What we’ve done for Saltburn
There have recently been questions raised about the competency of the Saltburn Community & Arts Association’s board of trustees, which may or may not be debated at an invalid and illegal Extraordinary General Meeting this evening, so we thought we’d just give you a quick idea of what the board of trustees has done for Saltburn in the past eighteen months:
Jobs
Saltburn Community & Arts Association
Arts Development Promoter
Wilma Gardiner-Gill has worked for our charity for over ten years and does a sterling job. Due to reforms made by the current board of trustees Wilma now has, for the first time in years, an employment contract, has benefited from a long-overdue pay rise and has had her office painted and a new blind to replace an old banner that she had been forced to use as a blind since she started work for us.
Office Manager
In order to be able to provide a better and more consistent service for our users we created, in October 2011, a new role of office manager and hired long-standing volunteer Christine Postlethwaite to man the office each morning from 9.30am to 12.30pm. This has also enabled us to bring ticket sales in-house for the first time.
Events and Technical Assistant
In January this year we secured funding from Redcar & Cleveland’s Roots to Employment Service which has enabled us to hire Joe Postlethwaite. Joe will be selling tickets from the office from 12.30pm to 4pm each day and we will now open on Saturdays from 10am to 1pm. He is also providing technical support for our increasingly demanding events.
Publicity Assistant
In January this year we secured a fully paid intern from Teesside University who is helping us develop a better publicity strategy not only from the Community Theatre, Hall and The Saltburn School but for the entire town. Clare Robertson is a recent graduate from Marske and if her work proves successful we hope to be able to hire someone permanently for this role.
New Businesses
Peeling Paint
At The Saltburn School we have been able to offer space to Peeling Paint a furniture restoration company who has moved to Saltburn from their bases in Yarm and Leeming Spa. They have paid for this space by restoring £1,000s worth of furniture which was crucial in enabled us to open the cafe and launch our community library and book sharing service in the Saltburn Reading Room.
DanceFit Saltburn
We’ve supported Estelle, the vicar’s wife, in establishing her DanceFit classes at The Saltburn School in the new Studio Theatre, which has gone from success to success.
Events
- Expanded the Annual Photography Exhibition to entire Bank Holiday Easter Weekend
- Launched the inaugural Saltburn Arts Fair with over 1,000 attendees at our venue
- Launched the Vintage Fairs at the Community Hall
- Launched the Wedding Institute Fairs at the Community Hall
- Expanded the Annual Art Exhibition over the Bank Holiday Weekend
- Expanded the Annual Film Festival over the Bank Holiday Weekend
- Launched the Annual Beer Festival at the Community Hall
- Launched an Annual Childrens and Adult Halloween Party
- Launched an Annual Christmas Market
Our events have reached audiences have reached over 20,000 in the past twelve months an increase of 80 percent.
Funding
Co-operative Community Fund
In late 2011 we applied for £500 from the Co-operative Community Fund to enable us to continue the successful heritage lectures and lunchtime recitals that we had put on earlier in the year as part of the Saltburn 150 celebrations using funding from Redcar and Cleveland.
Unfortunately the bid was unsuccessful, however, since our successful bid for the school we now have sufficient dedicated space to enable us to look towards organising more of these events later this year in the music recital and lecture room.
Arts Council England Strategic Touring Bid
We were approached by the ARC in Stockton in November 2011 to take part in their Strategic Touring bid to the Arts Council, this bid would of enabled the Saltburn Theatre to gain access to a number of heavily subsidised theatre groups and allowed us to broaden the range and quality of theatre productions we were able to show in the theatre.
Unfortunately this consortium bid failed at the first round though the ARC is considering another bid later in 2013.
Creative People and Places
In March 2012 we worked a large consortium of other arts organisations across Redcar and Cleveland to place a bid for £2.8 million to this innovative new fund designed to push arts council money through community organisations. We were the lead bidder on this funding and though it was unsuccessful in the first round we were invited to place a second round bid.
Coastal Communities Fund
In March 2012 we worked with the Saltburn Town Partnership to place a collaborative £1.8 million bid for this large pot of money for coastal communities. Unfortunately both our bid on behalf of Saltburn as well as the Redcar and Cleveland bid were unsuccessful.
