiling you all this week with not just one Blog post but two!
But, ahead of the Your Cash, Your Caithness event this Saturday in Thurso High School where we will be bidding towards funding for the Community Hub Project we wanted to give you some background on where we are at the moment and also encourage you to come along and vote! Before we get to the ins and outs of our project a quick word about Your Cash, Your Caithness and how it would be fantastic for people to get involved and come along. The event is a participatory budgeting session…big words, we know. But that is officially how it is termed. It’s a little like Dragon’s Den for communities but without the Dragon’s (we hope!) Community Groups apply with the hope of getting up to £1,000 towards a project they are working on. On Saturday 25 groups will be pitching at the event. Speaking for 3 minutes about their projects, the audience can then ask questions for 2 minutes. Everyone votes, the projects selected by those present come away with their funding. BUT, it is more than just getting a pot of funding, it is a brilliant exercise in finding out what groups are up to, celebrating the work going on in the Caithness community and on occasion finding another project similar to your own, or one where you could say, “Hey, I could help you with that” or “I know someone who could help you” or offering to get involved as a volunteer to simply learning more about what people are up to. We highly, highly recommend that if you are looking for something to do this Saturday, come along. Of course we would love you to vote for us, but that isn’t necessary, it would just be fantastic to see lots of people coming along and getting involved in the community.
So back to us! When we started the Trust the first thing we did was ask you, the people of Thurso what your priorities were for the town. Number one was a Community Hub. Over the past two years since that consultation it has never gone away, every event, activity we do it all boils back to you our community want a space that you can call your own and need events, quality facilities and activities that help to reduce social isolation, help people who are struggling, provide training and employment opportunities and somewhere we can host more events which bring us all together.
We’ve been doing lots of homework over the past two years, talking and listening to people. Assessing all the opportunities for a Community Hub and how we can achieve this for the town and have found wide ranging issues. There are a lack of activities and events which suit some of the people in the town most in need. Halls and existing facilities are either oversubscribed already or are not suitable for some events and activities. Costs are increasingly an issue for larger events and the groups who stage these. We have found ourselves in developing activities that we are struggling for places to host them, our Thurso Grows project relies on workshops and events and we struggle to find places to host them. Similar with fundraising events and activities. The feedback from our community, from you, is also that you want somewhere that belongs to the community, is community owned and managed and will succeed throughout the generations. We want to be able to develop a wider range of activities and events for you all, we need the space to do it.
Looking at the options around the town, currently the Drill Hall in Sinclair Street presents the best opportunity to make this wish list come true. Dealing with a historic building means there are greater avenues we can look at for funding. But this also comes with issues of its own in that it is an old building which is in need of a significant amount of work to make it suitable as a Community Hub. We know that to make it successful as well as the range of community activities, services and facilities we would love and you would love for us to offer from it along with the community aspects we need to make sure that it washes its own face. It needs to be super energy efficient, have as low running costs as we can manage and also not take away from any existing businesses or services. So we need to consider how it can make money, suit the needs of you, our community and offer new services, events and activities which don’t displace the fantastic work that already goes on in our community.
It is a tall and challenging order to fit all of this into one building. So with all of that in mind. That is the place we now find ourselves in. Working out how to make it all work. We’ve therefore just a couple of weeks ago submitted an application to Stage One of the Scottish Land Fund and to the Architectural Heritage Fund to assess the feasibility of the Drill Hall. Feasibility means working out the condition of the building as is, what work would need to be done, how it could be designed to meet our needs, business planning in how it can make money and making sure it will fit the needs of our community both now and in the future. We have our own ideas, you will have your ideas too. Have no fear, we will be asking for those too if these funding applications are successful, it will be your community hub and we’ll be on the trail with community consultation and doing lots of work to make sure that your needs and priorities come top of the list!
We do have a small shortfall in these funding applications, which is why we are bidding for £1,000 on Saturday. Helen, our Chair and Magnus our Board Member will be taking to the stage and telling all attending about the project and how excited we are to get to this stage of the planning. As soon as we have more news about the rest of the funding we will let you know. We hope to see lots of you on Saturday or if you can’t make it and want to discuss the project or get involved please get in touch to info@thursocdt.co.uk