Dear <<First Name>>
Thank you for your support and interest in the work of Manor House Development Trust over the last 12 months. It's been an incredible year for us as we've settled into The Redmond Community Centre and we're thrilled to have worked with a number of fantastic people and organisations to establish a number of projects in our local area for the benefit of local people. We're proud to be leading the
Manor House PACT project and would like to thank The Big Lottery Fund for selecting the project as part of its
Communities Living Sustainably fund and giving PACT the £1 million grant.
2013 is promising to be an exciting year as Manor House PACT gets underway and as new and existing projects grow and take shape. And if you have ideas for new projects on which we could partner with you, please let us know!
We wish you all a peaceful, happy Christmas and holiday season, and a Happy New Year.
Get High
The
Get High working at heights training programme pilot has been taking place at The Reach climbing centre in Woolwich in December. What an intense couple of weeks it’s been! Early starts, travel to Woolwich on buses and trains, the high spaces at the Reach Climbing centre, and the two Andrews –
fantastic encouraging trainers who inspired confidence in the trainees.
Week one focused on Abseiling IRATA Level 1: five intense days of industrial rope access training including use of ropes, harnesses and helmets. Get High has given trainees tired muscles and new perspectives. Two of them were tested and accredited on day five, and one was immediately offered a job.
Week two has trained them in PASMA alloy tower – safe use of mobile access towers, ladder use, first aid, working with asbestos and IOSH Health and Safety. The training ends in early January with window cleaning and fall protection.
Get High is funded by
Young Hackney and delivered by
Be Safety, with recruitment and key support from MHDT and links with Brighter Environment.
Building Lives Academy
The first trainees completed the Building Lives Hackney programme in December; the two groups of trainees have been working at the new Building Lives Academy in Stamford Hill since August. MHDT has partnered with Building Lives, Harrow College and Hackney Homes to set up the project, and has helped recruit the trainees.
50 of them will be selected to become Building Lives apprentices working with a number of contractors in Hackney: this will prove tricky as they’re all so good!
Manor House PACT update
The Manor House PACT project is getting underway with the appointment of three new people who have now started work on the project. Vivien Macdona has joined as PACT Marketing and Administration Assistant and Mark Mckenna as PACT Coordinator, both based with Manor House Development Trust. PACT Energy Assessor Miriam Burke has joined Groundwork London.
The first PACT meals will start in January at The Redmond Community Centre. Check out the PACT website for updates and sign up on the site to join in the conversation and to get involved:
www.manorhousepact.org.uk
We’ll be recruiting volunteers in the New Year – again check out the website and watch this space for details.
Celebrating 400 Hundred Years of the New River
One key aspect of Manor House PACT is festivals, finding ways of celebrating all that is good about our local area, things that are special. The 400
th anniversary of the New River in September 2013 seemed to us like something to celebrate and so it will play a key part in both the festivals and Open Spaces strands of the project.
We held a productive meeting in December about initial ideas for the Manor House New River Festival 2013. Our second meeting will be on 13 January and we’d like to invite you to contribute your views about how the festival should look and develop. We're also looking for enthusiastic volunteers to help with the practicalities of setting up the festival.
The meeting will kick off at the
Castle Climbing Centre cafe at 1pm, where we will gather before setting off on a walk of the New River route towards Finsbury Park. We'll be looking out for good places to set up the festival, suitable sites for signs and posters, and more.
We aim to get to the Finsbury Park cafe (located in the centre of the park by the pond) around 2pm, where we'll get refreshments and sit down for a proper discussion about what we've seen and ideas for the festival. If you just want to come to the sit-down discussion, feel free to join us at 2pm at the Finsbury Park cafe.
Come along and find out more and contribute your ideas. And if you've never been for a stroll along the New River before, that’s all the more reason to come!
For more information call Vivien Macdona on 020 8356 7590.
Share your New River stories…
Do you live, or have you ever lived, near the New River? Do you have memories and stories of the river, whether past or present? Did you play by the river as a child? What’s your relationship with the river now? We’d love to hear from you.
We are local audio journalist Sarah Peters and painter Henny Beaumont. We’re collaborating on an exciting audio-visual documentary to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the New River. Manor House Development Trust is supporting the project, and we’re aiming to create an interactive app for mobile phones.
We are very keen to interview and photograph local residents across the generations, so please get in touch with us at:
eyesandearsn16@gmail.com
We look forward to hearing from you.
Hire The Redmond Community Centre for your meetings and events
Make regular or one-off bookings, hire the whole centre or individual spaces. The centre is in a beautiful location overlooking the West Reservoir, 5 minutes from Manor House tube station in zone 2. What's more, by making a booking you're directly supporting the work of the Trust!
Click here for more information, click here to download a brochure and contact Patsy Butcher or Kamalji Nijjar to make a booking: 020 8802 7580 / patsy.butcher@mhdt.org.uk / Kamaljitkaur.Nijjar@hackneyhomes.org.uk
