Our completed community grants pages show all the projects that have now completed and been successfully funded through the community grants scheme.
Completed Grants Page 3
Feel Good Gardens
Feel Good Gardens’ project introduced individuals, through practical sessions, how to grow and identify wildflowers, why growing wildflowers is important for the local area, wildlife and ecology, and lots of other facts about wildflowers.
Over 12 teaching sessions, participants prepared the soil, sowed plug plants, sowed seeds direct, carried out plant identification sessions, and learned about the theory and practice of cultivating wildflower meadows including what is a meadow, soil testing, ground preparation, why it is important to grow wildflowers, propagation methods, growing wildflowers on different scales and sustaining a wildflower patch.
The project has involved people from a range of local groups (Edwinstowe in Bloom, Edwinstowe Friends of the Earth, Newark and Sherwood District Council Parks Dept, a range of community gardens and community allotments, RSPB), as well as local residents who are keen to learn more about this subject and meet like-minded souls. It has also made contact with various local schools, 4 of which have actively participated.
The legacy of the project has left a huge, beautiful wildflower patch, with different zones which can be used as a teaching resource for many local people in the future, that the organisation hope to grow and enhance year on year.
Oasis Community Church
The Oasis Community Church project took small groups into Sherwood Forest to observe the forest and woodlands. Sessions were taken into the countryside with groups, spending between 4 and 8 hours, using items to grow or create whilst learning about the subject and also learning life skills, gardening, conservation and arts skills.
‘Some of the participants had never been into a wood or forest area and it was exciting to see them come alive by walking through the forest, taking pictures and foraging there.’
The group have learned many lessons through this project, particularly about the value of going offsite to other locations and using these for inspiration for their own community Garden sites.
Social Action Hub
The Social Action Hub delivered a Rainworth & Blidworth Forest School Heritage Project. This was a project that gave practical opportunities and learning for local young people to investigate, get involved with and understand their local heritage. The project was also able to purchase forest school tools and resources to move further out into the local forest and woodland where the Rainworth & Blidworth Collieries sat many years ago encouraging young people on the project who live in the community to understand about their heritage and the area they live in.
Bespoke weekly sessions were run, incorporating forest school activities and included building dens and identifying food sources.
This project has provided The Social Action Hub with a springboard to launch a new service provision and they have been able to train their staff with forest school expertise and be in a position to create their own permanent forest school environment on site, as a result of the demand.
Nottinghamshire Mining Museum
With the help of funding from our scheme, The Nottingham Mining Museum were able to set up, manage and run an online public consultation and a public fundraising campaign to establish support for a future project for building a mining sculpture.
Activities undertaken included weekly meetings, working with the media to launch the appeal, producing leaflets, posters and pamphlets, public consultations and producing a folder, containing the list of names, addresses, and inquest details relating to the deaths of the over 3,300 miners killed in Nottinghamshire's coal mines over 300 years. This is in an accessible alphabetical format and is a very important tool for family members researching their family's mining history. In the future this will be produced in a Memorial format and will be on display in the Nottinghamshire Mining Museum.
The grant has enabled the group to set up Phase 1 of their project to create an inter-active, informative, educational and inspirational Mining Sculpture and Memorial on the Miners Park at Berry Hill, Mansfield. To find out more, please follow their progress on their website.
APTCOO
APTCOO’s project was for funding for an outdoor club to include woodworking classes and materials for a vegetable plot on two separate sites - North Farm House and Camelon Lodge.
The group carried out numerous activities within the project to include, undertaking a green wood working course, learning the importance of plant care and teaching learners and staff how to safely use tools and creative woodland craft.
Creation of areas that will attract wildlife nearly quadrupled on site thanks to the project. Learners have also gained a new respect for their environment and how to think about it more.
Find out more about the organisation and their work on their website.
Mine2Minds
With the help of our funding, the latest project from Mine2Minds enabled them to design an online arts, heritage and cultural landscape digital trail around Blidworth. The digital trail will be accessible via mobile devices either on site or in the comfort of your own home on a PC. It will give small, compact chunky accounts of Blidworth’s connections via image galleries, videos and audios with links to other online resources for more detailed information.
2 x half day project planning workshops with Blidworth & District Historical Society and Blidworth Parish Council were undertaken, as well as designing an online education pack (KS3) with downloadable resources and a visit to the Joseph Whitakker school to demonstrate the digital trail. The group also gave an Illustrated talk to Blidworth & District Historical Society on the My Trails initiaitive.
Drone footage was used in one of the My Trails heritage digital trails for the first time. This helped to significantly enhance the heritage digital trails, and also allow the trail to cover a wider area, including special landmarks that are not normally visible to the general public.
This project is running in conjunction with the Blidworth heritage digital trails initiative, Blidworth Parish Council have secured funding for an information board outside the library and both will be looking to be launched in August 2024.