Community money - invested by the community

Report from Radstock Museum – Dragons’ Den 3 Winner

paint-tearoom

Dragons’ Den 3 – Winners Report:

Jos Binns from the Radstock Museum reports on their winning bid to paint their tearoom:

Big Local asks – How has the funding improved our community?

Within the Museum the main benefit of the grant has been that we have been able to improve the décor within the tearoom (and also the other areas covered by the whole project) with a new colour scheme and we have overcome the shabby appearance which had resulted from over 15 years of continuous hard use.

The benefit to the local community is that all of our visitors will be step into a more vibrant and well decorated entrance and will enjoy their tea and cakes in the new surroundings. Hopefully they will pass on their positive thoughts about the Museum to other potential visitors and comment on Tripadvisor and other social media. All of this enhances not just the visitor experience in the Museum but, together with other positive developments in Radstock, also the impression of Radstock as a whole that visitors
from outside take away with them. This clearly meets one of the main aims of Big Local, which is to improve local facilities.

Big Local asks – Why do you care about the area?

A main purpose of Radstock Museum is to record data or obtain items that capture the essence of life in the area of the Somerset coalfields so as to make these available to visitors or researchers in the long term. This helps the people of Radstock and Westfield
understand their local community’s development through time and also to research their family histories. In addition it provides a draw for people from outside Radstock and Westfield to visit and to understand the local communities.