As you know we are always looking out for more volunteers to keep marching on with all the ongoing tasks for the Royal Park Community Centre project.  Each week (or thereabouts!) I will be posting up more details about one of the different roles you could get involved with.  This week's feature role is 'Community Outreach and Membership.'  Below is some more info - please get in touch by emailing volunteer@royalparkschool.org: 

The RPCC had it's Annual General Meeting on July 29th, 2010. There were quite a few people in attendance, including local clergy and councillors. To open the meeting we had a brief history of the RPCC from Sue Buckle and some words by Tara Cleveland about the future of the RPCC.

We then got down to the business of reviewing our Annual Report. Many thanks go to Liz Boyd and Stella Darby for preparing it. Our 2009-2010 Annual Report is available to view online in PDF format.

We need your help, and your ideas, to make this community centre a reality.

Positive progress is being made and the Council have expressed increasing support for Royal Park Community Centre – things certainly haven’t ‘gone quiet’ as someone told me they thought recently!

The following is the text of a deputation given to Leeds Council by local residents of Hyde Park:

Hyde Park is suffering. It has been suffering for years. In his book Dark Heart: The shocking truth about hidden Britain, Nick Davies described Hyde Park shortly after the riots when the Newlands pub was burned down. He wrote:

Since 2005 the people of Hyde Park have campaigned tirelessly to save one of Leeds’ most controversial buildings and turn it into a much needed community centre. While they await the final decision on the building's fate, new hope comes in the form of council leader Keith Wakefield and the reformed Leeds City Council.

The RPCC has been busy working away on this bid for the Royal Park School building for several months. We've met with other community centres in Leeds and the Yorkshire Region, we've met with social enterprises, we've asked millions of questions and had loads of help from people across the community (thanks to all of you who've supported us!) and we've put together a new bid. This revised bid includes: 

RPCC Meeting Notes May 18, 2010

1. GARDENING DAY  - went well - the school looks lovely.
2. DATA INPUT -  We need a day for inputting membership forms and contact information into the database. This will be postponed until after
3. FUTURE MEETINGS - Tara will chair next weeks meeting Liz has booked the next two meetings but must pay for them. No meeting on the first of June (pub instead?)
4. QS - Stella meeting QS on Friday Andrew Gaunt. - Maged volunteers to go - Tara might go.
   

As part of the current phase of our plans we are carrying out research to find out the views of our community - what would you like in the building, what inspires you about the project and what concerns do you have?

Please take five minutes to quickly complete this questionnaire! It's so important that we understand how people feel at this stage!

Here is the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RPCC

Cheers
Charlotte

A group of volunteers from Royal Park Community Consortium (RPCC) spent
the day clearing up on the open Royal Park school grounds.

We removed masses of litter and broken glass, trimmed trees and
bushes, weeded, and maintained the gardens. Councillors and the police
were highly supportive of this action, as were local people walking
past.

As 31st May approaches, we're working diligently on the revised, re-vamped, revved-up version of the business case requested by the Council.  This will build upon the hard work done on the original bid, and we hope positive consideration at the next Executive Board meeting will result in the long-awaited transfer of the building into community ownership!!  There's LOTS of work to be done, and we've got a solid plan to achieve this, but we need as many heads and hands to help out as we can get.  Please come along to our next meeting (every Tues from 7-9pm