Projects Funded in Barrow
Organisation: Youthability Youth Services
Project Title: Scootability
Funding Received: £13,934.84 (October 2023 – May 2025)
Project Outline:
'Scootability', aims to use scooters to enable young people with special educational needs and disabilities to become more active in a fun and positive way. By doing this, the young people will build their confidence to be more independent in the wider community.
The project will last just under two years with over 50 young people benefitting, as we as their families and friends. Youthability also intend to engage with the young people at George Hastwell School and the young carers at Furness Carers by working collaboratively to hold workshops and participation events.
Organisation: Age UK Barrow and District Limited
Project Title: Promenade Pedallers
Funding Received: £2,208 (Augsut 2024 - October 2024)
Project Outline:
The Promenade Pedallers project launched with a Cycling Festival during summer 2024, with the aim to target older people aged 60 and over. The Cycling Festival aimed to introduce stimulating methods of cycling and different ways to cycle to the older population.
Park Vale Sports Stadium, on Walney, was the venue for a variety of activities, such as E-Bike and E-Trike tasters, standard bike and adapted bike confidence building and Trike challenges. The event incorporated food and music, as well as a guided rides for those ready for an early challenge.
The following four weeks during early Autumn were used to reinforce the impact of the introductory festival, by offering a prospectus of different cycling activities to maintain and further stimulate the participants’ interest in, and enthusiasm for, cycling and in becoming “Promenade Pedallers”, promoting the cycling mobility and fitness ethos, as well as the opportunities for socialisation and making pedalling partnerships with others.
Organisation: Friends of Bram
Project Title: Barrow Island on Bikes
Funding Received: £28,910 (Sept 2024 - March 2026)
Project Outline:
To develop a flagship Bike Workshop Hub on Barrow Island which will form a base, to teach and support people, through a network of volunteers, in becoming self-sufficient and proficient in bike riding, bike maintenance and organised instructor-led bike rides, for our communities, schools and partner organisations.
The aim is to make cycling accessible to everyone on Barrow Island, and beyond – no matter what their circumstances. This project is aimed at anybody who would otherwise struggle to afford to buy a bike or get their bike fixed.
Organisation: Ease E Ride Ltd
Project Title: Active Barrow
Funding Received: £900 (October 2024 – December 2024)
Project Outline:
This project will conduct a feasibility study into whether local community groups could be used to test ride the identified routes in the LCWIP (Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan) and where alternative routes are identified, evaluate these using Department for Transports route selection tool. If the study shows that this is feasible then a future project plan, and funding application, will be made to conduct the study using the identified community groups, and the creation of ‘Active Travel Champions’, to complete the research.
Organisation: Abbots Vale Community Centre
Project Title: Abbots Vale Oasis – a place for Friendship, Movement and the Exploration of the Senses
Funding Received: £31,677.20 (August 2024 – August 2026)
Project Outline:
Abbots Vale Oasis seeks to develop a unique oasis of calm, colour, appropriate opportunities for physical activity, in a safe and welcoming environment. Essentially, ‘Movement, Companionship and the Mind’.
The land will be developed, with a ‘trail’ 72 metres long, interweaving throughout the sensory sections of the space, to gently target and enhance all seven senses.
- A safe haven for people to gather and interact
- To experience an adventure of the senses
- An interactive movement zone for those with mobility issues, long term health conditions and older populations
- Surface suitable for those using strollers and wheelchairs, so entirely inclusive, and unique for Barrow-in-Furness
- Adaptable so toddlers can safely explore their development on balance bikes
- Allow target audiences a much-needed safe haven to develop low level activity
The area through which the track/path interweaves, which is wide enough for all types of inclusive ‘wheels’ will incorporate:
- Wind chimes and musical enhancements
- Colourful flower beds to stimulate sense of vision
- Flowers to stimulate sense of smell
- Floor surfacing to stimulate variety in touch
- Panels with varied touch/sensory surfaces
- Seating areas
- Beds to grow and develop plants and vegetable/fruits
Organisation: Vision Support Barrow and District
Project Title: Barrow Buddies
Funding Received: £32,920
Project Outline:
Vision Support Barrow and District will deliver the ‘Barrow Buddies’ project, over the course of one year, which has two main components:
Sighted Guide Volunteers – Recruit and train dedicated sighted guide volunteers in Barrow, who will be matched with people who are vision impaired and struggling with orientation, mobility and confidence to engage with their local community. The volunteers will provide support to help improve fitness and confidence, by walking short and purposeful routes with their buddy to help them learn the way to important places such as the health centre, local shops, places of worship etc.
Encouraging and supporting them to engage with the wider community resources that are often inaccessible to someone with sight loss such as social groups, health checks etc. Allowing them to do this by walking or using local bus services, removing the over-reliance on taxis which is detrimental to their financial well-being and to the environment.
Barrow Buddies Walking Group – To deliver regular walking trips, by setting up a Ramblers wellbeing walking group, to meet monthly in the colder months and weekly in the warmer months. They would facilitate access to green spaces, the beach, and other places, such as the sea front at Grange Over Sands, Coniston and Windermere.