So concludes a recent reflective blog entry by Samuel Cooper, a research student at the University of Sussex, who lectured in February on ‘The Situationist International and its British Fallout’ at Marsh Barn just outside Bridport.

Situationism at Marsh Barn, Bridport: "Is there a fault with reality?"

Mr Cooper was, in short, giving one of the Lectures About Everything organised by Horatio and Ioana Morpurgo.

You can see why a D Phil student obsessed with ‘a forgotten period of avant-garde activity’ (British Situationism since 1967) would regard Marsh Barn as a surprising place to encounter people who were not only enthused by his overview of such subjects as the Angry Brigade and Punk but had themselves been engaged in ‘proximate activity’ (a 68er, a workplace activist, a wobbly, a trade unionist,  a road protestor and others). But that’s  the appeal of this part of the world…

A ‘wobbly’, incidentally, is Mr Cooper’s term: I have got no idea what it means. If I’d been there, I would have asked him, but I wasn’t and I’m sorry I missed it.

In return for Mr Cooper explaining to me what on earth a ‘wobbly’ is, I could have told him that the ex-Special Branch man who cracked the Angry Brigade now lives in Bridport. As I was saying, it is that kind of place…    

Anyway, if you too missed the lecture, and you want to read Mr Cooper’s notes, you can click on this link here; or if you want read his reflections on his Marsh Barn experience, you can click on this link here.

*Situationism began in 1958 as a radical French philosophy heavily influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism. It sought a “REVOLUTION of everyday life”, most famously through the events of May 1968 in Paris, immortalised in graffiti such as: “Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault with reality” and “Be realistic. Demand the impossible”.

A new branch of Travis Perkins, costing £2.3 million, is being constructed. Up next is Lidl

WHAT USED to be a pleasant and uplifting walk along St Andrew’s Road is rapidly being destroyed by the Philistines who are building the new builders’ merchants depot and grocer’s shop alongside the Co-op.

They are completely obliterating the wonderful view of the upper half of Jessop Avenue and all of Happy Island Way. No more will we be able to gaze in wonder at these architectural gems as they seem to roll down the hill and fill us with warmth and gratitude to the far-sighted developers who gave us these vital ingredients of our local heritage.

Each time I see the vista before me I hear a Pete Seeger tune playing in my mind and give mental thanks to the planning department of the local council for granting us such a blessing.

I am sure that no other town in this land of ours would even dream of allowing a much-loved treasure to be completely hidden by a building constructed with sole purpose of foisting tins of baked beans, rolls of toilet paper and bottles of Egyptian Hock off on a gullible public.

Is it too late to prevent this monstrosity being completed? If so we must act and we must act swiftly and decisively. This view is far too valuable to be destroyed. If we allow this boil on the buttocks of Bridport to be completed future generations will curse us for our sheer vandalism. I would beg you to think of Happy Island Way and complain to your local councillor before it is too late.

The artist Richard Harris has been commissioned to produce a permanent work of art in response to the construction of the Dorchester to Weymouth Relief Road. The Earthscapes exhibition at Bridport Arts Centre shows some initial ideas - and this is one

Some notes on the Earthscapes exhibition at Bridport Arts Centre, curated by Sherborne House Arts

Part 1: The Project straightforwardly Described

A SCALE MODEL of a sculpture to be sited either side of the new Dorchester to Weymouth Relief Road has gone on show for the first time.

It’s on display at Bridport Arts Centre as part of Sherborne House Arts’ Earthscapes exhibition.

The work by sculptor Richard Harris shows some 28 boulders gradually rising on steel poles reaching to 3m (10ft) above the Southdown Ridge.

All the rocks ­- weighing between one and eight tonnes ­- are sourced from the 1.6m tonnes of material moved from the site where work on the road has been taking place.

If it gets the go-ahead, the sculpture will be on both sides of the road and will curve off up the slopes of the cutting following the natural geological strata.

Lines of stones are to be mounted on poles close to where they were dug up

An aerial view of the proposed public art work along the sides of the Dorchester to Weymouth relief road

The poles will curve up the sides of the cuttings

The excavated rocks are between 160 and 65 million years old and started being formed in what would have been a tropical lagoon. The concretions are formed around small matter such as a leaf or a fossil and steadily build up over millions of years solidifying by chemical processes.

Mr Harris said: “I was asked to consider the landscape, context of the whole road and having worked on several proposals for different sites ­ this is the idea that I feel is the strongest and most appropriate. Some of the geology has been exposed by the cutting but will eventually become less visible as the grass grows.

