The King's Chronicle - December 2020

From the Chairman:

Dear Reader,
 
Well, this year has been a challenging year for all of us in all sorts of different ways. For Bovey Paradiso things were moving along so well until we were into March then for quite some time everything stopped. When we started back up it wasn’t easy with all the difficulties of social distancing for our contractors and making it inappropriate to deploy volunteers.

Anyway, let’s focus on positives, we got through the phase 1 building / refurbishment work and it’s beautiful, we had two very good open days with around 100 very enthusiastic visitors and launched ‘easyfundraing’. We’re looking forward into the New Year as we plan to launch our second community share offer in January, call Members to AGM in January and open the gallery in February. There are further details on these item below.

We are also continuing to work very hard on fund raising from grants' organisations and other potential sources to raise the funds for the subsequent phase 2 of the development and welcome any other fundraising ideas you may have, and indeed additional donations are always welcome and very easy on our website. Please contact me directly at stephen.willmore@paradiso.org.uk or 07710 300 897 if you would like to discuss anything further.

Thank you for your continued interest and best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

Stephen Willmore – Chairman

Open days

Thank you to all those who attended our two recent open days. We’re happy to report around 100 visitors were given a COVID-secure tour around the ground floor of the premises.
Social distancing rules made things less than ideal, such that it was not possible to show the work completed upstairs in the building, please see the photos in the slide-show above for an idea of how smart it now looks.
In the new year we hope to organise more of these open days, prior to opening the gallery – Covid rules permitting – please keep an eye out for emails from us for more details.

Second community share offer

With lots of local help, we’ve done the difficult bit - but now its time to finish the job. We asked the local community to help us save the building, and to start work making it structurally ready for the future. We’ve also been very lucky to secure generous grants from funders who back our vision. However, grants alone won't be enough to get us over the final hurdle. The second share offer will get the cinema, theatre and restaurant built and finished. By participating, you’ll be helping to open the doors to an amazing space that will be owned by the community.

We have been working hard over the last few months to prepare for our second share offer which we will launch in January with the aim to allocate the shares before the end of March so that those who qualify can benefit from Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR).  As soon as we can announce this in the New Year our current shareholders and newsletter readers will be the first to know.

AGM

The Pandemic has delayed our AGM which would normally be held in November.  We will be announcing the date for the delayed 2020 AGM as soon as we have completed our preparation for the second share offer.  The AGM will be held over Zoom and we hope as many of you as possible can attend.  We will also be making provisions for those Members who would like to participate but cannot join us on Zoom.

Development of phase 2

In the later part of 2020 the building work continued on the Phase two enabling work as we had sufficient funds to do this. The enabling work that has been completed comprises; the toilet block which will be required for cinema / theatre and restaurant, the kitchen storeroom, structural repair to the rear corner of the building, part construction of the sidewall to Sibley’s parking area and early next year the new sidewall to BDF’s premises which is part of the auditorium construction enabling work. Provided sufficient funds are raised from our second community share offer we’ll be ready for the ‘big build’ commencing April, this comprises: cinema/theatre and kitchen/atrium restaurant area. We of course, will be obtaining tenders for construction during the period of the second community share offer and our aim is to complete and open for business in  December 2021.

Grants

Since our April Newsletter, we have been awarded:

• £60k from GD LEAF, in addition to monies already awarded
• £50k from the Viridor Communities Fund

This is a total of £110,000, which is a significant contribution to the development of phase 2. We have a further £25k of bids in the pipeline and currently being worked on, however in this time of COVID-19, many of the grant bodies we might have approached for funding are focussing on helping existing organisations to survive, rather than looking to fund new applications.

Other fundraising

If becoming a Member with community shares isn’t for you but you still want to help us finish this exciting project, you can support Bovey Tracey Paradiso Arts in the following ways:

• Donate – If you’d like to donate to the project, our website now includes a secure donation portal.
  Please visit here if you’d like to donate click here

• Easyfundraising – Easyfundraising is widely used by sports clubs, schools and charities to bring in a regular income when their members shop online. As an example, Bovey Tracey Lawn Tennis Club has raised £500 with only around 100 members using this service. It's very easy to use and costs you nothing. For more information on this click here

Summary of what's ahead for 2021

• The launch of our second community share offer in January
• Holding our AGM as soon as possible in 2021
• During Quarter 1; complete detailed design for development of phase 2, obtain tenders and award building contract.
• The start construction work for phase 2.
• Phase 2 targeted to be complete in November.
• Opening of Cinema / Theatre and Restaurant.

Best wishes for Christmas and New Year from the Bovey Paradiso team.