RECENT PROJECTS

Growing Food in Longwood and Golcar

Wild About Wool - Exhibition at the Colne Valley Museum

14th January to 26th February

The mill was the vision of children from Elm and Cherry Tree classes at Slaithwaite C of E J&I school. They went on a walk with local artist Rachel Ellis and sketched mills in the area. From these drawings Rachel created a wonderful willow sculpture which was taken on the Moonraking procession in 2011. Then people of all ages covered the mill by knitting, crochet, felting and weaving colourful fabrics which were sewn onto the willow structure. Some of the people who worked on the mill had never created fabric before and others were experienced at some or all of the crafts.  

The woolly mills, cottages and viaduct (below).

The exhibition includes other handiwork in wool both historical and modern.

Work by history students at Colne Valley Specialist Arts College (above)

Work by Gail Smith (above)

Peg weaving (above)

Community Garden with Fruit and Vegetables at Manor Road

Golcar J,I & N School won a bid to set up and develop a community garden within the school grounds with help from Incredible Edible Golcar. This will allow the school to fence off the area and make it separate from the school grounds. It is expected that the community garden with small plots will be created in Spring 2011.

If you want small plot/strip growing space and you are prepared to share your expertise with the children or you can contribute in some other way, then the school would like to hear from you. Ring them on Hudds 222212 during the Autumn Term or come to the next meeting on September 13th at 6pm.

You could be growing fruit and vegetables next year. To contact Incredible Edible Golcar, ring Sally Willow on 07870929222 or Jane Wood on 645034

Golcar Ward Good Neighbours

There are over 2,500 people in Golcar Ward over 65. Some of these people feel cut-off by age or disability. A new befriending service is one of the schemes that the Golcar Connecting Communities Steering Committee has funded for a year. This will provide volunteers visitors for those who feel isolated in their own homes.

There is undoubtedly a need for such a scheme as there is a waiting list of 16 people living in Golcar Ward who wish to join the existing Kirklees-wide home visiting scheme. The local WRVS will provide training for all new volunteers and also make sure that there is a good match between the visitors and those visited.

Would you like to volunteer to help?
Give Glen Roberts a ring on Hudds 453679 or Jeremy Cuss a ring on Hudds 655290 and come along to the launch meeting.

The volunteers commit themselves, after an initial period, to visit one person on a weekly basis for an hour or so over a cup of tea. Checks are done before the visits start to ensure that both the people are compatible and that both will be safe. A visitor may help their contact person to get to a hospital or doctor's appointment, if appropriate. There is no payment for the visit, but the person visited is expected to pay for the travelling expenses of the visitor.

Would you be interested in seeing a regular visitor at your home?
Please ring either of the above numbers. We expect that there will be someone who would be happy to become your friend and visit you on a weekly basis.

After the end of the first year the local scheme will continue under the WRVS banner as part of their existing Kirklees-wide project.

Food Safety Training

For generations volunteers have prepared food to share with others in community events. Churches and other local organisations have a long tradition of doing this. Elsewhere regular coffee mornings and social events at which food is served form an important part of the social calendar especially for senior citizens.

Recent food hygiene regulations demand that all involved in the production of food for sale to others must have received adequate training to ensure that safety standards are met. A basic food hygiene certificate is awarded to people who successfully complete a one day course. It is valid for 3 years, but the cost can deter volunteers from the training. The result is that they and those for whom they prepare food could be at risk or they may simply cease offering the service they provide.

A grant from Connecting Communities has allowed for the delivery of free local training courses for about 30 people in food hygiene. It is for those providing food on a voluntary basis within Golcar ward. If you would like to take part please contact Canon Martyn Crompton on 654647 or email him on rmf4vmc@btinternet.com

'Just Sing' gets a New Portable Electronic Piano

The recently formed "Just Sing" choir meets on a fortnightly basis in the Community Room at Golcar St John's Church. They succeeded in their bid for a portable electronic eight octave piano to accompany them.

The choir brings young and old together. It aims to seek out members of the public who have always wanted to sing but have never felt brave enough to tackle joining an already established choir. Many want to sing but feel they cannot do so. The choir seeks to prove that they can. Already we have thirty members and hope to increase this number as our fame spreads! It meets at 7.00pm on Thursdays. If you would like to join do ring Margaret Laycock on 647701 or email her on penguin@mlaycock.freeserve.co.uk

The choir wants to participate in local events. They are already booked to sing this year at the Golcar Luncheon Club Christmas Party and next year at Golcar Old Folks Treat and on Golcar Lily Day.

Communities United Project

In 2010 the Communities United Project in partnership with Golcar Ward Connecting Communities ran an open access 5 a side soccer competition at Royds Hall high school. Up to 47 young people attended the Friday night sessions over a 12 week period. CUP brought together young people between the ages of 13 - 16 from all around the Golcar ward.

To take part in what's happening in 2012 see the What's On page.