“This proposal puts the geology back where it was ­ but visible­ continuing up above the hill indicating where it would have been before it was weathered away.”

Mr Harris said he had been involved with the project since January last year making many visits to the site and consulting with geologists.

As if an invisible car was driving through in mucky weather and spraying up stones

He said: “This idea came in the late summer and only came about when the work had started and the stones had been revealed.

“The heavier stones will rise up from the ground and will get progressively smaller as they run through the air to the top of the slope.

Big stone...

... Small stone (fascinatingly coloured and shaped)

“What I am trying to do is give an inspiring image as people come into Weymouth and to reveal the geology in a dramatic way.”

 The idea of incorporating art in relation to the road was initially proposed in the Weymouth and Portland Commissioning Plan for 2012.

It stated that public art could be used to make the £87m road ­ which is due to open in Spring next year – more attractive for drivers.

The work is being supported by Arts Council England, South West and Dorset County Council.

Mr Harris is now working with Skanska, the contractors, Dorset County Council and his own engineers to develop the project. 

Part 2: ‘Earthscapes’ as an exhibition title

THERE AREN’T many better words in the English language than ‘scape’. It means so much and is so capable of forming suggestive associations. Brickscape, prisonscape, cityscape, mudscape, hedgescape, landscape, moonscape, earthscape… It’s a brilliant word for conjuring up an external scene or, indeed, an externalised one – as in moodscape or mindscape.

Then there is the word ‘scape’ taken by itself. It’s long been used as a shortened form of ‘escape’ –  ‘scape’ breaks away and soon ends up leading an outlawry of meanings: a ‘scape’ is a fart; a transgression due to thoughtlessness; an outrageous sin; a slip of the tongue; a clerical error.

Shafted / Scaped

‘Scape’ can also be used to describe the shaft of a column, or the long stalk of a flower  rising directly out of its root.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins used ‘scape’ to denote an impression or reflection of the individual quality of a thing or an action; its quiddity, its real nature or essence.

So you can start to see why an exhibition called Earthscapes is always going to be appealing, even before we get started on that titular coinage.

Why earthscapes and not landscapes? Perhaps because ‘land’ speaks too much of ownership and class, of power and authority – whereas ‘earth’ still escapes from some of those human forms? The earth, physically and mentally, is a space that none of us can ever truly hope to control – not forever – and space of course is an anagram of scape. At which point – at the mention of anagram – your mind can start to run away with possibilities (yes, to scape), because earth is also an anagram of heart.

So you can have earthscapes as ‘heartscapes’ or ‘heartspaces’ or ‘hearts paces’; pluck out the word art and you get ‘she art scape’, or ‘he art scapes’; and so on and on…

Part 3: The Relief Road Art Work as a Work of Art

You might regard everything written above as rather wild, but it is all relevant to the Dorchester to Weymouth relief road, and to Richard Harris’s initial models.

They’re fiendishly difficult designs to photograph, and if you’re interested you should go to see them for yourself, but I hope for now the pictures here show roughly what’s on display.

So, scapes: relevant how?

Firstly: in the crudest way, there will be people who regard what’s proposed as arty-farty nonsense – and, remember, ‘to let a scape’ does mean to break wind…

But let’s chuff on.

Secondly: look at the way the stones are upheld on shafts / columns / stalks – call them what you will – they are all ‘scapes’ and there are many different ways of viewing their form and layout. The stones for the real art work will come from excavations along the route. They will – you could argue – look like the severed heads on poles that used to be stood at the entrances to towns and cities (Dorchester once used to be gristled with the rotting heads of Catholic Martyrs who’d been hung, drawn and quartered). From that perspective, the two lines of scapes, moving down either side of the road, represent a triumphal assertion of power by Dorset County Council and its contractors.

Look what we have done! We have disembowelled the earth! We have built this road and routed our enemies!

Thirdly: and for what?

The stones curve like a sabre tooth, or perhaps a tongue

Or in these daubs like antennae or paw prints?

More still to follow: writer is thinking (when he gets chance)!  

FOR MORE than seven long years the Literary & Scientific Institute in Bridport town centre has stood empty. Now though, the Bridport Area Development Trust has been given a chance to seek new uses for a building erected in the early 1830s as a Mechanics Institute, whose purpose was to help Bridport’s working classes educate themselves. In 1855 it become a more middle-class Literary and Scientific Institute; in the late 19th century it was an art school; in the late 20th a Dorset County Council library.

