Claremont Park Community Centre is a multi activity community hub housed in a former branch library in the inner ward of Claremont in Blackpool, one of the most deprived areas in the North West of England.
The Community Centre provides a vital support service for a wide cross section of the community, offering a wide range of activities, events, projects and services including arts and crafts groups, youth clubs, community arts projects, Over 60's clubs, sports and fitness clubs, martial arts, childcare, family support activities, dance and drama, multi-cultural activities, music and photography. The Centre also has its own community garden which is tended all year round by local volunteers. In addition to being a popular and important social centre the Community Centre and Garden acts as a vital lifeline for many vulnerable and disadvantaged members of the community. Several of the users of the Centre are older people who are living alone, socially isolated and feeling lonely. Going to the groups at the Centre is often the only time in the week that they get out of the house and meet with other people. The Community Centre also provides an important meeting place for young single parent families where parents of new born babies up to toddlers can support each other and share experiences in what is often a traumatic and stressful time in their lives. The facility also offers regular activities and respite for young carers, some as young as seven years old. It is just wonderful to see these young carers let off steam and be in the company of young people who are in the same position as themselves.There are so many reasons for our Centre to remain open and with cuts taking place all over the UK and community streams of funding being lost or dwindling, we now have to fight for survival or lose a whole community with whom we have supported for eleven years. Please help our Centre survive.