At a well-attended meeting yesterday evening, the Ladywell Assembly chose the projects for funding from the 'Mayor's Fund' in 2011/12. The successful organisations, following a ballot of all present, were:
1st Montage Theatre Arts
2nd Youth Village
3rd= Lewisham Youth Theatre and Brockley Design Winter Festival
5th Lewisham Community Sports
6th Brockley Football Club
This was a worthy experiment in participatory budgeting but, regrettably, LVIG's bid (£6k to buy new planters) always looked likely to lose out, especially given the age profile of those present and voting.
Well done to the successful bidders!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
That is a shame, but good to see money going to some worthy local causes.
You may have already thought of/tried this, but what about getting some local businesses or perhaps some of the bigger corporates to sponsor the planters? Could put (possibly not too large) signs on them to advertise their businesses in exchange for donations to buy the planters. Or perhaps Shannons would offer some free planters in exchange for some publicity/advertising on them http://www.shannonsgardencentre.co.uk/
It was great that Ladywell Youth Village, Montage Theatre Arts and other bidders got the young people who use their services along to support the bids - youth services are doing great things on a tiny budget with the Youth Village and I was pleased they got the money they asked for. Too often, younger residents' views are not heard, because they don't participate in these kind of meetings. Last night their voices were well and trully heard and I think we may have set a new ward assembly record for most participants on roller skates!
Also worth noting that until the assembly a couple of years ago approved a bit of funding for Ladywell Day Centre's security system to be adapted to allow out of hours hire of its hall, the sports hall where we now have 120+ young people roller skating every Friday night was not being used much by the local community. I think it's a real success story for Ladywell's assembly, that this facility is now being made use of, and it helps the day centre's finances too.
It would have been nice to have new planters, but the ones we've got will last another year or so, perhaps until the streetscape works are completed (if the Council gets the money for that from TfL, fingers crossed).
The involvement of so many young people in an exercise like this is great - and of course the successful projects are all worthy in their own ways. HOWEVER there are lessons to be learnt from last night and I would hope that a fairer and more democratic process might be possible next year.
Last Thursday's assembly was the best attended, noisiest, and most chaotic assembly I have chaired since taking over as Chair of the Assembly last year. It was also the most exhilarating!
The lion's share of the funding was awarded to projects working mainly with young people, which was one of the five ward priorities. All of the projects put forward by local groups were worthy of funding but sadly there was not the funding available for them all. 13 groups bid for funding and the total value of all the bids submitted was some £89,908. The funds available amounted to £42,730 and this represented two years money, 2010/2011 and 2011/2012. There will be further funds available next year, 2012/2013.
The Assembly Co-ordinating Group will need to give some consideration to the scheme adopted for distributing the Assemblies Fund in the future. We may need to make some changes to ensure other ward priorities besides youth facilities also receive funding, perhaps dividing the fund up between priorities, perhaps adopting a commissioning approach. Another possibility may be to set aside a part of the fund for small bids, and spread the money around a bit more.
But those discussions are for the future and for the time being I would just like to wish the six successful bidders good luck with their projects. They will put The Assemblies Fund to excellent use funding sports and theatre and leisure and educational activities for young people locally.
Post a Comment