About 25 people are due to look round inside to dream and to calculate what might be. The pictures shown here need little commentary, but you’ll find the occasional note of explanation and literary tag.

All pictures were taken by Vince O’ Farrell of Bridport Area Development Trust, with whose kind permission they are now reproduced.

“Classical, that’s it – it is calm and classical… No low beatings and knockings about” (Mrs Jarley in Dickens’ The Old Curiosty Shop).

One of the reasons we know that the Institute was built in the early 1830s is that a book about Baptist churches published in 1835 complained that it made the garden setting of the chapel right by it, pictured below, less attractive to visitors.

The same book (by one  J. Murch) commented nonetheless on what “a handsome and commodious edifice” the new Institute  was.

“The scene was the familiar one of grandeur and desolation” (The End, Samuel Beckett).

Old buildings “were scaffolding once / and workmen whistling” (Images, T E Hulme). 

“… And immediately

“Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:

“The sun-comprehending glass,

“And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

“Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”

(High Windows, Philip Larkin)

Ten interested parties have been shown around the empty Institute in East Street, Bridport, by members of the Bridport Area Development Trust, which has got six months to find a modern purpose for the historic property.

“We’re still in the very early stages,” said Crystal Johnson of the Trust.

“We’re lucky in Bridport in that we’ve got a lot of other facilities and arrangements, and we don’t want to duplicate those, so we’ve got to have something that doesn’t put the building in competition with other venues, but complements what’s already happening.

“A lot of ideas have to do with training and providing courses, perhaps working with higher and further education institutions, which are looking to deliver more courses locally.”

The building was last occupied in 2002, which is also when the last structural survey was done. Another survey now needs doing.

The digital arts organisation PVA was one of the Institute's last tenants. PVA is now based in the old building at the back of the East Street car park

Ms Johnson said: “It’s not deteriorated significantly since then but of course the costs of things have changed.”

Everyone involved with the Trust is working on a voluntary basis; the organisation does not have a lot of money or capacity.

Ms Johnson continued: “We’re hoping that people will come forward with specialist skills, for example legal or property management, skills which will help us get some kind of business plan together for the building to be handed over to the community, and help us raise the initial capital that will be required and also develop further uses that bring funding with them.

“We’ve got to think quite long term about it.” 

The building’s history

The sign outside proclaiming it to be a Literary & Scientific Institute is a bit misleading. It was that, but not until 1855. Before then it had a very interesting history indeed; it encapsulates a period of class warfare and ambitions for cultural change. 

In 1830, Bridport formed a Mechanics Institute, one of the first Mechanics Institutes in the country. London had the very first, in 1824. Mechanics Institutes were mutual improvement societies, self-help organisations, part of a grass-roots working class struggle for education and advancement.

“The time has gone by,” as one former rope-maker put it, “for the selfish and bigoted possessors of wealth to confine the blessings of knowledge wholly within their own narrow circle, and by every despotic artifice to block up each cranny through which intellectual light might break out upon the multitude…”

Restraint on “sensual indulgence”

The aim of setting up a Mechanics Institute in Bridport was (take a deep breath!) to foster “the mental and moral advantage of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, but especially of the young men of the working classes, by affording them the means of useful knowledge, and assisting such of the members as may be engaged in mechanical pursuits in attaining a scientific acquaintance with their respective arts – providing them with improving and interesting subjects for reflection and discussion, and thereby establishing a wholesome moral restraint on their amusements, keeping them from wasting their leisure time in vacancy of mind, or unprofitable conversation, or sensual indulgence; in fact enabling them to become more thinking, and therefore more rational beings, and more useful and respectable members of society.”

This explains the origin of the East Street building. Some of the language used here (“moral restraint”, etc) clearly shows middle-class involvement, but the Institute itself was explicitly built for the working classes, between 1830 and 1835, at a time of great political unrest, especially in Dorset. (This was the time, for example, when the Tolpuddle Martyrs were transported).  

The Institute’s building was paid for by Henry Warburton, the son of a Kent timber merchant. Warburton was a Radical reformer who was MP for Bridport from 1826 until 1841. By one account it cost him £16,000; that’s more than £1.3 million in today’s money.

“Fear God and Honour the King”

Anyway,the Institute began with fine hopes, but it failed. No one really knows quite why.

It might have been because employers simply made their workers do such long hours they didn’t have enough time left for proper meetings.

