March Update Email
March Update
Dear Supporters,
Thank you for taking the time to read this update from the Save the Novello Picture House campaign. Our aim is to bring this much-loved, historic building back to life and back into the hands of the local people, doubling our village venue capacity and enabling our local community to thrive.
While we have made a lot of progress since our last bulletin, we appreciate a lot of this has been going on behind the scenes so we wanted to give you an idea of what has been happening and how you can support.
Where are we now?
As a result of our petition, which scored a magnificent 1500+ signatures in only one week, we are hopeful that the Novello will be granted the status of an Asset of Community Value (ACV). An ACV designation should positively impact potential future use of the building as well as setting a structure and timeframe around negotiating over its future.
The next milestone is securing a formal valuation from the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead council (RBWM),which will indicate how much value they assign to the building. In parallel, we have architects and surveyors working on ideas around how the building can best be put back into a useable condition and to give us a ballpark estimate of what this might cost.
These valuations will effectively become the significant majority of our fundraising total. Therefore, they are critical to understanding how feasible it is for the campaign group to pursue our goal to take over ownership and management of the Novello. If the total amount is within our expectations, we are confident we will be able to raise the funds within the allocated timeframe – anticipated to be in the region of six months. If is wildly out of line with expectations, we will need to have another discussion with the council.
That said, we are hopeful that the positive and constructive dialogue we have enjoyed to date with RBWM will permeate through to the valuation process and our campaign group will be granted the exclusive and first-in-line opportunity to try and raise the money required to take over the Novello.
Our primary focus therefore remains on fully cooperating with our council partners to unlock a reasonable valuation, secure the rights to exclusively fundraise the total required and, as a result, protect this vital and valuable asset for today’s community and future generations.
What else?
The team was lucky enough to secure access to the venue a couple of weeks ago, enabling our surveyors and architects to properly inspect the structure and interior of the building. The great news is that despite its age, the building is largely suffering from neglect rather than anything more structurally serious.
As expected, the heating and electrics will need to be updated as well as it requiring work on the auditorium floor, but all things considered, it is in a decent shape.
We’ll be posting a more detailed, behind the scenes, perspective on the venue itself on the website in the coming days. So keep an eye on Facebook for an alert when it is out and then head over to the website to see some photos of what is behind those locked doors!
What can you do to help?
After the valuations milestone has passed, we may– if all goes well – be granted the exclusive option to fundraise to acquire the Picture House. When fundraising starts in earnest, we will be very grateful to this group for any support you can give – either financially, through expertise or skills or by supporting the fundraising committee.
In the meantime, we would appreciate your help in two other ways.
1) Your memories of the Picture House – we are creating a testimonials page on the website and have had some great contributions from people sharing their memories of enjoying the Novello over the years. If you have any fond memories to share, we would appreciate hearing from a few more people to make this section of the site really work well.
2) Your ideas on how to use the expanded space – looking ahead, if we were successful, we would have two village venues side by side, with the Novello and the Cordes Hall. With this expanded capacity, we hope to relieve some of the pressure on the Cordes Hall and enable a wider group of people to benefit from the additional space. Ideas to date include: potential exercise clubs; toddler clubs; band and comedy nights; corporate training days; a community café; expanded arts interests and the possibility of hosting bigger events such as dance, theatre or comedy festivals, as well as enhancing low cost facilities for local schools and community organisations.
If you have any other ideas or if you run a local group and are struggling with lack of space, it would be very helpful to have your ideas to build into a future proposal around maximizing the site – contact@savenph.org
We will be back in touch next month – or possibly sooner if we have any concrete updates. But in the meantime, we’ll use the Facebook page and website to keep in touch.
Thanks,
Alan Everett
Campaign Coordinator