Our Aims

The Partnership's aims can be summed up as follows:-

▪ To raise awareness about issues and concerns relevant to local communities.
▪ To enable local people to participate in community development activity
▪ To support local people to better inform and influence local decision making
▪ To manage projects for community benefit.
▪ To attract resources and funding into the area for the benefit of local people, groups and communities.

To raise awareness about issues and concerns relevant to local communities.

The Partnership has several focus groups including environment and community safety. The environment group has organised a clean up day, and arranged distribution of leaflets to local farmers, highlighting the decline of birds such as lapwings and curlews and giving contacts for possible funding to help halt this decline through land management. We have also highlighted areas of global concern through supporting the local showing of films such as An Inconvenient Truth and Black Gold.

The Partnership is committed to supporting the Penistone Carry-A-Bag campaign which aims to highlight the excessive use of plastic bags, and encourage residents to use cloth bags.

To enable local people to participate in community development activity

The Partnership has supported, amongst other projects, the highly successful 'Art @ the Altar' annual exhibition by a local network of artists called Hens Teeth. The events were held in St Johns Church, Penistone and showcased the work of painters, jewellers, glassmakers, ceramicists and other craftspeople, all of whom live and work in the district. Each year, this has raised money for charities such as Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice, Wentworth Castle Conservatory Fund and St John's Church Roof Restoration Fund. This event has also raised the profile of all the artists involved.

The Women's Week event in 2006 and 2007 took place in April, and in 2007, the Partnership supplied some of the contents of the goody-bags. We have previously promoted Fairtrade juice and 'Pilates in Penistone'. If this event is organised in the future, we would hope to support it in the same way.

There are too many other schemes to mention individually but the Partnership has also helped a group of mothers in Silkstone gain funding to refurbish a play area, and supported a campaign to form a Penistone Chamber of Commerce. The Partnership was the lead supporter of the Fairtrade in Penistone Campaign which saw Penistone gain accreditation as a Faritrade Town in February 2007. For more information on other projects the Partnership has been directly involved with, please check the projects section on this site.

To support local people to better inform and influence local decision making

Through local press coverage, the work of the Partnership is highlighted so that local people realise that they can have a direct impact on the quality of their surroundings by campaigning for and attracting funding for a specific project they believe is important.

To manage projects for community benefit.

The Partnership has previously employed a Healthy & Active Lifestyles Officer, who organised a series of healthy walks including a funghi walk, a Halloween ghost walk and trips to walk round Nostell Priory and Lincoln Christmas market. A cycle hire scheme has been developed by the Partnership which ran in summer 2007.

The Penistone Allotment and Community Gardens Group, formed with the help of the Partnership, has the use of two polytunnels and some open ground on land owned by the Partnership in Springvale.

To attract resources and funding into the area for the benefit of local people, groups and communities.

In 2004, the Partnership was influential in bringing in £42,000 of funding. For 2005, the figure was £117,000. In 2006, we attracted funding of over £440,000 into the local area, a lot of it for St John's 'Open the Doors' and 'Sensory Gardens' Projects. This is a massive total and shows the hard work and dedication of the Board and staff of the Partnership.

In 2007, this was a very difficult act to follow; however we achieved £106,000 and in the first month of 2008, a total of £42,000. Funding is getting more difficult to obtain and it is the aim of the Partnership to become less dependent on grants and more self-sustaining.