Sharon Dussard
June Cummings
Yasmine Dawson
Christine Speed
Carly Newman
Angela Morris
Lisa Blackford
Solange Nkeng
2006 was an eventful year! A new voluntary management committee was appointed at the January AGM and they have since been working continuously to help bring the playground into the 21st Century. With the change in legalisation and OFSTED regulations it has been vital that staff and management ensure things are up-to date, we now have in accordance with OFSTED an under 8’s policy. It has been a long, hard and often stressful process but we look forward to the positive future of a new building.
The process for the new building has led to us meeting with the architects (EAST), looking for extra funding and designing the interior of the building, our thanks to all the staff, parents and partners who have helped with this. The budget for the building from the NDC now stands at £400.000. From all the ideas and input a prototype of the building has been made and Gary has worked closely with the children to make an external model with structures! We expect work to begin on the new building in May 2007. This will bring new opportunities in Somerville’s ability to continue to deliver play opportunities for local children and young people.
Along with work on the new building we have also been working on registering Somerville as a charity of which we are waiting confirmation. And the good news is we are now a company limited by guarantee which will help make it easier for us to obtain funding to keep Somerville going. Lewisham still continue to recognise the value of work and have over this period given us an annual grant to cover staff salary costs.
Most of our funding for school holidays and special events have come through grants from the NDC NX.
This has allowed us to provide much more to the users of the playground, and made the playground even more popular. However funding is still a major concern and we are looking at different ways of fundraising for this year. For the first time in the history of the playground we received a grant from Southwark Council towards activities.
As with anything in life there are high points and low points! Throughout 2006 we dealt with staffing issues some of which are still on going. Luckily all of the staff pulled together during this time and a local resident and ex- user was on hand to help out. Bradley Cummings joined the team voluntary and eventually on a part time temporary basis. It was nice to have some young fresh blood on board (no offence to the older folk!). New procedures have been put in place for staff to help Somerville function more effectively, another requirement of current legislation. We would like to thank Alvan Wright from Lewisham Youth Service for his guidance and support throughout this process.
Somerville has successfully provided its services to the local community for more than thirty years, but we need to revisit and update the work we do to make sure we can continue in the future. The management committee decided that in order to safeguard the future of the Playground a total restructure was necessary.
FOSAP has now been up and running for three years now and although it has been a good way of keeping local people in the know, there hasn’t been as much interest as we would have hoped for. We feel the playground is at the heart of this community and involvement from parents is vital. To continue to flourish Somerville needs new people to join the management committee and we hope that 2007 will see a surge in new members.
We would like to thank all those bodies and individuals who have supported Somerville over the last year. These include the London Borough of Lewisham, New Cross Gate NDC, Hyde Plus the staff and members of the management committee for their dedication and hard work and of course last but no means least the parents who help out on trips and keeping the playground ticking over.
We believe that 2007 sees the start of a very exciting year for Somerville Adventure Playground and its users.
Nicola Cann and Debbie Ellison
Then Joint chairs