Hourly lessons between 2.00pm until 8.00pm.

Admission per Hour: £5.00 for adults and £2.00 for children (8yrs+) and students. Tap shoes not necessary but it is advisable not to wear trainers or rubber sole shoes.

First session: 2pm-3pm
Second session: 3.15pm-4.15pm
Third session: 4.30pm-5.30pm
Fourth session: 5.45pm – 6.45pm
Final session: 7.00pm-8.00pm

For more information contact Linda Tither on 01925 226528 or email on clj.birdsong@hotmail.co.uk

Monday 5th March 2012 (11.30am – 12.30pm)
at Crownway Community Centre.
£3.50 per week (first session on above date half price) 

No need to book a place, just come along and enjoy one hour of gentle invigorating Latin-based dance fitness. Our recent taster session was a huge success with an all around positive response to the dance style. Catering to individual needs, you can participate sitting down if you prefer and our Zumba Gold instructor, Louise, will be on hand to give you support and make the session an enjoyable one!

“We have been running Fresh Start classes for a few months now at Crownway and it is always nice to be there. The staff are always helpful and the main hall we use for our sessions is ideal for purpose.”

Mark Flannery, St Helens Health Improvement Team.

“We choose Crownway as it provides a great space for our street dance courses/staff meetings and is of a central hub to many schools we work in throughout Newton le Willows. We hope to continue working at Crownway throughout 2012, as our street dance classes have proved a great success.”

Andy Hilton, Academy of Sport

“We have been at Crownway for 18-months now and we are very pleased with the facilities on offer. Everybody is welcomed and nothing is too much trouble. The staff and volunteers go out of their way to accommodate us in delivering the services of Age Concern Newton-le-Willows. I would highly recommend Crownway Community Centre and its facilities to any inquiring organisation.”

Barbara Skeech, Age Concern Newton-le-Willows

“The centre provides the use of 10 laptop computers and wifi throughout the building, which I use for the delivery of a basic computer class every Monday morning. The meeting rooms and main hall are equipped with multi-media facilities comprising of large screens for video or laptop presentations, with amplification for microphone or sound if needed.

I also deliver a popular line dancing session every Thursday evening and up to thirty or forty line dancers enjoy the friendly atmosphere of the Centre and the staff; the cafe facility is an excellent addition for providing drinks and snacks.”

Gordon Blackburn, Trustee & Volunteer

“We have been running a family Stay & Play group for over two years at the Centre; all the staff and volunteers are wonderful and helpful and always open to suggestions on menu changes for the children during Tots Cafe. The Hall is spacious and is always clean for our purposes.”

Cath Bent, Stay & Play Group Leader

“We have used Crownway to host our meetings on three occasions and the quality of facilities, room, equipment, ambience, stationary, refreshments and service have all been outstanding. Crownway is a warm and welcoming community venue and we intend to use this venue a lot more in the future.”

Cath Lewis, Halton & St Helens VCA (Children & Young People’s VCFS)

“On every occasion the staff were supportive and welcoming and showed a helpful understanding of the needs of our service. Excellent environment and facilities – I couldn’t praise them more  highly. Thanks to everyone at Crownway for your  support!”

Mike Towell, Barnados North West

“We used a room at the centre for a Learning Advocates Network Meeting.  The staff at the centre were very friendly and professional.  They  made us feel so welcome  and responded to any needs we had immediately. The facilities that were provided were of a high standard and the location was very handy for people travelling from a range of locations around the North West.”

Liz Johnston, The Johnston Partnership

“It is always a pleasure to come into the Crownway Community Centre being met by friendly staff. We are looked after… when we come to the tap class.  The room is always clean and ready for us to use. The ladies stay behind and use the café after the class to sit and chat and buy a drink of tea, coffee, orange etc which whoever is on duty provides for us. It is just as pleasurable to use the café after the lesson as much as the tap class itself. The number of people attending the class has grown since I started and we are all enjoying using the building for our meeting.  The floor is brilliant for the purpose of tap dancing and the large area also gives people plenty of room to dance. The class also enjoys meals out at summer and Christmas which means that the people bond as friends and not just members of a class. I look forward to using the room for the foreseeable future.” 

Linda Tither, Tap Dancing tutor

“We were impressed with how helpful and courteous the staff were. The catering was excellent.”