It might have been because power in Dorset then largely rested with Conservatives viciously hostile to working class aspirations. In 1838, for example, the Bridport Institute sent a petition up to London supporting proposals for educational funding to be freed from churches. This gesture was denounced in the Conservative Dorset County Chronicle, which wanted clergymen still to make the lower orders “Fear God and Honour the King”. Such attitudes would have made it harder for the Mechanics Institute to survive. 

Institutes generally were also vulnerable to economic downturns, internal squabbles, problems with getting reliable teachers, and so on. Whatever the reason was, the Mechanics Institute failed and only in 1855 was it reborn as the much more middle-class Literary & Scientific Institute.

So what next?

It’s difficult to draw conclusions, and it may well be that the largely forgotten history of working class struggle in Bridport is regarded by many people as, these days, a bad omen, or irrelevant. But is it?

One of the great themes of the forthcoming General Election is going to be “mutualisation” – both Labour and the Conservatives say they want to encourage all sorts of enterprises based upon this principle.

So even though there are going to be huge cuts in public spending, Bridport could perhaps be well placed to argue for an institution that embodies the idea of mutual help.

The Bridport Area Development Trust should be bold. It should seek a use for the Institute that’s as new now as the idea of the Mechanics Institute once was.

And wouldn’t it be fantastic if the Bridport’s current MP Oliver Letwin, who wants the Conservatives to be radical and reforming, could be persuaded to contribute towards the Institute in as generous a way as his predecessor in Parliament once did?

Editor’s Note: This piece draws on The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose and the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History & Archaeological Society.

The Institute is on the English Heritage register of buildings at risk. Click on this link to read more.  

The move is announced on the papers’ website but not (that I can see) in the papers themselves.

The shift means the two Newsquest publications will come out on the same morning as the free newspapers View From Bridport, View From Beaminster and View From Lyme Regis.

“The Bridport News and Lyme Regis News moving to Wednesday is purely for operational reasons relating to available press slots,” says Toby Granville, editor of the Dorset Echo, who also oversees the two weeklies.

View From editor Philip Evans comments (via Twitter): “@RealWestDorset By moving to a Wednesday publishing date they lose their only exclusive news day to the View. Great decision – for the View!”

Analysis

Myself, I think there are three things worth remarking on.

One: when the News did first move from Friday to Thursday that was done to compete more directly with View From titles and the Western Gazette (which comes out on Thursdays). Yet I know people who still dislike that shift intensely and refuse, as a matter of principle, to buy the News on a Thursday, because they believe it should still come out on a Friday. That’s a powerful testament to the strength of the connection that the News had with people, and to the force of habit. It’s Friday: it’s Bridport / Lyme Regis News day. Friday was a crucial part of the papers’ brand identity. Changing to a Thursday affected that, but perhaps moving to a Wednesday will not, particularly, because the first move was the one that showed the brand could be tampered with. Like ITV’s News at Ten; there are people who have never seen that in quite the same way since ITV began moving it around…

Another comment via Twitter: “oninbridders @RealWestDorset Bridport News belongs to Friday, a nice way to end the week, sort it out @Dorsetecho. Though at this rate it will loop back”

Two: it will interesting to see what effect it has, three editions of the View From and two editions of the News coming out on the same day, midweek. All sorts of permutations are possible. Good for the View because people might choose to pick up a free paper rather than pay for one that is now covering exactly the same last week? Good for the News because it’s got more pages at the moment than it’s had for years and people might think that a paid-for publication is always going to be superior to a free? Or good for them both because, if you’re in the shop, why not get them both? Neither is going to want to have exactly the same content as the other so they should (in theory) both get better and more various.

Three: and what of the 60p Western Gazette, which fewer people in West Dorset seem to care about these days, despite the best efforts of its local reporter Danielle Hoffman? (It was noticeable, for example, that she turned up for the recent South West Quadrant appeal hearing whereas no one from the News was seen – a situation that people commented upon.) Alas for the Western Gazette, it won’t have much of an “exclusive news day” to itself on Wednesdays because the deadline for its West Dorset edition is late on Tuesday. Oh well.

Postscript

View From Publications are now planning something for Fridays called the View Online Dorset Weekender – “a brand new weekly paper you’ll only be able to read online!”

Come to Bridport... We're having a Hat Festival

It could become the world’s biggest celebration of headwear and millinery, and it should provide an additional incentive for tourists to visit Dorset in the early autumn.

