£15m To Improve NI 'Spaces And Places'

The Big Lottery Fund is to spend £15m on improving local spaces and places in Northern Ireland.

The Space and Place programme, launched today, will aim to unite communities in Northern Ireland through improving the community environment, according to the Fund.

The Fund is the largest distributor of National Lottery funding. It is responsible for giving out half the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.

"The programme could fund for example, a project to create a community garden and allotments in the grounds of a community venue, or a project to turn a derelict area into a mini park with cycle paths and walkways where people can enjoy their local space," a statement said.

The Fund is looking for an award partner from the voluntary and community sector to run the programme’s grant scheme and take charge of the grants, which could range from between £50,000 and £1m.

Frank Hewitt, Big Lottery Fund NI Chair, said: "There is a demand in Northern Ireland to provide new spaces and places and use existing ones better, particularly those that are currently viewed as underused or difficult for a variety of reasons.

"They may be underused because local people don’t use them as often as they could and these spaces or places have the potential to become active community venues, or difficult because they are overgrown and neglected or because some members of the community don’t feel safe using them as they are perceived to only be used by certain groups."

"An example of the type of project that could be funded through the programme is the community centre, sports area and community walkway that has helped tackle anti-social behaviour and vandalism in the rural village of Dromara, Co Down," the statement added.

Dromara Primary School has already used around £31m in grants to turn a derelict nearby field into a community centre and sports arena.

The school has also used funding to turn a neglected area along the River Lagan which was a popular spot for underage drinking into a scenic walk way.

School Principal Stanley Poots said: "We first started work on this project back in 2000. At the time the village was having problems with a group of young people who were hanging around causing trouble.

"They were just hanging around on the streets, drinking and shouting at passers-by and generally intimidating local people because they had nowhere to go and nothing to do. So we wanted to try and change the attitudes of these young people by giving them a space where they could go to have fun.

"There was a field adjacent to the school that hadn’t been used for years and was overgrown and neglected. We felt the school could use it for the good of the local community, and things started to develop from there.

"We got various amounts of funding from the Big Lottery Fund, Lisburn City Council and the Department of Agriculture and we turned the field into these fantastic facilities for everyone to use."

(IT/CD)