Levenshulme people fought to save our library and we will have a new library in 2015 as well as a lifelong learning centre and support facility for pupils run by Levenshulme High School in the current building.
An amazing future for libraries and learning in Levenshulme.
Interesting article in The Guardian yesterday, “A library is not just about books: it’s also a place for the vulnerable”, available HERE.
The next community meeting to discuss the multi-million pound redevelopment of facilities in Levenshulme will take place on Friday 26th July at 19.00 in Inspire on Stockport Road.
This meeting will be preceded by a ‘planning challenge’ meeting (15.00-17.00 at Inspire) where users of the Arcadia Sports Hall will present their plans on how all facilities can be fitted onto the Stockport Road site.
The council’s proposal is to build a new combined facility containing two swimming pools, a gym, a multipurpose fitness and community room and a full library on the Stockport Road site. The council maintains that it is not possible to retain the old Arcadia building and fit the new facilities on the same site and has proposed that users of the Arcadia are relocated to the Mount Road Sports Hall currently used by the Gorton Boxing Club and the Grange School. The boxing club would be relocated to the new Belle Vue development and the building would be adapted based on the needs of existing Arcadia users using funding from the £6.5m allocated to the new Levenshulme facilities.
The meeting on the 26th July is an opportunity for Arcadia users to challenge the council’s proposals and present plans / proposals that they have developed.
Wondering what to do in Levenshulme during the school holidays?
The Arcadia Sports Centre will be open every day from 12.00 – 16.00 for the kids throughout the summer holidays.
There will be football, roller skating, roller hockey, roller derby & martial arts.
Full details and a programme will be posted when they are available or keep an eye on the Arcadia website HERE.
If you know any older residents on your street, please call and see they are ok in the heat.
HERE (pdf download) is some guidance – from Western Australia – for looking after older people in a heat wave (it will help little ones keep cool as well!).
HERE is the advice from NHS Choices.
(Thanks to Levenshulme Good Neighbours)
From September 2013, Levenhulme High School will be working towards becoming the first school in Manchester to be ‘officially’ LGBT friendly!
The school will be working with Elly Barnes’ Educate and Celebrate programme. Elly has devoted her career to helping schools become environments in which LGBT students and teachers can thrive without fear of discrimination.
“We want as many schools as possible to tackle LGBT equality, we want every student to be proud of who they are. Educate and Celebrate is not just about fighting prejudice it’s about celebration” Yvette Cooper MP, Shadow Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities.
Levenshulme Youth Project & ALL FM have come together to offer MC, presenting and DJ experience.
Are you 13 – 17 years old? Or do you have a teenager in your house with a whole summer looming and not much to do?
Come to ALLFM. Learn to MC, Present your own radio show or even lay down some original tracks.
Join us from Monday 29th of July to Friday 2nd of August from 11am – 4pm every day.
It’s free and it will be an amazing experience.
There are only 12 places so it’s first come first served.
Call Christine at ALL FM on 07813612569 or 0161 248 6888
Lucy Lloyd-Roach who teaches swimming at Levenshulme Baths has just swum the channel to raise money for the British Heart Foundation. Congratulations, Lucy!
You can still make a donation on Lucy’s Just Giving page HERE
In yet another stunning success for Levenshulme the Beehive Play Centre in Cringle Fields Park has been saved from closure.
The Beehive Sure Start Play Centre will continue to operate through a partnership with the Friends of Cringle Fields Park. To celebrate this success a Fun Day is being held on Saturday 20th July from 12.00-15.00.
The Beehive is behind the tennis courts in the park. Come along, have fun and celebrate!
An update from the people at the lovely Levenshulme Market. This shows how much Levenshulme loves its Market.
