Big Lottery Fund

Big Lottery Fund makes huge impact in Aberdeenshire:

In the past year we have seen a number of capital facilities being completed including:

• Huntly Nordic & Outdoor Centre (£312750), opened by HRH Princess Royal in September 2004. The Centre has hosted the British Rollerski Championships, club membership has risen from 70 to over 90 this season and there is an increase in schools usage.
• Kessock Park, Fraserburgh (£450,000) third generation football specialist artificial pitch opened in September 2004. A new pavilion has been provided by the Fraserburgh All Weather Sports Facility Group, at a cost of approximately £200,000. This has been very well received and there is significant school and community use. The facility is locally managed by a voluntary group.
• Turriff All Weather Pitch (£550,000)– Opens on Monday for school and community use and will be managed by Turriff Sports Centre
• Mintlaw All Weather Pitch (£588000) is under construction and is due to be ready for use by August 2005.
• Ellon All Weather Pitch (£140,000) is hoping to get the go ahead for upgrade in the summer holidays.

On the Activities strand there is much to be proud of: In year one the following performance indicators were achieved:

• 7417 children aged between 5-16 years took part in programmes
• 1543 sessions were run
• 86770 attendances
• 47% of participants were boys and 53% girls.

Included in the range of projects are:

• SPARKS project run by Princess Royal Sports Trust in the Banff area
• Gordon Dance project, which is now expanding from the Huntly Schools area into Kemnay and Meldrum. A successful “Let your Feet Speak” has targeted 12 rural schools since August 2004, with excellent results. Continued Professional Development – Dance for Primary Teachers is currently working with 12 staff. The “Bare Bones” workshops recently involved 170 children over a week in April 2005.
• Volleyball Development in South Aberdeenshire – has involved 2387 children attendances at 6 participation venues, 2919 at development sessions, 342 adults were involved. A new Beach Volleyball programme was established at Knockburn Loch, Strachan (pic) which included 2 “Midnight Volleyball “sessions last summer. An innovative Volley 4-7 programme is being piloted at Banchory and other areas just now.
• Active Steps – all school clusters areas have been offered funding to develop local sports related activity programmes to target children with behavioural problems or at risk of exclusion. Pilots in Kemnay, Inverurie and Portlethen are well established and others are coming on board this term. New programmes are commencing in Meldrum, Alford and Huntly .

This is only a small flavour of what is currently being offered.

Balmoral Road Race 2005

Many of you will have already heared about the recent Balmoral Road Race on 30 April, which attracted over 2000 runners and 6000 people to the event.

The event has been taken over by a local partnership and hopes to build on this success in future years to promote running, international tourism to Deeside and Aberdeenshire and create a sustainable family orientated sporting FUN day out.