2009 North East Market Town Awards
By Katie Fewings • Oct 11th, 2009 • Category: AwardsPress Release: 9 October 2009
Flood recovery in Morpeth wins top market town award in North East
A project which aimed to boost community morale following the devastating floods in Morpeth just over a year ago has been named the winner of the North East Market Town Awards.
With Castle Morpeth Borough Council leading on the economic recovery group, the Greater Morpeth Development Trust (GMDT) set up a Morpeth Arts and Flood Recovery project in a bid to bring the whole community together through a range of arts and culture activities, creating a better social environment and meanwhile raising money for flood victims.
In partnership with the economic recovery group, GMDT created an arts and culture programme, which included a range of arts, crafts, heritage and cultural activities, events such as the Recycle Rally, The Walking Festival and The Ice Festival – a celebratory event in March this year with an ice rink, toboggan slide, bands, fire eaters and a musical fireworks display to mark the return of many families to their homes.
The aim was to strengthen the link between community activities and the support for businesses affected by the floods, with people using the opportunity to raise money for flood victims through collections at events and promoting the idea that the community is here to help one another through a difficult time.
The North East Market Town Awards – part of the National Market Town Awards run by Action for Market Towns – each year celebrate the great variety of volunteer-led projects that are helping to regenerate and sustain small towns throughout the country and recognised awarded GMDT with the award at the launch of the refurbished Town Hall in Morpeth on Friday 9 October 2009.
Chief Executive Officer at GMDT, David Lodge, said: “GMDT is a development trust set up to work with the local Community across a range of activities.
“It is down to the hard work of the partners we worked with that has made the programme happen and we were delighted to play our role to bring everyone together.”
Funding for this project came from a liveability grant, Awards for All grant and various contributions from Northumberland County Council, Castle Morpeth Borough Council and One North East.
One North East’s Strategic Rural Policy Manager, Frances Rowe, will be presenting an award at the event along with Heather Small from Northumberland Strategic Partnership.
Frances said: “Morpeth was hit badly by the floods with the pride of the town very low during the aftermath. So while all the work being carried out to lead the economic recovery of Morpeth was of course essential, this project played an extremely important part in raising morale and restoring pride once again with organisations across the board working together to tackle the aftermath of the crisis.
“The work carried out by GMDT rallied the troops and helped to raise money for flood victims promoting the idea that local people were there for one another through that difficult time, so it’s very well done for winning this regional award and the very best of luck going forward in the national competition.”
Ends
For further press information on the market town awards, please contact: John Pole on 01430 441557. E-mail: john.pole@towns.org.uk
To contact the Greater Morpeth Development Trust, ring David Lodge on 01670 503866 or David.lodge@gmdt.org
For more information, contact Alison Laggan (One North East press office) on 0191 229 6613, mobile 07766424400 or email alison.laggan@onenortheast.co.uk
Katie Fewings is Katie graduated from the University of Sheffield in 2000 with a BA in Modern Languages (French, Spanish & Portuguese). After a year teaching English in Barcelona, she returned to Sheffield where she joined the NHS and was responsible for coordinating training programmes for GPs and servicing the recruitment of trainee GPs.
Katie honed her organisational skills over nearly four years as PA to the Director of an internationally renowned firm of architects in London before moving to Brighton and taking up the post of Project Manager at the online ethical travel directory, responsibletravel.com. In this role, she organised the annual Responsible Tourism Awards with partners World Travel Market, The Telegraph, Geographical Magazine and BBC World News, and facilitated a programme to develop and support community based tourism with the Washington NGO, Conservation International.
Katie has a strong interest in issues of sustainability and social responsibility, and has set up her own website, Ethical Weddings (www.ethicalweddings.com) to help couples plan the wedding of their dreams without compromising their values. She also co-founded Our Ethical Network in Brighton to give ethically motivated businesses in the city the chance to meet one another, share common problems and explore business opportunities.
Katie is AMT’s Towns-4-Towns Coordinator and in this role will help towns to share knowledge and best practice from their successful initiatives through face-to-face and online networking.
She works Tuesdays and Thursdays and can be contacted on 07876 701 266 or by email at katie.fewings@towns.org.uk.
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