Author: Laura
//By Ian Huddleston, Community Organiser
In March, the country went into lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic. This put a lot of strain on the local community of Dinnington and left a lot of residents lonely and isolated. A group of residents put out Facebook posts to assemble a team of people who could work together as a committee to try and tackle these issues to help those residents most in need.
Continue reading “Dinnington Coronavirus Community Action Group”
//By Rob, Gooding, Community Organiser
Led by Natalie from the East Herringthorpe Litter pickers, the group has brought together members from other East Herringthorpe groups such as the cemetery clean up and the local history group. The aim is to create a large group focused around improving green spaces in East Herringthorpe. The group already has around 18 residents involved with them and is hoping to grow this over the next year. Natalie said: “I was tired of looking out of my flat at rubbish in my neighbourhood so decided to do something about it.”
Continue reading “East Herringthorpe Friends of Green Spaces”
//By Dan Barron, Community Organiser
The Mowbray Musers are initially started as an in-person group in the Mowbray Gardens Library in February 2020. The aim was to form a group of friends would all sit and talk about creative writing, play some literature games, and show off their works in progress to friends for feedback. To allow people the opportunity to write in-between meetings, they planned to hold their meets, fortnightly at 12 noon on the first and third Tuesday of each month. The group were able to hold just two, in person meetings before the country went into lockdown.
Continue reading “Mowbray Musers” //By Rob Gooding, Community Organiser
Over the last year the Silverwood group have continued to grow and thrive, the group have an active Facebook page with 568 people to date. They regularly engaging with the page, with posts about memories from life down the pit to ways the area could be improved. A key aim of the group is to bring back the old pit community spirit in the area.
Continue reading “Silverwood Colliery Group”
//By Rob Gooding, Community Organiser
The Rothersteps 2020 project was rolled out over the four areas – Dinnington, Ferham and Masbrough, East Dene and East Herringthorpe. It was created to combat boredom and increase fitness over the lockdown period. Rothersteps aimed to encourage participants to count the steps they took over a week using the Fitbit style fitness watches we provided. Everybody that entered the project was given a RotherFed water bottle and a fitness watch to count their steps. The participants were added to their area specific group and invited to join their area Rothersteps’ Facebook group. The project proved to be a great success attracting over 100 people wanting to take part, the main area of participation was Dinnington which attracted 45 participants and several more were added to a waiting list.
Continue reading “RotherSteps 2020 Project”
//By Dan Barron, Community Organiser
Initially RotherFed were engaging with multiple partners as part of the Ferham Steering groups including Ferham Primary School at the beginning of 2020. The consensus was that greenspaces in Ferham were scarce such as allotments and were originally looking at doing a greenspaces project that would encourage people to use this space again and make better use of the local parks etc. However, the steering group have not met again until October 2020 due to COVID19. This had changed the priorities for several groups over the year.
Continue reading “Ferham Primary School” //RotherFed had organised several litter picks in Ferham park as part of the Green Spaces campaign to help maintain and improve local greenspaces in Masbrough. The litter picks have attracted 6 volunteers over the activities and has managed to clear 15 bags of waste from the park so far.
//I first spoke to Peter Keyworth from Leverton Way Tara in January/February 2020 when my areas changed and Dalton/Thrybergh became part of my new area. I arranged to meet Peter and his group at the Dorothy Taylor Centre where the groups meet on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, due to the Covid 19 I never got chance to do this.
I have however spoken to Peter a few times since the lockdown in March to make sure that himself and the other members of the group are doing okay, looking after themselves and to let him know that RotherFed are here to support in any way we can. Peter told me that they were all looking out for each other and helping one another where possible i.e. helping with prescriptions, shopping etc.
Continue reading “Leverton Way TARA” //By Rob Gooding, Community Organiser
Natalie set up the East Herringthorpe litter picking group a year ago because she was fed up with the amount of rubbish on the street spoiling the view from her home. In that time the group have managed to remove 367 black bags of litter that works out to around 4 tones of rubbish or around 92 Wheelie bins from East Herringthorpe, as well as areas of fly tipping and blocked drains that have all been reported to street pride.
Continue reading “East Herringthorpe Litter Pickers”
//The Covid Diaries is a project to share poems, stories, diary entries and videos during your time in lockdown. which will then go into a documentary film.
For more information or to share your stories please email Ian Huddleston