With great stalls comes great responsibility…
For those who are interested (we accept that you may not find this quite as exciting as we do!) the market on 27th will see the debut of out VERY OWN STALLS – 25 of them to be precise which have been bought with our start up funding from Manchester City Council. Why 25? Well because that’s how many we thought we could sell when we set out our business plan – and we thought that that was optimistic! Little did we know how brilliant the community of stallholders in Levy and Manchester would be at embracing our idea and, since we now have 50 stalls (and loooooooong waiting lists) booked in for every market, Manchester Markets are kindly renting us the additional 25 – but that still costs! And any money that we spend on them gets taken away from the profits we can reinvest into the community. Sooooooo….yesterday we applied for funding from the National Lottery for 25 more stalls of our very own. We think we’ve got a good case so please cross your fingers for us (although these things take time, so apologies if you get cramp).
You may also have noticed at the last market that we had a camera man following us around…the lovely Alex Hill – resident, film maker and all round good guy was making some films about the market that will support our funding bids and also explain a bit more about what our social enterprise is all about and how YOU can benefit from it.
So it’s exciting times, here at Levy Market – keep your eyes peeled for more info soon!!
A lovely article by journalist and Levenshulme resident Ally Fogg in the Guardian about Andy Murray’s win at Wimbledon. (OK, a pretty tenuous link between Levenshulme and Wimbledon but who cares, it’s sunny and someone from the UK has won Wimbledon).
After living through the 1996 primary school massacre, Murray’s greatest achievement is giving his town back to its people.
Read the full article HERE
Facilities lists related to the major redevelopment of sports, leisure and library provision that will take place in Levenshulme over the next two years are provided here. There are three documents, all provided as Microsoft Word document downloads:
Some lovely photographs from the Levenshulme Food and Drink Festival 2013 by photographer Elizabeth Kurtis.
LFADFEST 2013 photos by Elizabeth Kurtis
Find out a bit more about Elizabeth HERE. Her website is HERE or visit her BLOG.
A marvellous Music Hall evening performed by the Levenshulme Singers on 8th June 2013 at the Levenshulme Klondyke Club.
Watch the video HERE
Highfield Country Park
Sunday 7th July 2013
Opening of the new Bowler Street entrance by Sir Gerald Kaufman MP
A Friends of Highfield Country Park event
Back to our usual meetings:
Friday 28th June, 19.00 @ Levenshulme Inspire
Come along and discuss the Baths, Library, development of the new facilities and Arcadia. And raise anything else you want to about what’s happening in Levenshulme.
The next campaign meeting about the Baths, Library, Arcadia etc. will happen on Friday 28th June, 19.00 at Inspire on Stockport Road
We’re taking a week off to have some well deserved fun at the launch of the Levenshulme Food and Drink Festival on Friday 21st.
Media coverage of the spectacular win for local campaigners in saving Levenshulme Library from closure.
(John McDougall, Mancunian Matters, 14 June 2013)
Jeremy Hoad, chair of the Friends of Levenshulme Library, was delighted at the news and expressed relief that the facility has been saved.
“It’s win, win, win all round,” he told MM. “It means that the library is saved and protected for the next two years until the new library is opened. It does offer a sense of hope and a positive model that libraries can be saved. It provides everything we wanted, everything we could have hoped for and more for both now and the future.”
Read the full article HERE
Levenshulme Players are putting on a murder evening at Inspire on Saturday 3rd August at 19.00. Come in 1950s costume if you like as there will be prizes for the best dressed as well as for the best solvers of the crime.
£20 a ticket including a three course meal. Tickets are available from Inspire or by calling Beryl Cowen on 0161 225 4674 (from July 9th).
A blog post by novelist Paul Magrs on Levenshulme library being saved and the value of libraries.
View Paul’s blog here
It was announced on Monday 10th June that Levenshulme Library will stay open for the next two years in its current building before being transferred to the new joint facility on Stockport Road in 2015 to sit alongside new gym, fitness facilities and swimming pools as part of a £6.5m investment in Levenshulme.
If you are in town on Saturday and feeling peckish then why not pop along to this?
Piccadilly Gardens, June 15th, 12.00-16.00
LINK: Feed the 5000
Smiles all round as it is announced Levenshulme Library is saved through a partnership between Levenshulme High School for Girls, Community groups and Manchester City Council.
