Pinehurst in an area in Swindon recognised as area of deprivation. There little in the way of free play facilities for young people and for many years people have been embarrassed living in the community as it suffers from the stigma of deprivation & crime. We have people complain to us “nothing good ever happens in Pinehurst” or “Pinehurst is rubbish”.

Over the last few years we've run a highly successful community ‘fun day’ where the community can come together, enjoy themselves, learn new skills & access appropriate services and information. It has become a point where PIF and other agencies are able to engage residents in consultation, giving people a voice in improving our community. Each year this event grows with approx 2000 local residents coming last year. Responses on the day and feedback the fun day is known as high quality, really enjoyable day. Residents are proud of it and it has become one point where the community can celebrate all the good going on in the community.

What we'll deliver:

• Be able to provide more workshops and activity stands for the community
• Enable new skills to be gained
• Encourage skill swops between local residents
• Provide more activities for young people
• Increase confidence and self-esteem

Why it's a great idea:

Every year this event has got bigger and bigger and is all achieved through volunteers and hard work by everyone. The feed back and volumes of people who come along says it all. This year we are looking to try and encourage local residents to pass on a skill or talent to others in the community through facilitated workshops - whether DJing, Street art, flower arranging, cross-stitching, model making or even fishing, the positive learning opportunities are enormous. Last year we experimented with zones – youth & play, community, green and health which we would like to expand on and have more on health and wellbeing and money budgeting and debt. Last year as a new area the green / environmental area went really well but ‘health’ was weaker than the others therefore we will continue to build this over subsequent years.

This is such a positive day for Pinehurst and massively boosts peoples pride in their area and the people that they live with and we'd love to offer even more!

Steps to get it done:

• This is achieved with volunteers from Pinehurst Initiative Forum, youth club young people and also local organisations

We would really love it if you were able to support the Pinehurst Fun Day it takes a huge amount of volunteer hours to set up and organise, with a small amount of people but really does achieve so much for the community, which has a positive impact for everyone involved.

We fund raise all year to make the event happen and the £3000 we are looking for puts in place all of the infrastructure and all of the costing for the workshops that are run across the day so it goes a massively long way! Thank you very much for reading the info and have a great day!