The community group working to reopen Ore Library are celebrating again having won a £6,000 grant from Big Local North East Hastings (BLNEH) to help cover some of their costs in the first year of operation.

Juliet Harris, co-chair of Ore Community Library Group (OCLG) said: “We are delighted that BLNEH has granted our funding application. This is a crucial factor in our planning and enables us to proceed with our plans.

“We are grateful to BLNEH for this vital funding and for their confidence in our plans. We very much need to do additional fund-raising and we are already talking to some organisations and will be reaching out to others over the next few weeks.”

Listen to Juliet Harris when she spoke to Hastings In Focus last month. Follow the link below…

OCLG was thrilled last month when East Sussex County Council (ESCC) gave the green light to allow them to reopen the former Ore Library as a community library. Ore Library was one of seven libraries closed by the county council in May 2018.

OCLG is made up of local residents who stepped in to begin work on making an application to reopen the Library in July this year after a previous group was unable to reach agreement with ESCC. Many of the members of OCLG were active in the Save Ore Library campaign group set up in 2017 to campaign against the Library closure. After a very busy period of meetings and planning, an application including a business plan was put together and submitted to ESCC at the end of August.

Ms Harris says: “This is fantastic news for the residents of Ore and surrounding areas. We are delighted to have been given a three-year peppercorn lease of the Library building by ESCC so that we can provide a community library and other services to local residents.

“Ore Community Library has a vital role to play in widening local residents’ access to quality, focussed resources – including access to digital resources such as computers, the internet, printers and scanners – that will bring both pleasure in reading and enhanced numeracy and literary skills. This will in turn create greater learning and employment opportunities for local residents which will benefit the wider local economy.

“The services, information and advice provided by Ore Community Library working in tandem with partnership organisations – such as local schools – will also have a positive, empowering effect upon the health and wellbeing of local residents.

“There is now much work to be done before we can open the doors of the community library to the public. We need to fundraise, recruit volunteers to help run the facility and install IT equipment, among other things. We will be inheriting the library’s existing stock of books, etc., but we will also be working on refreshing that stock with new and popular titles.”

Anyone who wants to find out more, or who wants to volunteer, should contact the group secretary by email at orecommunitylibrarygroup@gmail.com.

Main photo: courtesy of Allyson Breeds

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