For grant funding, we first thought that we would try the lottery. The need for a community facility in St Mary’s was identified through community plans. Before that, flats and houses had been offered, but that was not sufficient for an area as big as St Mary’s. We went to the lottery board but, because we were getting help from the council, we were too close to it. Eventually, we got to the judging table, and we expected a yes, but we got a phone call to say that our application had been refused.
We invited some of the people up to Dundee and asked why they had refused the application but, as Yvonne Tosh put it, we got a lot of gobbledygook. However, we pulled them up and said, “It’s all right, because we are going to build the centre anyway—we will look elsewhere for funding.” That is what we did, and we got European regeneration funding. That is the funding part.
From the very start, however, you have to get volunteers on board and ask the local community, from young people to old people, what shape they see the community facility being. You have to do that before you can apply for funding, because you do not know what size they would want, what is affordable, what they would like for it and what opening hours they would like. You have to get your community on board immediately for something that they want to get their teeth into.
You must also keep the momentum going with your community rather than just sit back and expect the community to ride along with you. My knowledge of communities, whether they are poor or not, is that they are very interested in things that are going on in their area and that they have very community-based people.