Comic Relief Application
In March 2012 we placed a £10,000 bid with Comic Relief for new chairs for the Community Hall and The Saltburn School, this collaborative bid was successful with £5,000 being raised from the Tees Valley Community Foundation and £2,600 from Comic Relief which enabled us to buy 144 new chairs and chair trollies as well as 28 new tables, which have benefited both our buildings.
CommunityBuilders Feasibility Fund
In March 2012 we placed a £22,250 bid to pay for the surveys necessary to develop The Saltburn School. We found out in May 2012 that the bid was successful and we had been awarded £19,750 which has been crucial in our initial development of The Saltburn School project.
Creative England
In late May 2012 we found out about a new piece of film funding offered by Creative England and we rushed to prepare a funding bid that would not only benefit the Annual Saltburn Film Festival but allow us to extend the Saltburn Film Club’s Foreign Film content so that we could show two foreign films a month for a year and build a more regular audience.
Although the bid for £10,500 was unsuccessful we have moved the Film Club’s regular evening to Thursdays and seen our membership more than double since we introduced the rolling membership programme earlier in April 2012.
Arts Council England Strategic Touring Bid
Following our work with Rural Arts on the Creative People and Places bid in March 2012 we were invited to participate in a £150,000 Strategic Touring Bid that they were preparing for East Cleveland bringing professional dance, music and theatre groups into the area over a three year period and inviting the young people of the area to work with these professional groups and then stage their own production. The bid was successful and the programme will begin in late March this year.
National Association for Literary Development
In September 2012 we revived the Saltburn Literary Society to provide better support to all the budding writers and poets in Saltburn. In October we submitted a bid to the National Association for Literary Development, which was closing it’s doors, which we hoped would enable us to launch a programme of development workshops. Unfortunately due to high competition the bid didn’t succeed, but our new volunteers are working hard on how to bring this programme to life later this year.
Sport England: Inspired Facilities
In September 2012 we placed a £320,000 bid to transform the hard standing at The Saltburn School and add a new MUGLA and 3G short pile pitches. Unfortunately the funding was significantly oversubscribed with over 250 applications, we were one of the 90 percent of bids that didn’t succeed but we’ve been working with other sports facilities in Saltburn to put together a bid to the Sport England Iconic Facilities fund which would allow us to bid for up to £1.5 million for the town.
LEADER
In July 2012 we were made aware of the last significant capital funding to be made available by the North Yorkshire Moors LEADER programme. We were determined to secure some of this money for the Community Hall as the kitchen and bar is in need of renovation to allow us to better cope with the increased demand of events like the comedy nights. So we commissioned the first ever accurate floor plans of the building from our surveyor and prepared a bid, which we submitted in October.
We were deeply disappointed when we found out that our £16,850 bid was not successful, but we’re looking at breaking the project into smaller components so we can proceed with the plans to add a disabled fire exit from the theatre, a new disabled toilet and a new kitchen and bar area designed with feedback from regular users of the kitchen and from our chairman Peter Nixon who acts as licensee and runs our bar.
Creative People and Places
Following our turn down for the first round we worked from June to December preparing a new bid for £2.8 million for the funding and have built a consortium of national and regional partners which has greatly improved our chances of success. The bid was submitted in December and we are hoping to be invited to interview in March this year.
mima
Just a few days ago we submitted two bids to mima one for £4,000 to develop the class one project space, which will enable us to offer space to artists and curators to explore contemporary art at The Saltburn School. Our first exhibition in this space is planned to open in late February to early March and will feature work undertaken during residencies at the Saxon Princess Dig.
We have also placed a bid for £1,000 to open a weekly art cart for children modelled on the one at the mima and the Tate Modern, which will be run each Saturday morning from 10am to 12pm and allow children to come and explore their creative side in an artist-led programme. Volunteers have already stepped forward to run the programme and if we don’t receive the funding it will still go ahead albeit in a smaller way.
What else
That’s of course not including the saving of the school and the thousands of volunteer hours put into bringing this building back into service.
