Finedon Community Centre volunteers ‘want to remind people we do exist’ as committee seeks new ways to keep asset in use

Northants Telegraph

A group of dedicated volunteers are working hard to keep the asset afloat after recent years have seen a decline in use of the Wellingborough Road facility.

Transcript

00:00you know from the history of this building it was it was purchased by a local benefactor and

00:06given to the people of finder for for their use um you know we're the latest version of

00:14volunteers and committee who kept the building going since 1988 and uh we're just trying to

00:22you know keep it going very much in the in the same vein of being available

00:27obviously if if people don't use it um it would it would close and it would get sold

00:35and it would be a great shame if this building were to close uh you know a chunk of that would

00:40be lost and it would it would be a shame one of the things that we'd really like to do is to kind

00:45of bring it up and make the most of the aesthetics in the place yeah i think i think probably what

00:52we're sort of collectively reflecting is a lot of a lot of what's in the building does actually

00:57get back to the the the original renovation and conversion from a church to a community center

01:06yeah and and just with time it's you know it's just getting to the end of its life and uh

01:12yeah it needs a bit of a bit more money investing to modernize update decorate

01:19yeah without losing the the aesthetics yeah yeah it's a tough balance

01:26which makes it a bigger job i think than just saying well well just decorate the place because

01:32it needs to be done sympathetically and by people that know what they're doing

01:36to some degree probably true with a lot of sort of community facilities you you know you're just

01:42aware of it and it's like great to know it's there if you ever need it but you'd only really

01:46miss it if it was suddenly gone um so we we've seen the previous committee

01:56had seen a you know a radical change in use of the building i think it was fairly well used and

02:02occupied pre-covid and a lot of people moved away and you know found alternate ways of meeting holding

02:09events um so it's it's been a a challenge and i think one of the of course the impulses is

02:18when you're in a sort of environment as we are that it's an old expensive building to run if you

02:25have fewer people coming through the door the sense is you have to increase your prices because

02:30you know on a smaller base you need more you need more support to keep the building going

02:35but as as new people have come onto the committee of we've just had the opportunity to

02:41take a step back and you know i'll give credit shawnee's been a strong advocate of this

02:46of really saying you know we we have to go back to the the principle of what the building is for

02:52that it's for people finding to use and uh pricing ourselves out to the market is actually a bad

02:59strategy

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