Page 52 - ALG Issue 3 2019

Northern
Northumberland, Cumbria and Durham
Exciting plans for improvements at Gilesgate AA
The Gilesgate Allotment Association in Durham has recently been successful in securing over £49,000 in financial sponsorship, which is to be used to update the allotments access-ways and car parking, and also to provide
a welcoming arts feature at the site’s main entrance.
Over the next few editions of the quarterly Magazine, the association committee has agreed to give readers the benefit of their experience over the last three years when applying
for funding, and how the site improvements were identified, designed and procured. Also, the outcome of
the local community consultations regarding the art feature, the artist and the feature’s final installation.
SPONSORSHIP IS A LONG HARD STEEPLECHASE NOT A QUICK SPRINT
Our site consists of 59 plots, used for family gardening, poultry and pigeon keeping and a small amount of animal husbandry, all formerly directly managed by the Local Authority.
In late 2015, a new management committee was elected and as a pre-requisite for seeking sponsorship, the membership agreed to become self-managed. This decision brought us a quick win when we were offered up to £10,000 by our local county councillors from their community chest fund. This offer was, however, time limited and
in the event, we did not have sufficient time to decide our priorities and to identify reliable contractors. The result was that the money was lost to another good cause, but we did manage to get a smaller sum of £2,000 carried over to 2016.
In 2016 we did some background research about improvements which would benefit the site and turned
this work into a questionnaire which members were asked to comment
on and prioritise. Ten improvement priorities were identified and top of the list was better site communications, accessways and car parking. The committee decided to move quickly and the £2,000 grant we had been offered was spent on a site entrance board and a community notice board
to improve internal communications. The balance of £500 was spent with the council engineers, who drew up plans and estimated costs for surfacing our grassed accessways and providing extra car parking.
With the information from the engineers, we chose two potential sponsors: The National lottery “Awards for all” and
our Local Community Foundation, both regular contributors to good causes
in our area. In 2017, we submitted the applications and awaited the returns; neither was successful! It seemed that the sponsors were not particularly keen on funding straightforward road improvements. In addition, the value of the allotments to the local community (outside our site) was not clear to them. Back to the drawing board!
Time passed as the committee considered the post application advice received from the sponsors, consulted its members, and began talking with various sections of the surrounding community. The discussions resulted in a community open day to be held by the Association each year during National Allotments week. Assistance from
our members was given to the local residents to help maintain decorative planters on the highways around our site, the donation of plants to voluntary organisations and surplus fresh produce to the local food bank. We also invited local schools to visit our site and to see the baby pigeons.
During this period, we also learnt that it was necessary to thoroughly research available sources of funding, speak
to potential sponsors and the local council officers involved with the area regeneration – also, of course, the local councillors themselves.
Then in early 2018, a gleam of light; we were advised that some Section106 funding was being administered by
the local planning department and that underspending in the Arts related budget area was evident. Section106 funding, by the way, is the money provided by private developers, as part of planning applications for community works within designated areas.
We spoke to the planning officer
Our site consists of 59 plots, used for family gardening, poultry and pigeon keeping and a small amount of animal husbandry, all formerly directly managed by the Local Authority
concerned and the idea of an arts trail around our site began to emerge with perhaps arts features designed into
the new accessways and car parks.
We then chatted with the local arts development and culture co-ordinator, who with a more practical hat on, felt that our site would not support multiple artworks and anyway “we were only really trying to fund the road ways”. It was accepted, however, that our main entrance car park would qualify for arts funding, subject to a local community consultation exercise to determine what form the artwork might take. It was agreed, in principal, that funding for the arts feature and the surface it would stand on estimated at £13,000 would be the subject of a bid to the Durham County Council Section106 arts budget, and a separate bid would be made to the Small Arts Grant of
the Durham county community Trust for a further £2,000 to finance a local community consultation exercise.
Starting to make progress, we went back to our local county councillors
and parish councillors to advise on progress. We still had the problem of paying for the actual accessway and car park surfacing, but the concept of the car park art feature and consultations with local residents was now taking hold. With the help of the local councillors, we were able to go back to the Section106 and look at other budget areas to try and fund the roadways. Eventually, we were advised that the Section106 environmental budgets did have a residual £34,000 available to bid for, if we could adjust our accessway costs of works to fit. We did some quick design changes, had the engineers confirm the likely costs, and submitted all our environmental and arts related bids in late 2018. This time we were successful and we are now are in the process of implementing the projects.
Gilesgate Allotments Committee
52 Allotment and Leisure Gardener