Youth and Community News.

Things have been busy for the youth and community team over the last few months delivering and developing new projects. Here’s a rundown of what we have been doing and plan to be doing in the near future :

Bacup ‘Café’ Project.

Working in partnership with a local café owner in Bacup town centre and funded by Rossendale Borough council. Youth workers from Profiitt’s opened the café on Wednesday night 6:30 – 9:00pm to engage with young people who hang around the town centre. As well as food, drink and discussion’s in the café the young people took part in two trips, bowling in Rochdale and a climbing session at Manchester. The project ended with a visit from Lancashire fire service, with the young people learning and trying out various pieces of equipment in the café.

These ‘engagement’ session’s identified that the core group of young people ‘hanging around’ the town centre were of a younger age than expected and were not accessing other provision due to their age. Theses engagement sessions have now ended and workers are currently liaising with workers from ‘Sunnycrest’ family centre regarding continuing the work for this age group at the premises on Pennine road. These sessions are planned to commence in the very near future.

Under 18 music events.

Youth workers from Proffitts have been consulting with young people throughout the summer break on what ‘genre’ of music events we should be organising. The consultation has been carried out through detached sessions throughout Rossendale, and have not only helped us with find out what young people want at these events they have also given us the opportunity to meet young musicians who will hopefully be performing at these events.

Workers are currently meeting with venue owners the police and young people regarding the first event provisionally planned for the end of September.

Wheeled sports.

Unfortunately we were unsuccessful in our recent bid to Awards for All to provide coach trips to indoor skate parks over the winter months for young people involved in skateboarding, bmxing and inline skating/micro scooters.

We are currently re-evaluating this work and are seeking other funders to continue this work as there is a definite need to provide access to indoor facilities for young people involved in these activity’s.

Keep an eye out for further news regarding the outcome of future bids.

Other work.

We are currently meeting with a number of other agencies and individuals regarding three other interesting opportunities regarding providing training opportunities in mountain biking and project management further news to follow.