AGM 2022
Held at 7.30pm on Monday 7 November at Bestwood Lodge Hotel
The Chair's Report
The context for parks such as ours is increasingly difficult. Parks are not a statutory responsibility for councils. We
prepare ourselves for further budget cuts. Pressing the case for our Park remains a priority for us. Our group and our volunteers are making a difference. Obvious examples are the ever-popular Dynamo House café, the Winding Engine House, and conservation task groups. The Dynamo House café celebrated its 10th birthday this year.
Community
This volunteer engagement marks our park out as being different. We are embedded within our communities in a way that other large city or county parks probably aren’t. Last year we gathered data about our volunteering work. It is staggering to discover that together we contributed 6,868 hours. A charity worked out a few years back that volunteer hours could be valued at £14. That makes an amazing £96,152 of value added to the Park. Many groups such as ours face a demographic challenge - we aren’t getting any younger! And so we’ve worked to
broaden membership of our group.
Group resilience and succession planning:
We identified tasks undertaken within our group and attempted to distribute them more widely. We also created new roles to help us reach out to park users in different ways.
✔ Karen - new treasurer
✔ Carol - minuting & membership
✔ Alan - Facebook admin & comms
✔ Lucy - Graphic design
✔ Jill (& Alan) - events co-ordinators
✔ Nigel - honorary auditor
✔ Miles covering Website during Kay!s sabbatical
✔ Imogen - Chair of Wildlife Group
✔ Jess - Wildlife Group recorder
✔ Facebook group began in 2021 - now has 700 followers
✔ Twitter
✔ Newsletter ‘The Drift’ received in 185 inboxes Carol
✔ Magazine ‘The Dynamo’ David
✔ Website - Kay & Miles
✔ Consistent messaging & style guide - Alan
✔ "Darling buds of May" Greenwood 2022
✔ "Trees for climate" (Queen’s Green Canopy) - Greenwood 2022
We must not forget the parkrun volunteers who attract around a hundred runners to the park each week.
Building on enduring success of the Dynamo House and Winding Engine House we have created a Wildlife group.
Our Walks programme led by Carl Cornish (RSPB) and Hayley Sears were extremely popular with almost every walk over-subscribed.
Bestwood Country Park Development Group
The group initiated a meeting with county councillors in October 2021 and we had our first Development Group meeting involving parish, borough and county councillors and others with an interest in the park in January 2022.
• We have undertaken a review of the Park maintenance schedule review
• Signage is appearing around the park - we’ve been pressing for this since 2017
• A feasibility study will be undertaken to increase car parking at the village end of the park
• We have been pressing for maintenance of the Park permissive bridleways since 2020
• Our footpaths require maintenance
• Vandalism to the Alexandra Lodges remains a concern
• We have pressed Gedling about the early closing at the village end car park.
• Concerns continue to be raised by the public about access to the Quarry
• We have produced a shared vision for the park and and worked with all our partners in agreeing priorities for the Park.
• We receive many requests from potential volunteers but there is insufficient capacity to accommodate them. With
Notts County Council and the miner2Major landscape partnership we are working on a scheme we’re calling ’Super-
volunteers’ to help us create more volunteering opportunities.
Advocacy
Many letters have been written to county to councillors and Mark Spencer MP.
In 2022/3 - A big ‘to-do’ list!
The chair will step down at the next AGM. We welcome all interest and will be pleased to discuss this.
Our minutes will be produced in a revised format.
We plan to ‘ring-fence’ group funds to enable us to continue to support small group projects but to also build a ‘war chest’ for future, bigger plans as they emerge.
We have equal opportunities and safeguarding policies to approve and will use the ‘Better Friends’ self-assessment tool.
We will agree our ‘style guide’ to achieve consistent messaging.
We plan to explore the creation of a Bestwood Heritage Group.
……….. And provide mentoring and support for all new groups within FoBCP
The historic Legend Stone will be re-sited
Having agreed Park priorities with the Bestwood Country Park Development Group, we want to go on to prepare
business cases so that projects are ready to take advantage of any funding that becomes available..
We will trial our ‘Super volunteering’ roles
There will be a second "Darling buds of May!#$%$&'#… and there will be further !Trees for climate II!#and hedge planting
As a group we will further distribute roles to increase participation.
Thank yous
Thank you to everyone for their contribution to our successes this year.
Special mention in dispatches to:
• Helen Mitchem of Miner2Major for work behind the scenes on prioritisation, ‘super-volunteers’, and all-round support of the group.
• Aidan LaMola the NCC Cultural Services Commissioner who has put up with endless meetings & phone calls to get us where we are.
• Rob Wombwell and the team for attempting the impossible on a daily basis, managing our 700 acres.
• And to Sue whose influence pervades all we do: she led the initial meetings of the wildlife group; has attended all the Development Group meetings and many of our group meetings as well as taking a lead on the ‘super-volunteering’ which we hope to roll out next year.
David reminded us in our volunteering edition of The Dynamo that you don’t need enough time to be a volunteer - you need enough heart.