The plans are being backed by some of the industry’s biggest names.

The first Hatfest will run for three days from Friday, September 17 to Sunday, September 19. It will include themed talks, demonstrations, gigs, street theatre, workshops, exhibitions and competitions. There will also be a few surprises revealed nearer the time.

The festival will aim to teach us more about hats...

... and particularly to remind us how stylish they can be

The man behind the festival is Roger Snook whose West Street shop, T Snooks, attracts customers from around the globe, including many celebrities.

Roger said: “It is a project that I”ve been considering for a little while now. I think it’s something that would benefit the whole town.

“When I first started thinking about it I was convinced there must already be one already in existence somewhere in the UK ­ but there isn’t.

“Winchester has a hat festival but that’s for street entertainers, the only other ones are in France and Egypt.

“The Bridport Hat Festival is to be an annual event to remind people just how stylish wearing hats can be, and how stylish Bridport can be.

“This should be good for local traders, the town generally and the whole hat industry. There are so few hat shops left in the country, and it’s a real shame.

“I have hat aficionados coming to my shop from as far afield as Derby and Norwich. People that are serious about their hats go mad for them.

“And, apart from anything else, a hat festival would just be great fun. It will attract people to the town and be a great early autumn attraction.

Help fill in the details...

“If anyone has any more ideas than we’d love to hear from you.”

You can contact Roger at roger@rsnook.fsnet.co.uk or by calling 01308 458224.

Roger Snook, in his South Street shop, wearing his own Colonial Panama trimmed white

Dorset County Council is working with Bridport-based arts company PVA MediaLab to appoint an artist-in-residence for the project, called ‘Domus’, using an award of £5,000 from the Big Lottery Fund.

The artist will work with local deaf and hearing-impaired people at workshops in March to develop a looped projection piece to be shown at the Town House. The work will explore the site’s history and environment through the use of digital media and light.

Julie Penfold, director of PVA MediaLab, said: “We are very pleased to be working with colleagues at Dorchester’s Roman Town House to deliver this exciting project. We hope to highlight the special qualities of the site, enhancing its qualities and encouraging pride in local heritage.”

If you are interested in taking part in the workshops on 23-25 March in Dorchester, please book through the Roman Town House officer Sarah Harbige on 01305 228241 or s.e.harbige@dorsetcc.gov.uk

The above is all from a press release issued by Dorset County Council. You can tell that from the perfectly on-message words “said” by Julie Penfold of PVA.

They’re worth noting because, in the current climate of impending cutbacks, ‘Domus’ is exactly the kind of project that many people will think is a waste of money. Do deaf people really need to experience “a moving image projection” on the Roman Town House? They’re hard of hearing. It’s not like they can’t see it. What’s wrong with reading about it, or walking around and imagining?

But PVA are going to do a job, and who can blame them for wanting to do it? What’s more interesting is the role of Dorset County Council. I would suggest that Domus should be seen in the context of years and years of expenditure and experimentation by Dorset County Council on the Roman Town House. It is a remarkable and important archaeological monument, but it’s in an odd place, tucked away round the back of County Hall, and not all that many people go it, and no one is really quite sure what its purpose should be, or how should it be promoted. Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on it, and yet no one ever seems to have produced a coherent plan for promoting the Roman heritage of Dorchester and including the Town House as part of that. I know people have tried, but does anyone think they have succeeded?

You can see the official Roman Town House website by clicking on this link. At the time of writing this, it’s got Tony Robinson on the home page, which is ok, and also a horrible spelling mistake, which is not…

Generally discussed in playground-style huddles, this question has long given a delicious frisson of dread.

It is: What will happen when headmaster Mike Kite finally decides to retire?

Loders School

Last year when Loders was inspected by Ofsted, this small village school near Bridport was found to be outstanding in every respect.

“Many [parents] commented on the inspirational leadership of the headteacher and it is this that provides the key to the school’s success. The headteacher has a positive ‘can do’ attitude and this permeates through the whole school from the headteacher himself to staff, governors, parents and children. No problem is too big to be surmounted.”

The problem now is that the time has finally come when Mr Kite, aged 62, has decided that he wishes to work rather less intensively than he has for the last 25 years.

His first plan – as explained in a letter – was to retire altogether in July.

But as everyone concerned with the school is reluctant to let him go – as some of what makes Loders special would inevitably go with him – another course of action is first being explored.

