On Tuesday the PC also approved our request for #250 for printing the Time exchange tokens, so that can now go ahead asap. (I’ve mocked up a design based on Karens initial ideas, but think we may need to get someone with the right softweare to produce the final version and get it into the rather demanding format the printers need.  (I can produce a pdf, which is OK for most printers, but they are asking for stuff I haven;t heard of, so way out of my comfort zone!)

and this http://www.urbed.coop/journal_docs/Narrative%20Handout.pdf

“… Grassroots Grants is funded by the Office of the Third Sector. It is a three-year scheme to March 2011.  Open to not-for-profit, voluntary or community groups who:

• Have been active in their local community for a year or more 
• Have an average income over the last three years of less than £30,000 (or over the life of the group if less than three years old). 
• Work for the benefit of their local community 
• Are led by volunteers 
• Have a written set of rules or constitution

…From £250 to a maximum of £5,000 available. Groups may apply more than once until they have received a maximum of £5,000 in total. …Applications for less than £900 will be considered throughout the year.  Applicants will be informed of the decision within 10 working days of the submission of a complete application… The grants are intended to benefit the community, so can be very wide ranging, including the purchase of equipment such as computers or kitchen facilities, a local community event, small-scale training and staffing costs, local community activities and rent costs. Grants can be awarded for an existing project or service or for the costs of running an organisation. We can also fund new projects of an existing group. Grants for a project or service can also include overhead costs….”

Might be worth planning to apply in 2010 once the action group has been  running for 12 months(and we’d have to set up properly with a constitution and bank account – but that may be worthwhile if it means we can apply for more funding to enable all the projects people come up with!) May also be of interest to existing groups in the village?

For instance, I like the idea of their Video project which “.. involves producing,shooting, and editing a video [...] the resulting DVD will be used as evidence for our Local Action Plan.Young people will interview older residents of our village{chosen by Age Concern}    so that they can express their views about changes in the village and wishes for the future.The young people themselves will comment and no doubt their aspirations will also be recorded.”

“I-Spy Dallington” – Under 50s may not remember the popular I-Spy series of childrens books. Each one was based on a particular category of things you might see in the countryside such as  British Birds or Trees or in the street (eg  Post Boxes).   Each page had a line drawing and information about an example of the category, for children to look out for and tick once they had seen it, with extra points for spotting rare examples.  I thought it might be nice to produce something similar based on what can be seen in and around Dallington – to encourage people to go out on walks and keep their eyes open.  If anyone has a copy of an old I-Spy book, please get in touch as my memory of the details is is a bit woolly, and it would be nice to take a look at one again. I found an article about them at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Spy and various illustrations of front covers elesewhere – but no inside pages!