Emma Rodriguez Dos Santos, St Helens LINk

“I have used the Crownway Centre facilities over the past 5 years on a weekly basis and this venue has always been well attended by my client group who felt they were welcomed and had a confidential area to discuss their needs. It is easy to find with parking facilities and staff are friendly and helpful.”

Linda Andrews, Starting Point

“A great venue, particularly as we are an Amateur dramatics group, the facilities provide great acoustics for singing in the large hall. The staff are very friendly and always helpful.”

Tracy Barham, NADOS

Stay tuned with updates about current events, activities and courses happening here at Crownway Community Centre on your mobile device or computer by following us on Twitter. If you have enjoyed our facilities and services, visit our Facebook pages and ‘Like’ us to spread the word throughout the local area! Thank you for your support!

We will be closing on Friday 16th December and

reopening on Tuesday 3rd January 2012.

Big Lottery

Carol our Centre Manager has now completed three successful and intensive telephone interviews with Big Lottery Grants Officer, Kerry McGlynn. We were also lucky enough – from one perspective! – to be picked at random for an official visit in late June, where a representative came to Crownway for the day and observed the Centre, its staff and volunteers in action. The result we are pleased to say was very positive, and we received excellent feedback on our progress.

We have specific outcomes that were proposed in our successful Big Lottery Reaching Communities funding bid, and with all of these we are completely on track and in some cases, exceeding our figures and time frame in which to do them. Our objectives revolve around providing opportunities for training, accessing gentle exercise programmes, investing resources into our volunteers to strengthen the support basis of the Centre, improve working relationships with local organisations and operating a Young People’s club. Carol is now underway submitting funding bids to reestablish this club as in its trial run it was incredibly successful.

New Admin Assistant

Crownway generated enough funds from room hire bookings last year to employ a part-time administrator — this allowed Carol to unburden herself of a lot of the paperwork in the office and to focus more on the accountancy and funding side of her role. Craig joined us at the beginning of March and came from another local community centre where he worked in a similar capacity.

Crownway Community Cafe

Environmental Health awarded us a four star rating on the doors which we think is a great achievement. Lets aim for absolute perfection and get those five stars! The Cafe is growing in popularity and is getting more recognition in the local area — tell your friends and family about our facilities and services and help to strengthen community ties — more details about Cafe opening times and whats on the menu in the cafe section.

New Regular Activities & Programmes

This year we gained an influx of new fitness and health related programmes: Fresh Start, Fit4Life, and Shoots Food Co-op which have all proved very popular with local community members. Fresh Start and Fit4Life are on a rolling 10-week and 6-week programme so please register your interest with the Health Improvement Team to be booked on the next run. Shoots Food Co-op is open for more members – please support local fresh produce.

New Volunteers

Crownway gained three new volunteers this year: Ruth who works in the kitchen on Thursdays is a big support in the running of the Age Concern Luncheon Club; Jackie on Wednesdays assists with the Tots Cafe and brings her excellent customer service skills to parents, carers and their children. Finally Terry, who helped over the spring and summer in  caretaking of the building on Wednesdays and assisted weekly in our computer class on Mondays. Thank you to these three for their ongoing support and to all other volunteers who made them feel welcome.

Training & Skilling Up

Crownway wouldn’t be the successful community centre that it is without the support of our dedicated volunteers. Since last year, the majority of volunteers have undergone training to improve their skills and awareness in the following areas: customer service skills, active & effective communication, finding valuing and recruiting volunteers, safeguarding vulnerable adults & children, manual handling, food hygiene, first aid and more….! Over the summer Carol completed an NVQ Level 3 in Retail and Craig finished a Level 2 and 3 in Customer Service.

The majority of volunteers and staff members underwent Fire Extinguisher training in October with K.W. Fire Protection, who delivered a fantastic half-day course in the identification, proper use and handling of fire extinguishers in the event of an emergency. We spent time outside in the chilly autumn air, goggled and gloved on the car park blasting off every extinguisher we are equipped with… and got a few strange looks from passers by! But we all took a strong message away about fire safety and how to handle a fire emergency so it was very much worth it — and we all had fun too!

Other Successes

• Crownway’s Open Day raised £200.00 for the centre.
• New partnerships have been forged with local companies and organisations.
• Cory Environmental, Leigh Community Art Group and Helena Partnerships hosted large events.
• Worked with St Helens based graphic and web designers, Cultivate Creative to relaunch the new Crownway website.

