The fantastic resident-led Winthorpe Community Partnership (WCP), led by Jodi Bradbury, have put enormous effort into purchasing and refurbishing a redundant Methodist Chapel, which will be a community hub for the whole of Winthorpe.
The grand opening took place in December 2019.
WCP are a C2 Community Partnership established in 2012. They offer a daily range of community-led, health-promoting services and activities for all ages. And they fund raised the considerable £32K for themselves, with additional support from Tudor Trust, The Methodist circuit and Skegness Town Council.
Securing funding
Jodi told Skegness Standard how they got the funds together, and why the new space next to their usual home was needed.
“We recently secured funding from the Tudor Trust Charity and the Methodists to refurbish the church next door, to give us a bigger, disabled-friendly community space to allow us to offer more to our community,” she said.
“Tudor Trust gave us £22,000 and the Methodist committed £10,000. We also got a grant from the Skegness Town council to pay for the flooring in here as we had ran out of money.”
Local volunteers
With the ethos of doing things for themselves, a group of locals volunteered to clean and decorate the building.
“This took about three weeks of evening painting and weekends,” said Jodi. “It was a lot of painting and hard work.”
Winnie’s Community Lounge
The name, Winnie’s Community Lounge, also came out of a vote by the local community.
To see the range and activity at Winnie’s Community Lounge, pop over to their Facebook page. It is packed with information about free workshops, events and activities for the whole Winthorpe Community.
‘Come along join in and make a difference,’ they say. ‘Get your voice heard and by working in partnership with local residents and service providers we can make a difference.’
