The Friends of the Old Girls’ School based in Sherburn in Elmet, gathered to pose for a before and after photo in front of the school after receiving a grant of £223,210 from the Big Lotteries Fund.
The grant comes in two parts, £95,000 to refurbish the building and a revenue grant for three years to cover the staffing to assist with running programmes that have been proposed to the Big Lotteries Fund. This means they will no longer be relying on volunteers to run the Community Centre, there will be paid staff to manage the facility and session workers to help provide the programmes.
The Old Girls’ School will be turned into a Community Centre and their recent grant will see a brand new Tearoom that will open out onto their fantastic garden area which was created with the help of the grant from Tesco Bags of Help.
There will be two main rooms which can be used for exercise or activity classes and there will also be a Community Cinema. This space will also be available to rent out for children’s parties.
In addition to the above, there will be an IT media suite located behind the Tearoom with Wi-Fi and computer access for training purposes or to drop in for networking purposes.
Two additional rooms will also be available to book for meetings and consultations with ample parking spaces available around the back of the school.
Work is due to start before Christmas replacing the School’s windows and the main refurbishment project will be taking place in January 2018.