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14/01/2011
The Community Spaces programme recently closed for applications
Groundwork UK’s Community Spaces programme recently closed its doors to applications after nearly fours years of providing funding to green space community projects. Community Spaces is a £57.5m open grants programme, being managed by Groundwork UK and funded through the Big Lottery Fund’s Changing Spaces initiative. Community Spaces provided community groups across England with funding to improve and re-vamp open spaces. Community groups have been able to apply for funding from anything between £10,000 - £450,000. The programme has already awarded funding to over 450 projects across the country and is hoping to fund at least a 1000 projects by the end of 2014. The money spent so far has gone towards transforming old pieces of wasteland into tranquil nature reserves, creating outdoor gyms in the middle of urban areas, and new play areas in some of the countries most deprived neighbourhoods. In the run up to the closing date, the programme has received almost 500 applications. This high volume of applications means that future grants panel meetings will be extremely competitive as only 20% of the applications are likely to receive funding. Wendy Jenkins, Director of Open Grants for Groundwork UK believes the programme has been a great success. “Since the programme opened, we’ve invested £27m into community projects across the country, and helped over 1.5 million beneficiaries. We are only just beginning to see the benefits of the funding.” Groundwork is very proud that a number of the projects funded through the programme have won nationally recognised awards such as Green Pennant, Green Flag and the Queens Voluntary Awards.
