The Age Concern’s activity hall has had a much-needed facelift, as huge renovations have brought the much- used building up-to-date over the last seven months.
“We had to give the hall a much-needed reno”, says Caroline Budge, manager of Age Concern.
When the building next door to Age Concern’s existing office building came up for lease a few years ago they grabbed the opportunity to make use of the space for their organisation’s needs.
The Age Concern hall was originally built by the Lions as a community project in the 1970s.
However, after nearly five decades since being built and having little work done, the hall was in need of a spruce up.
“We wanted a warm and inviting hub for people to come and feel comfortable in,” Caroline says.
So Age Concern, who a self-funding charity, straight away turned their focus onto fundraising. Through grants, pub charities and fundraising through members, clients, and other businesses, they raised the equivalent of $175k for the hall’s changes.
As well as renovations, which included a brand-new kitchen, an internal access area between their existing building and the hall was constructed.
On top of that, two new offices were built to meet the growth in staff numbers which had caused staff to be squashed up together in the existing building.
Building began on the project in October last year and the final touches, such as painting, were due to start just as lockdown level 4 began.
Fast forward to the end of lockdown 2 and those final touches got picked up again until all work was completed mid-June.
Previously the hall has been the scene for popular activities such as the popular singing group ‘Sing yourself well’ every Tuesday morning and the Age Concern ‘Tea and Talk’ sessions on a Wednesday, which will continue. But Age Concern thought, rather than fill up the hall’s schedule with activities, they’d use the time of change to ask the community what activities they would prefer to see taking place in the hall.
“We’ve just put in a wee suggestion box”, says Caroline.
This way the activities calendar will fill up as ideas come to light and the hall will be utilised as it was intended – to facilitate activities for the community.