Loders has become the first school in Dorset to advertise for a Co-Head, that is, effectively, a job-sharing arrangement. It is, as Mr Kite says, unusual but by no means unique. About 40 other schools nationwide have co-heads.

The aim of Loders’ governors is to set up a mechanism for succession, an extended handover. It will be fascinating to see whether they succeed, at a time when a survey just last week found “a dire shortage of applicants” for headteachers’ jobs. More than a third of primary schools (35%) have to re-advertise.  

If no co-head of sufficient calibre can be found for Loders, then Mr Kite will retire in July, and the school’s headship will be re-advertised on a conventional basis. 

“Whichever route is taken,” says Mr Kite, “you can be sure that the governors will do an extremely thorough job – second-best is not an acceptable option for Loders School.”  

More details of what’s proposed can be found on the dorsetforyou website.

Editor’s Note: I should say that when I qualified as a teacher, Mr Kite was one of my mentors, and I looked up to him as a flicker of light does to a star…

BRIDPORT TLC is at a crossroads. Our volunteer-led community recycling project is now in its fifth year, having implemented a wide range of reduce, re-use and recycle schemes aimed at supporting the wider Bridport population to ‘do their bit’ and collectively we have kept over 1,000 tons of materials out of Dorset landfill sites.

We consistently reach the top three in National Community Recycling Awards, are the present West Dorset District Council ‘Environmental Champions’, and only last month came runner-up in the Resource/Novelis Community Project awards.

Bridport TLC needs stronger community backing

We know that we (27 active volunteers) are an asset to local businesses and organisations as well as a growing army of individuals from all local parishes who bring in some of the additional recyclable materials that we collect and process – from plastic wrappings and waste cooking oil to milk bottle tops and electrical items – but now need to know if we have full community support before deciding whether to keep going. Contrary to popular belief the financial fundraising from waste materials is very small, particularly when concentrated on a local level as our project is.

To this end we are writing to all local Parish Councils asking for a) indication of support and b) contributions towards the not-insignificant costs of providing the services we provide. As well as local Councils we are seeking feedback and support from other community organisations, needing responses by March 1st to gauge whether we continue from April 1st. If your organisation can support us by pledging a grant/donation for the next financial year, or sponsor a specific area of cost (see below) we may yet continue to operate and will highlight your support on our website and elsewhere.

Our basic running costs are £18,750 per annum of which £15,000 is raised through membership of our collections scheme, donations and the small returns on recyclable materials. Since Jack & Ollies Crisp factory closed we can no longer raise funds through biodiesel sales but the shortfall over the last two years was met with a one-off grant from Grassroots Awards and we include a breakdown of our running costs attached. 

DEFRA recently published research highlighting the major contribution that Third Sector Waste Organisations such as ours make to their communities, from productive volunteer placements and community ‘feel good’ factor to environmental and financial benefits to the wider community – showing that every pound invested invested in them is worth up to £5.89 to the local economy.                                                                   

With the HWRC [Household Waste Recycling Centre] in South Street due to close this summer we need to know whether we can keep going or be swamped with materials we do not have the time or personnel to deal with. We could continue our work towards Zero Waste if we could meet the shortfall in our running costs and purchase a replacement collections vehicle as ours is on its last wheels. Understandably, having already contributed over 16,000 volunteer hours and nearly £18,000 of our own finances and fundraising since 2005, unless we know we have wider public support we feel our significant efforts and achievements are not worth continuing.

Having already introduced bicycle rickshaws, the gull-proof bin bag, a Scrapstore, an affordable waste reduction scheme for businesses, behavioural change promotions, community biodiesel production and plastics recycling to Bridport we are keen to develop more beneficial schemes including community composting and collection ‘hubs’ in surrounding villages. Please support the ‘do-ers’ because we can’t do it on our own anymore. 

We would be most grateful if you could give this letter your full consideration.

In Sincerity

Leon Edwards

Project Co-ordinator (Volunteer)

Annual Running Costs of Bridport TLC

• Rents & Water Rates (£1,211pcm), £14,532.00
• Rates (100% Rate relief WDDC), £ NIL
• Full Public Liability Insurance, £ 1,263.68
• Vehicle Insurance, £290.00
• Vehicle Tax & MOT, £260.00
• Electricity, £456.00
• Volunteer Expenses @ £25 pw, £1,300.00
• Baler Servicing & Twine, £166.00
• Office: Phone, Postage & Admin., £480.00
• TOTAL, £18,747.68