BRADFORD FLOWER CLUB
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Newsletter March 2010

Good News

Dear Members

By now you will probably have heard that The Bradford Flower Club has been successful in being given a grant by the Lottery – Awards for All. I felt it right that I should inform all our members of the background to our application, the reasons for it and how the grant will be spent.

In late 2008 Pat Rhodes and I decided to attempt to decode the fairly complicated Awards application form and after much striving, many hours and late nights we put in our application in January 2009 (the closing date was 31 March) – thinking we had lots of time. In mid March 2009 the application was returned to us. There were some alterations needed and if we didn’t get the application returned by end of March we had to start all over again as, guess what, the criteria had changed! Of course we were too late so that application failed.

Undaunted, we got the new application forms, and again after much striving, many hours and late nights, we managed to completed the application with revised project details.

We were asked for a title for our project and chose Flowers for the Future. We told Awards that this was because we wanted our project to not only benefit our club this year, but hopefully some of the grant would be used to set up projects that would be sustainable for the next few years.

I am pleased to announce that the amount awarded to us is £8,794. This is a lot of money and we now have the task of making sure we spend the funds as we put in our application. If we don’t spend it all – it has to go back! We were sworn to secrecy so that we couldn’t announce this grant until Awards had officially done that themselves so we hope you understand.

You will find in the following information, how we intend to spend the funding.

Yvonne Coppin

Item/Activity
Length of the project:
12 January 2009 – 13 January 2011

1 Increasing skills levels – a contribution to our demonstrators’ fees

2 Increasing skills levels – workshops

3 Increasing skills levels – educational visits

4 Information Technology

Website

Photoscreen

Microphone

5 Promotional activity – programme, leaflets etc

6 Increase in member participation – ie flower festivals, workshops

7 Recovery of VAT paid

How this will benefit our Club

1 This will enable us to keep our membership fee at its present rate without an increase in 2011 and also to continue with booking a demonstrator at the 2011 AGM – we have normally only had a speaker on this occasion.

2 We plan to have 4/5 workshops:

a) For club members

b) A school workshop to encourage young people to have an interest in flower arranging

c) 2 community workshops for non-members

3 Educational visits – there will be a subsidy for one of our trips this year.

4 Information Technology – Awards are keen to see that we reach as many people as possible with the grant money.

A website will enable us to reach many more people – those who ‘surf’ the net

A photoscreen will help with displays and on club night

A new microphone is urgently required to replace our existing broken one.

5 Promotional activity – this will help towards a production of a quality leaflet for 2010/11 and production of our in-house newsletters etc.

6 Member participation – this was an integral part of this item – to encourage as many of our members as possible to attend workshops and help at flower festivals. So we hope to see you there!

7 Recovery of VAT – obvious – we hope to recover as much as we can – we’d rather us have it than the Government!