If you have any unwanted gifts, household items, books, CDs/DVDs or childrens toys (all in full working order of course), then we would appreciate all donations for our Bric-a-Brac stall. Just drop them into the Centre a few days before the event itself. Thank you.

We are now at the end of the first of a five year funding bid that was awarded to Crownway Community Centre in June 2010. We are already close to or have succeeded in accomplishing many of our proposed outcomes, which focus around:

• Developing a strong volunteer programme; we now have over twenty experienced volunteers who dedicate hundreds of hours of their time to the centre every month
• Successful training for at least fifty individuals each year in a range of fields
• Promoting the health, wellbeing and social inclusion of the over-fifties via a gentle exercise program and other activities
• Establishing strong links with an array of key organisations in the borough for the benefit of the community
• Providing social activities for 150 young people by the end of the project

Gordon has been associated with Earlestown Baptist Church for approximately 60 years, firstly as an active member of the Youth Club where he played Table Tennis, Badminton and helped to organise various social activities, variety concerts and pantomime productions which were held in the hall and enjoyed by Church members and local people from the community.

He met his wife Glenys in the Youth Club and were married in the Baptist Church in 1964 and both continued assisting in Church and Sunday School activities until they moved to Manchester for a few years to be closer to Gordon’s work place. They returned in the 1970’s and continued with assisting in Sunday School and social activities

After the Church building was demolished and fund raising work had begun by existing Church members, Gordon was invited to join the management committee and has been able to contribute to the setting up of the New Earlestown Baptist Church and Crownway Community Centre and continue to assist in its maintenance and organisation.

During the fundraising days Gordon went busking all over the North West and composed a Crownway Anthem which he used to sing during his busking – he raised a lot of money about £700 or more.

Gordon is a ‘time-served engineer’. That is where his talent for doing odd jobs comes in. He left industry to work as a classroom assistant at Penkford School. Up to his retirement, he would do as much as he could for the Centre and when he retired in September (I think it was 2007), the Centre became a life saver for him – he likes to keep busy and we have heard him say more than once, he doesn’t know what he’d have done in his retirement if the Centre wasn’t there.

Gordon used to do afternoon tea dances for Crownway just after we opened. That is one of the fables of Crownway. The first week we opened we had events on every day morning and afternoon. One afternoon we did a tea dance and the place was absolutely heaving, we couldn’t have coped with any more and it was really good. Of course everything was free because Beryl got a grant off somebody to put on the events. Anyway, they all kept saying “this is what we want in this area, when are you doing the next one”. We put one on about a month later and charged £2 each, and nobody came!!!! From that Gordon got the idea of line dancing – he’d never done line dancing, but in his own inimitable style, he looked into it and the rest is history.

Gordon is an asset to Crownway and nothing is too much trouble. His present duties and activities include:

• Setting up audio/visual equipment for centre users when required.
• General building maintenance and repair that does not require employing outside contractors.
• Facilitates an informal computer class for beginners on a Monday
• Runs the Line Dancing class on a Thursday evening
• Supports the café staff on a Tuesday morning
• Opens and closes the building on a Tuesday and Thursday evening for centre users whilst working in the café

Crownway would not be the centre it is today without volunteers like Gordon.

We have recently been highlighted and featured as a Leading Lights community project — by Halton & St Helens VCA — which recognises Crownway as having made a significant, positive and substantive contribution to community empowerment and cohesion in the local area. This was a great achievement to all involved with the Centre…. well done everybody!

Leading Lights was funded by Northwest Together We Can through the Department for Communities & Local Government. The project was undertaken by six sub-regional infrastructure organisations led by Halton & St Helens Voluntary & Community Action. This magazine publication celebrates the contribution of six community projects supported by local voluntary organisations in the northwest.

Successful community projects have long been as diverse and individual as the people they support and the neighbourhoods they serve. Such wonderful variety is undoubtedly inspiring and in many ways embodies the spirit of much of the rhetoric within “Big Society”. The challenge that variety poses is to understand, capture and communicate the recipe for success that the best projects represent.

Leading Lights presents the findings of a review of six distinct, effective community projects from across Greater Merseyside. Each project has made a positive and substantive contribution to community empowerment and cohesion in its locality. Each project has evolved in its own way to meet specific needs and yet within the fabric of the projects as a group there are some common strands, you could say golden threads, that come together to create the conditions under which success can be achieved.