Joy after £60,000 boost for Black Country projects
Members of three community projects are cock-a-hoop after winning grants totalling nearly £60,000 to give a boost to their causes.
The cash awards – in Wolverhampton, Sedgley and Stourbridge – will see the creation of a 'sensory' garden for people with disabilities, a community cafe and a facelift at a landmark church.
St Andrew's United Reformed Church and Methodist Church has been awarded the lion's share of the grants from the Veolia Environmental Trust.
Its £38,863 chunk is to be spent on converting an area just inside the Victorian stone church, in Bilston Street, Sedgley, to create a community cafe area, with access straight from the roadside via a glazed entrance. Northycote Farm, in Underhill Lane, Bushbury, Wolverhampton, gets £11,090 from the Veolia trust towards the creation of a sensory garden, which will be suitable for wheelchairs, pushchairs and anyone with mobility problems.
The project will see the installation of seating, raised flowerbeds and a wide variety of plants chosen especially for colour, scent and texture, behind the farm's teaching centre.
Visitors will be encouraged to sit and linger, touch and smell the plants and relax.
Work on the sensory garden will begin during February and the Friends of Northycote Farm are also raising a further £1,000 towards it, topping up the grant cash.
The Veolia Environmental Trust has also awarded the Grade II listed St John's United Reformed Church in Stourbridge – a landmark on the town's ring road – a grant of £8,670 towards refurbishment.
The church – built in 1860 to a design by architect George Street, noted for his work on the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand, London – already has another grant of £7,000 from Dudley Council's Community Forums budget. The three Black Country grants were among a total of 77 across the UK – totalling £2.5 million – awarded through the fund.
