CHAIRMAN’S REPORT
Good evening and thank you for being present at this meeting and for continuing as Trustees of the Wickham Institute. Your support and advice are always most welcome.
The first thing you will by now all be aware of is that we have now been using our modernised kitchen for nearly a year, including its dishwasher and new cooker. We are hoping this year coming to commence work on refurbishing the rest of the building, inside and out, and to obtain quotes for installing central heating as the gas heaters are becoming very expensive to run and maintain.
You will probably be aware that with some effort we have managed to increase the regular usage of the Hall. For this year only the school have been using the hall for PE while awaiting the building of their new classroom space . When we offered them the space on Wednesday afternoons, we originally sought to charge them at half the regular rental rate. However, much to all our delight, the administrators of the Binsted Educational and Recreational Trust, which is now incorporated into a larger umbrella charitable trust, granted a very generous sum to the school (following our advice to apply) which made it possible for the school to pay our full rental and still have approximately £1000 left with which to purchase equipment . We have also as a result forged much stronger links with the school and the Friends of Binsted School and it has been a pleasure to get to know Mrs Morton and her team.
The Committee are hoping to make an application to the Trust on behalf of the Wickham Institute this year to assist with refurbishment of the interior and/or a proper heating system, for which we are obtaining quotations at the moment.
Moving on to our other regular users; we now have three or four regular exercise classes on Mondays, a full afternoon of childrens’ ballet classes on Tuesdays, an embryo Botanical painting class on Thursdays, run by an extremely talented lady, Sheryl Pape, our continuing Coffee Shop on Wednesdays, and regular use by the church for crèche/Sunday School on alternate Sundays. There are also several church groups who meet here regularly and we have had a good number of private hires
We have had several successful events in the hall over the last year for which Andrew will supply the figures. The Spring Supper, which was a sellout last year in May, a local food fair organised by Alix and Tammy, the PCC Harvest Supper in October who generously shared their takings with us (another example of ever closer relations between village organisations), the Flower Festival where our team ran the refreshments on one day, the Quiz Night which was highly successful, a second showing of the Binsted Slides, with tea, and lastly an Easter Fair run again by the Alix and Tammy team! I think you will agree that we are making more and better use of this lovely old building.
We would like to thank the Fete and Flower Show committee for their support in past years. Their donations have been vital in our having enough money set aside to top up the Big Lottery Grant towards a new kitchen. It is sad that they did not have a good year in 2015 and were unable to make grants, but I hope they will have better luck this year to reward all the effort that goes into our lovely, traditional village fete and which is also so generous in supporting local causes.
We hope that we can maintain the increased regular use of the building to make our efforts at modernising and improving it worthwhile, but each class is fragile, dependent on class numbers and the goodwill of the teachers concerned. I would like to ask that you all, as supporters, make people aware of what goes on here and encourage them to use us as much as possible. Of course, we need to keep our programme of fundraising events and welcome entertaining new ideas .
