Below is an extract from the Director's report on the 2013 year, delivered by Wendy Honeyman Smith (Chair of the Directors), with links to all the relevant pages to find out more...
And here you can click through the slides we showed in our Project Review:
Directors' Report for 2013"Alchemy continued to be a host organisation for the Community Organiser programme. We recruited and hosted training 2 more “CO”s who completed their training whilst listening intensively to hundreds of local people about their loves, concerns and ideas for the neighbourhood. The CO team organised a very successful community learning conference: “Your Sneinton”. One member of the 2012 team became Alchemy’s first employee and another was supported to set up as a self-employed CO, both made possible through “progression grants” from the OCS. "Alchemy was awarded an Equalities Grant from Nottingham City Council to enable its CO team to work with Sneinton’s Roma community. This trained members of that community to use Community Organising techniques to listen to their community, give them a voice and take actions. Outcomes included a well attended Roma celebration event and the establishment of the Roma Youth Community Project. "Alchemy continued to publish the “What’s on in Sneinton” calendar online and publicise local events, news and information through the Sneinton Blog and, the Sneinton Alchemist online newspaper and a comprehensive set of social media accounts. | a Neighbourhood Plan for the area. Two “Place Check” walks gathered public opinion and encouraged debate on the development of the neighbourhood, and meetings were held with local Planners. "Alchemy carried out a “Prefeasibility Study” on the TRACs neighbourhood centre, grant funded by the SIB. This aimed to establish the potential for the building to be asset transferred into Community ownership in order to secure its long term future. The work carried out has revitalised the TRACs committee and helped it to secure investment in the fabric of the building. "Through the CO’s work in the community, local project ideas and leaders were supported and developed in order to build local capacity and turn ideas into action. This year a number of these became fully constituted groups and gained funding to implement their projects. Sneinton Alchemy supported some groups which did not have their own bank accounts by acting as their 'accountable body', allowing them to gain grant funding. These included the Roma Youth Community Project, VBA (Visualise, Believe, Achieve), Sneinton Hub café and the Prettier Whittier street pride scheme." |