WE HAVE LIFT OFF..........BUT A GIANT TRIPPED!!!!

Falmouth 350 takes off on May 16th at lunchtime when, thanks to great generousity of Falmouth Rotary Club, people putting on events in the adventure have been invited to join Rotarians as their guests at their normal business luncheon, when I will present the entire programme as it stands at the moment so that we can all move together on what has become a major success for the people of the town. Rotary President Bob Bridges will welcome all guests, the Mayor will open the Falmouth 350 presentation then it will be over to me to reveal all.

Remember it all started six months ago when the Rotary Club offered to run an anniversary dinner. This is still Rotary's part on the whole programme, but now they have been joined by over 30 clubs, organisations, and businesses in the town and almost 30 separate functions are being organised-this figure could rise to around 60 by the time October is on us!!!!

But one of my giants tripped.......We were turned down by the National Heritage Lottery for our grant. The main reason is that Charter 350, the organisation we formed to enable us to get grants, is a temporary body which will close down at the end of the anniversary. This was a major weakness when it came to consideration along with others for the grant, as it indicated that there would be no permanent result from our efforts.

However,we were invited to apply again if we could meet this weakness, along with some other points they raised, we have since met their representative, restructured both our application and the way Charter 350 works and our new application goes in at the end of April-we will hear the result at the end of June. 

Even if we do not get a grant, over 80% of the current programme will be delivered-it is the play, the enactment, the restoration of the Charter and items like that which could be affected.

Meantime there are more and more suggestions being put to me. A really exciting one is a two day medieval market and we are looking closely at this-another is The Big Falmouth 350 quiz, with 35 teams of ten battling it out for the Charter trophy. Another dramatic and different one, which recaptures nautical heritage, is to have a group of Press Gangs, who pick up people, offer them a cup of coffee in return for a donation to charity! 

Some really exciting news has come from America. Thanks to work by Elie De Rosa, we are now in touch with Falmouth Rotary Club in Mass, (not I am not going to try to spell it) USA, They have asked for an entire list of our activity and plan to pick those they can do and run them as a reflection of our anniversary as a gesture of good will. So now we are going international!!!

That's it for the moment, remember my phone number is 07770 831 728-and also remember that I am only the facilitator, this is your adventure, your programme, and will remain so.

Bye for now, Robin Dunseath
07770 831 728 Robindunseath@hotmail.com