Good news, Dean Court!

A Community Centre has been built… It is my great pleasure to announce that yesterday, at around 10am, after 9 months of growing and many, many hours of pain and huffing and puffing(!), practical completion of the building work was finalised and the keys were handed over to the Vale of White Horse District Council, who own the building and the land it is on. The building will spend a short time in their care while we gather lots of paperwork about it, and then, in due course, we (Dean Court Community Association) will sign a lease with them and take control ourselves in order to help it grow as a Community Centre.

Whilst I’m sure that the G-team and Cluttons will be overjoyed to be compared to a pregnant mother, we owe them a debt of gratitude for all that they have achieved and the hope and possibilities that they have bought to our community. So thank you Gordon and Graham, thank you Sam and Ian, and thank you to all your many skilled friends who turned our paper dreams into concrete (and bricks and carpet and metal and wood) reality. We hope that you’ll come to visit – you will always be welcome!

In the meantime, the hard work starts here! (Well, obviously it actually started a long time ago but that doesn’t sound as catchy.) We have a community to grow – if you’re reading this, then you, in some way, are part of it! We are turning from a building project into a new business attempting to start up and make a success of a social entrepreneurial project. If you think that you might have skills that could be useful, come and join the fun!

This next paperwork phase could take up to a month. We hope to be open for our first bookings at the beginning of March, and there is still some space in the diary – e-mail us if you’re interested. We are still on track for our grand opening on 5th and 6th April – put the date in your diary!

For now, enjoy a few photos of the completed build…