A FUNDING body was so enthusiastic about ideas to reinvigorate an annual bank holiday celebration they have offered double the money requested.
The Making Barney Brighter Together initiative, which is being spearheaded by Barnard Castle town councillor Sandra Moorhouse, applied for cash from Northern Heartlands to run creative workshops ahead of the town’s Meet next year.
Cllr Moorhouse said: “They loved the application and the idea so much they offered us more money.”
The initial application for £2,600 was for workshops across the dale to design and make giant puppets to feature in village and town parades.
However, Cllr Moorhouse said she was “amazed” at the response she received.
She added: “They didn’t just want to give us the £2,600 we asked for they offered us £5,050.”
The money, which will go towards funding historical research and to set up workshops with artists from Jack Drum Arts, who will help residents, who want to be involved, how to create large, interactive puppets and lanterns.
She said: “The only problem was the funding didn’t account for transport to venues for anyone who is interested and we need to get this sorted as we want to involve as many people as possible.
“The workshops which will be open to young and old learning about puppetry techniques using papier-mache, building paper and willow lanterns as well as making costumes, head dresses and flags.
“We want to create models of the Butter Mart, The Bowes Museum, sheep, a blue gentian, things that mean something to the dale.”
Cllr Moorhouse said the idea was to get as many groups, organisations and schools involved as possible to be able to “filter out” the information and skills on how to create the models, which could be used year on year.
“The other problem which also wasn’t covered by the funding was storage. Some of these puppets will be quite large and will need somewhere dry to store them,” she added.
However, a second funding application through the Teesdale Action Partnership, may resolve both the transport and storage issue and she is hopeful the group will know within a few weeks whether they have been successful.
She added: “Until we know we have the funding for the transport, insurance and storage we can’t set up the workshops but I’m hopeful we should be able to get a few in before Christmas as it would be wonderful to have some lanterns at the Christmas festivities.”
