St Mawes Singing for Fun – was held almost(Bank holidays not) every Monday from 9th Sept 2024 until 10th March 2025. It was led by Amelia and a professional guitarist Mike. It will restart in September. The age range attending was 8 to 80! At various times of course… Attendances varies but there were 22 of us singing carols around the village pubs at Christmas. It is singing for fun not intended to be a choir – all participants enjoyed the experience.
Our expensively, restored and refurbished hut opened in September but closed at the beginning of October due to a massive water leak that prevented use of the toilets and water supply. SWW took nearly £12,000 from our current account by direct debit for water that we had not used.
There have been 53 emails from October between myself and Southwest water about the problem. It was dealt with by the wrong department in Exeter who suddenly discovered we had a Business account after engaging with me for 13 weeks as an ordinary customer - then on January 8, they moved me on to the Bournemouth office. There they finally accepted - June and the leak they caused has finally been repaired. It has taken the intervention of our local MP to get Southwest Water to accept responsibility for the damage they caused to the pipe that supplies our building when they installed the huge holding tank for the St Just Village sewage system.
Given our usual bill was around £20, the deduction of that huge amount of money should have set off alarms at SWW, but it didn’t so we were unaware of it until the end of September. This means that the youth club that started in September had to close along with all hut bookings.
So, we will have a major re-launch in September 2025 and resurrect some of the ideas we had originally for example courses in - art, martial arts, drama, crafts.
The seating is in place along with the storage units –and the kitchen has been refurbished as we intended. Please see below
Table tennis continues to be supported – varying numbers turn up, but it is worthwhile doing not least for an autistic young man aged 17 who was initially brought by his mother but now attends alone. His social skills have exploded in an environment where he can excel and be treated as an adult.
The Art Group has happened on the planned 12 occasions despite the lack of water. We arranged for access to the Millennium Rooms (5-minute walk away) to be able to use their loos and water supply and transported water up to the Hut in cans for the painting. Age range 18 - ?? grey haired!
We continue to have a thriving Tennis Club and a heavily booked court open to all.
This Tennis Club is now offering coaching in half terms and holidays for anyone. We have secured the services of a young but qualified LTA coach who is already highly popular with the youngsters. February half term produced 9 children between the ages of 5 – 9 as an introduction to the Sport. There are 4 weeks of coaching booked for the next holiday and the last block had 29 children attending this course.
We will be offering the Hut as a Clubhouse for these activities so making it available to more members of the Community.
It has proved impossible to recruit a dedicated, qualified youth worker, despite meetings with Nick Smith Chief Executive of Young People Cornwall. We did send someone to YPC Training Days which was useful. We are therefore looking to provide stand-alone events focused on particular issues and keep the building open for drop-in table tennis and pool and socialisation in a warm and safe space.
Currently we are on the hunt for a Dance teacher – at the request of some of the local kids - but again this is proving extremely difficult. The
geographical isolation of our village that limits the activities of our young people affects those travelling in the other direction too with a perception that we really are out on a limb. So far, we have contacted 4 people who run classes, and they are all completely committed.
We might need to offer paid training to someone locally to take on the Youth Worker post as I have discovered that courses are run in Falmouth and will investigate that further. There are online courses, and that may provide another route as we would be able to pay the costs.
And so to the future- we have spent many hours working on a project to build a MUGA, a Padel Court and a mini- tennis court. Planning permission has been applied for – we hope to get this and move forwards on the project in the Autumn.
Simone Kennett July 2025