Ashley Connor, CUP's activities development coordinator said "C.U.P. is aware of the importance of integration between different groups of young people and utilises sport as a way of achieving this, Organising tournaments like this between different communities provides young people from different backgrounds with the chance to do something positive and constrctive with their time and helps them build new and improve existing relationships".

For further information please contact:
Ashley Connor Communities United Project Alexandra Chambers 32 John William Street Huddersfield HD1 1BG Tel. 01484 510932

Supporting this event - All Members of Golcar Connecting Community Group, Royds Hall School.

Pictured - Teams before the final.

Art in Religion

Golcar J, I & N and St John's Schools successfully bid for funding to bring together the local community to understand other faiths both within school and the community. Their aim is to clear up misconceptions of both adults and children and develop a culture of openness and understanding of difference. They also wish to develop a greater understanding of religious diversity and build this into curriculum planning across the schools. They will create a shared faith resource library for use by all the neighbourhood schools.

During the Summer term children in Year 3 from both schools visited places of worship of different faiths and created works of art which reflected what they had learnt. In the Autumn term they want to tap into the expertise of parents to extend the learning further.

Report from Karen Woods
As a school we are part of the Golcar ward community cohesion steering group which has received a government grant in order to develop projects within the local area. We have been allocated 3100 funding to organise an event for children at Golcar J I & N and St John's to consider religious and cultural diversity and purchase resources to support this type of activity in the future. This sits very well with what was identified as being an area for development after looking very closely at our school context.

Our Year 3 children have visited two different places of worship in the Huddersfield area. During the "I celebrate" day the children will be working closely with the children from St John's to consider the importance of art in religion. We had hoped to involve members of the local community but unfortunately due to illness our visitors will not be able to join us on this day. Staffs are looking at the possibility of using expertise amongst the parents to support the children in their learning.)

Telling Tales

During the week of 24th to 30th of May community members from Golcar, Milnsbridge and Cowlersley came together for the purpose of 'Telling Tales', a creative response to the collective voice of the community. The 'Telling Tales' project engaged the community in activities which culminated in a week long celebration of storytelling in a fantastic setting.

A 72 feet long yurt was built in the grounds of Beech School, Golcar and the venue was used to host fun and exciting activities in the heart of the community. The yurt was decorated by the community who made bunting, and decorations. The XTRA knitting club, based at the Drop By centre on Sycamore Avenue made hand puppets and props for the storytelling events. Groups from the Sure Start centre made characters as well as enough cakes and sweets from various parts of the world to sink a pirate galleon.

Beech Early Years, Infant and Junior School, Crow Lane Junior, Infant and Nursery School and Colne Valley Specialist Arts College were all enthralled by traditional tales and yarns told by renowned storytellers Christine McMahon, Ursula Holden-Gill and Dominic Kelly and during the open community events the storytellers were joined by Manasamitra, an organisation specialising in traditional Indian storytelling through the mediums of dance and music.

The project was run by the Botham Hall and Trees Partnership Group who come together to discuss and address the needs of the Golcar, Milnsbridge and Cowlersley communities. It was partially funded by Golcar Connecting Communities. The event followed a consultation exercise, which took place in the summer of 2008. The "Telling Tales" project built on this. The consultation found that there was a need for more interaction between community members and more opportunities to meet. There was a need to link together individuals of all ages within the community. Respondents felt that when residents talked more there would be a successful and thriving community.

During the week over 750 community members attended the various activities and judging by the feedback received all who attended were more than happy with the event.

Oral History

Golcar Museum 'Living' History. Everything around us will create our modern history, but rather than have a regular exhibition the grant from Golcar Connected has enabled some sound equipment to be bought that will be used to record memories of those in the older generation of the time here last century whilst it is still in people's memories.

Golcar 'twinning' links between St John's and Paddock Primary Schools

Our main aim with this project was to extend and build upon the links between St John's Church School and Paddock School, which began during 2009. Children from both these schools had much to learn from each other as there were vast differences in their ethnic mix. Our intention was to enhance and develop further community cohesion between the children and then expand on this to include other local 'Golcar Ward' schools.

Recent experiences during the summer term 2010, have involved staff, parents and children in organised 'family days' and these have proved very positive. We have just finished working together on a 'journeys' project which included a journey, for the children on the School Council, their teachers and parents. They took the local bus to visit each other's schools and then spent the day working together and learning from each other as well as having lots of fun! A photographer accompanied the group and produced a photographic journal of the day - the children participated in art and craft activities, baking, story telling, drama and poetry. The day was based around the real life journey of Huddersfield lady Olivia Hutchinson who travelled from the Caribbean on a ship to England, many years ago. Olivia's granddaughter, who is also named Olivia, spent some time story telling with the children and reminiscing.

We also had a visit from Donovan Christopher a local 'rap poet' who entertained everyone with his delightful poems which we all joined in with. We now want to continue working on new projects and make links with other local schools, and base this upon the good practice already embedded between St John's and Paddock.

Kathryn Benford ' Headteacher, St John's Golcar