Thank you for your big hearts for this past year and for the future.
Rob Carlyle Chair November 202
The context for parks such as ours is increasingly difficult. Parks are not a statutory responsibility for councils. We
prepare ourselves for further budget cuts. Pressing the case for our Park remains a priority for us. Our group and our volunteers are making a difference. Obvious examples are the ever-popular Dynamo House café, the Winding Engine House, and conservation task groups. The Dynamo House café celebrated its 10th birthday this year.
Community
This volunteer engagement marks our park out as being different. We are embedded within our communities in a way that other large city or county parks probably aren’t. Last year we gathered data about our volunteering work. It is staggering to discover that together we contributed 6,868 hours. A charity worked out a few years back that volunteer hours could be valued at £14. That makes an amazing £96,152 of value added to the Park. Many groups such as ours face a demographic challenge - we aren’t getting any younger! And so we’ve worked to
broaden membership of our group.
Group resilience and succession planning:
We identified tasks undertaken within our group and attempted to distribute them more widely. We also created new roles to help us reach out to park users in different ways.
✔ Karen - new treasurer
✔ Carol - minuting & membership
✔ Alan - Facebook admin & comms
✔ Lucy - Graphic design
✔ Jill (& Alan) - events co-ordinators
✔ Nigel - honorary auditor
✔ Miles covering Website during Kay!s sabbatical
✔ Imogen - Chair of Wildlife Group
✔ Jess - Wildlife Group recorder
✔ Facebook group began in 2021 - now has 700 followers
✔ Newsletter ‘The Drift’ received in 185 inboxes Carol
✔ Magazine ‘The Dynamo’ David
✔ Website - Kay & Miles
✔ Consistent messaging & style guide - Alan
✔ "Darling buds of May" Greenwood 2022
✔ "Trees for climate" (Queen’s Green Canopy) - Greenwood 2022
We must not forget the parkrun volunteers who attract around a hundred runners to the park each week.
Building on enduring success of the Dynamo House and Winding Engine House we have created a Wildlife group.
Our Walks programme led by Carl Cornish (RSPB) and Hayley Sears were extremely popular with almost every walk over-subscribed.
Bestwood Country Park Development Group
The group initiated a meeting with county councillors in October 2021 and we had our first Development Group meeting involving parish, borough and county councillors and others with an interest in the park in January 2022.
• We have undertaken a review of the Park maintenance schedule review
• Signage is appearing around the park - we’ve been pressing for this since 2017
• A feasibility study will be undertaken to increase car parking at the village end of the park
• We have been pressing for maintenance of the Park permissive bridleways since 2020
• Our footpaths require maintenance
• Vandalism to the Alexandra Lodges remains a concern
• We have pressed Gedling about the early closing at the village end car park.
• Concerns continue to be raised by the public about access to the Quarry
• We have produced a shared vision for the park and and worked with all our partners in agreeing priorities for the Park.
• We receive many requests from potential volunteers but there is insufficient capacity to accommodate them. With
Notts County Council and the miner2Major landscape partnership we are working on a scheme we’re calling ’Super-
volunteers’ to help us create more volunteering opportunities.
Advocacy
Many letters have been written to county to councillors and Mark Spencer MP.
In 2022/3 - A big ‘to-do’ list!
The chair will step down at the next AGM. We welcome all interest and will be pleased to discuss this.
Our minutes will be produced in a revised format.
We plan to ‘ring-fence’ group funds to enable us to continue to support small group projects but to also build a ‘war chest’ for future, bigger plans as they emerge.
We have equal opportunities and safeguarding policies to approve and will use the ‘Better Friends’ self-assessment tool.
We will agree our ‘style guide’ to achieve consistent messaging.
We plan to explore the creation of a Bestwood Heritage Group.
……….. And provide mentoring and support for all new groups within FoBCP
The historic Legend Stone will be re-sited
Having agreed Park priorities with the Bestwood Country Park Development Group, we want to go on to prepare
business cases so that projects are ready to take advantage of any funding that becomes available..
We will trial our ‘Super volunteering’ roles
There will be a second "Darling buds of May!#$%$&'#… and there will be further !Trees for climate II!#and hedge planting
As a group we will further distribute roles to increase participation.
Thank yous
Thank you to everyone for their contribution to our successes this year.
Special mention in dispatches to:
• Helen Mitchem of Miner2Major for work behind the scenes on prioritisation, ‘super-volunteers’, and all-round support of the group.
• Aidan LaMola the NCC Cultural Services Commissioner who has put up with endless meetings & phone calls to get us where we are.
• Rob Wombwell and the team for attempting the impossible on a daily basis, managing our 700 acres.
• And to Sue whose influence pervades all we do: she led the initial meetings of the wildlife group; has attended all the Development Group meetings and many of our group meetings as well as taking a lead on the ‘super-volunteering’ which we hope to roll out next year.
David reminded us in our volunteering edition of The Dynamo that you don’t need enough time to be a volunteer - you need enough heart.
Thank you for your big hearts for this past year and for the future.
Rob Carlyle Chair November 202