Photo (left to right) credit: Mark Waugh
Greater Manchester local authorities are consulting on the Greater Manchester strategic plan 2013-20.
The consultation ends on 17th June 2013.
Consultation details available HERE
The meeting will be attended by Neil MacInnes, Head of Libraries, Information and Archives, who will make an announcement about the future of our library jointly with councillors and community members who have worked hard to find a solution to prevent the closure of our library.
The next LCA meeting will take place:
DATE: Saturday 8th June 2013
TIME: 14.00-16.00
VENUE: Levenshulme Library
Hello!
This is our new website for the Levenshulme Community Association. Please bear with us while we add content.
Jeremy Hoad and Councillor Julie Reid comment on our success in saving our Baths.
John McDougall, Mancunian Matters, 4th April 2013
Read the full article HERE
Jeremy Hoad, Levenshulme Community Association Secretary and Save Levenshulme Baths and Library group member, feels the immense achievement should act as inspiration to others.
“It’s a fantastic achievement to be able to do this in times of local government being savaged more they have ever been with funding,” he told MM. “If this can be highlighted, it gives inspiration and hope to other people across the country that campaigns can work and we can actually protect our services. What has been so fantastic is the imagination, creativity and dedication of all sorts of people throughout Levenshulme and Gorton. It’s still sinking in. It’s one of those things you can’t quite believe you’ve actually won.”
Julie Reid, a Labour member for Gorton South, was actively involved in the campaign to keep the facilities in Levenshulme open.
“It took a long time and it’s been very difficult. If it wasn’t for the Tory-Lib Dem cuts we wouldn’t have even been in this position at all,” she told MM. It’s just been amazing. The Levenhulme community are awesome. I just can’t explain how wonderful they are. They’ve sustained the work all the way through for no money or anything. They’ve got loads of energy and kept it going.”
Town hall bosses have revealed their preferred location for the new Levenshulme leisure centre. The facility – set to replace the existing baths and library in 2015 – is planned for the current Arcadia sports centre site off Stockport Road. A report to be considered next month shows it would include a ground floor pool with a gym upstairs, as well as the new library.
(Manchester Evening News, 31st March 2013)
Read the full article HERE
A new public library appeared for the afternoon on the lawns of Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens.
Manchester Mule, 31st March 2013
Read the full article and watch the video HERE
Children heard a spirited reading of The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Where the Wild Things Are and the Gruffalo, complete with a Gruffalo impersonation, in a “pop up” library built to protest library closures. The flatpack facility was the brainchild of campaigners from neighbourhoods across Manchester including Northenden, Levenshulme, Burnage and Fallowfield fighting to keep their libraries open.
Subject to consultation, up to six libraries across the city could go in the latest round of £80m cuts implemented by Manchester City Council after the Coalition government slashed its funding. A replacement library will be built in Levenshulme – but not for two years.
Levenshulme activist Valerie O’Riorden told Mule that campaigners had not heard confirmation whether the new library would be a like-for-like replacement. “And with the other libraries who aren’t getting a replacement facility in Burnage or Fallowfield or Northenden” she said, “they’ve heard nothing. As far as anyone’s concerned the libraries are shutting and they will be replaced with an outreach service and maybe a book collection point in a shop or something.”
Councillor Julie Reid (Gorton South) has just confirmed that it was announced at a Labour Group meeting tonight that Levenshulme Baths have been saved.
We came together as a community and we won!
This follows immense community effort – marching, dancing, demonstrating, fundraising, lying in the street, campaigning, putting posters up, writing letters and emails, making banners, lobbying, filling in petitions, consulting and developing proposals to show how the Baths could be saved.
We showed how it could be done and the Council just couldn’t say no.
We have more work to do over the next two years and we still need to save Levenshulme Library but now is the time to celebrate our victory in keeping Levenshulme Baths open for everyone to enjoy.
There will be a public meeting on Monday 18th March 2013 @ 19.00 at Inspire with Councillor Jim Battle (Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council) to discuss the future of Levenshulme Baths & Leisure Centre.
