Local Wind Farm Community Fund Celebrating Success
The latest funding announcements through the local Crook Hill Community Fund see the Fu
nd celebrating three major milestones. The latest 14 groups to receive funding take the total awarded over £300,000, the total number of projects supported over 100 and sees the largest pot of funding distributed in a single funding year.
The record-breaking total awarded this year was a huge £48,973 which took the total awarded figure to £307,314 and the total number of projects supported to 103.
The Fund launched just eight years ago and is proving to be a valuable source of funding support for community groups within its area of benefit.
One group securing a grant in 2023 is Whitworth Historical Society who are to receive £2,474 to fund new photography and storage equipment to digitise and protect their collection. The Society holds a large collection of locally important and unique archive material in the form of objects, documents, and photographs which they will now be able to catalogue. Brian Furness, Chairman / Trustee of Whitworth Historical Society said: “High quality photographs are fundamental to the object cataloguing and identification process for all museums, including our heritage collection at Whitworth. Thanks to this grant from the Crook Hill Fund, we have been able to purchase sector standard photographic equipment with which to fulfil this important requirement”.
Also celebrating their £2,000 grant award is Littleborough Arts Festival who will use the grant for the Lantern Parade that will take place in Hare Hill Park on Friday, 20th October this year. Stephanie West, Chair at Littleborough Arts Festival said: “We are thrilled and very grateful to have received this grant, which will allow us to work with hundreds of local school children to create a magical climate-focussed lantern parade for our community.”
The other projects being supported this year are Whitworth Town Council, Upper Calder Valley Renaissance, Littleborough Brass Band, St Peters Walsden, Empowered People, Create & Connect, Wardle Anderson Brass Band, Littleborough Boxing Club, Wardle Football Club, Rochdale DS All Stars and Littleborough Events & Associations Forum.
The funding for the Community Fund is provided by Crook Hill Wind Farm, which is managed by independent investment firm, Vantage Infrastructure (www.vantageinfra.com), with support of Partnerships for Renewables (www.pfr.co.uk). The Fund distributes £35,000 annually over the 20 – 25 year lifetime of the project. Groups located within a 5km radius of the wind farm can apply for grants of between £250 and £10,000. The Fund is being administered by national charity GrantScape.
For full details about the Fund and how to apply, please click here
A full list of groups supported through the Fund can be found here
Photo – Littleborough Lantern Parade (image from 2022 event)
