Purchase of replacement motifs

Project is to purchase 3 motifs to feature in the centre of the village's Main Street.  This is where the Yuletide Parade passes through and the public follow to visit other events and traders' premises.

The new motifs will replace old, malfunctioning motifs and will enhance the atmosphere in the village to encourage residents and visitors to mingle together in an enhanced atmosphere.

Blachere Illuminations have quoted £321 each for these motifs, including fitting of wall-mounted brackets to maximise display values, as per attached quote.

We would like to run a banded table tennis tournament at Inverclyde Sports Centre this season. A banded tournament would bring to Largs approximately 60–70 players from across Ayrshire and Glasgow for an afternoon's competitive table tennis. Hall hire for 5 hours would be £440. This would be a once-a-year annual event, and as such the cost of the hall hire does not constitute rent for the normal week-to-week running of our club.

 We also need some equipment for our club for the new season. First off, we would like to purchase a training robot to help elevate the skill levels of our existing members. A training robot is also a big draw for younger players. Secondly, we would also like to purchase some new bats, as the ones we currently have are poor and not suited to developing players.

Breakdown of costs:

Hall hire for banded tournament: £440

Entry-level training robot: £200

Starter bats x 8: £80

Intermediate bats and rubbers x 5: £200

Balls (2x120): £75

Total: £995

We currently have £550 in our club account and are able to put £300 towards costs, so we are applying for a total of £695.

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Largs Table Tennis Club attracts people from across the North Coast, including Fairlie, West Kilbride, Skelmorlie and Inverkip. Almost two years ago we took advantage of the fact that our town enjoys a state-of-the-art sports facility and a wide array of table tennis equipment by opening our own club in the town. Largs is fast becoming a hotspot of Scottish table tennis; in March, the centre hosted the Scottish Nationals, and in July, Inverclyde hosted the Scottish Parkinson’s International for the second year running. One of our coaches, Paul Carson, attended a supplementary course at the Scottish Parkinson’s International designed to better prepare coaches for people with Parkinson’s attending the club. We have members with Parkinson’s and members with MS. Table tennis is renowned in sports circles for its benefits to people with degenerative and neurological conditions. We aim to embrace all people at our weekly sessions; it is an open group, and you can regularly find a ten-year-old playing with a sixty-year-old, and young and old mixing with people with various disabilities. We are very proud of this fact.

Our club is open to all ages and to encourage everyone we only charge £5 for the two hours session and we have made it FREE for under 18s.

Largs Events’ objective is to bring events to the town that will bring pleasure for the residents and their families, whilst also increasing footfall to a popular “seaside town” which following the pandemic and consequential “Cost of Living” crisis, has seen a changing and declining landscape of choice and facilities. Increasing awareness of the available choices is key to creating a friendly and enjoyable experience to residents and visitors alike. We have managed to increase our events by use of a local partnership to facilitate markets with specific “topics” and these have proved popular. One of our foundation Events is the annual “Yuletide Night” which has always been popular, and we would like to carry this on. Last year the night cost Largs Events £3,422.00 as we continued our long-term objective of “Social Inclusiveness” and everything “Free”, and indeed all our events are wherever possible free, and across all genders and ages. As a committee we decided to refrain from approaching the troubled businesses last year because of the financial situation and will try to do that until a more appropriate time. This year we have been advised by NAC that the erection\dismantling of the Lights will need to be paid for and we are actively pursuing funding for this in order to ensure Yuletide actually happens. We have already obtained funding to buy new lights as the existing one are failing and beyond their best and hope to have this in place for this year.

Our Yuletide night is a night for all the family and we would like to ensure there is something there for all family members and here is where we are asking for help. We usually try to have an area for live entertainment ranging from choirs to some local entertainers, this we have in the past been unable to make best use of due to lack of funds and would like to ask for a sum of £1000 to hire the stage area, to accommodate the local singers, but to make better use of, we can get hire some more “established” musicians to come to Largs and people can enjoy them, again foc. Any spare funds could also be used to add extra entertainment to the event, but without current costings we cannot say at this stage.

Our normal Fundraising activities will continue with the hope of building on the last couple of years successful events, whilst maintaining our desire to make Largs a town we can all be very proud of.

Barrfield Community Garden is a new space located in Largs. Though only created in the winter of 2023, already volunteers have brought in raised beds, planted a large varity of vegetables, fruits, and flowers, and harvested vegetables which were  donated to the Largs Food Bank. We have served as a site for local small projects as well as a well-being space allowing local people with varying levels of ability to work with plants. We hope to expand this site in the coming years to grow more food and create a space for local people of all ages and ability to engage with, as well as of course continue to grow tasty food and beautiful flowers to share with Largs and those who presently do not have access to healthy, locally-grown food.

At present, the site has water but no electricity. We'd love to keep a few plants growing well into the autumn and need to procure solar-powered grow lights to do so. This involves the purchase of two sets of grow lights with attached solar panels to keep our melon, pepper, lettuce and tomato harvests going into the late autumn.

Our water pipes are at present not protected from the colder temperatures that come with Scottish winter. We are seeking to insulate the water pipes and employ a local plumber to install this insulation. 

In the interest of increasing the environmental sustainability of the Barrfield Community Garden space, we would like to install drain pipes and water butts. This will allow the garden to collect and utilise rainwater for watering the garden's beds and indoor plants.

People in Largs may be aware we recently experienced vandalism to the garden. After this event, we would like to  install a motion-activated camera, as well as solar- powered, motion-activated lights for the main path into the garden.

Adequate amounts of compost will be needed for planting over the winter, including but not limited to the growing of garlic and seed potatoes.

We would in future hope to create a tiered garden on the hilly portion at the east side of the garden. The area is at present covered with thistles and weeds, so we would to cover this area with weed-killing membrane as the first step of this project.

10 Meter weed membrane roll (x10) @ £6.95 = £69.50

10w led Solar grow light (x2) @ 68.50 = £137.00

Motion sensor lights for pathway lighting (x6) @ £6.99 = £41.94

SolarCam Kit with night vision and SDCard = £85

Builders bag Compost  = £52 

Insulation for water pipes, materials and labor = £200

Water butts and guttering for rainwater collection = £400

We also support people in the community with their food growing by supplying seeds, containers, compost, fertiliser and friendly help and advice. Every year we need to keep our supplies up of compost, fertiliser, seeds, plants, tools as we expand our work. We have been developing our garden by building terraces and new growing areas and this year will be another busy time as we move onto a new area of the garden to develop. By voting for our project you will support us in expanding our food-growing space and garden infrastructure. Our garden was previously an overgrown derelict space and our volunteers have done a tremendous job so far in making it a productive and joyful space. 

We also require a new colour printer so that we can print our signage, save money on leaflets and posters, growing instructions for people we are working with and to draw more people into our projects. As we are keen environmentalists we want to switch to an eco printer. 

Printer and supply of ink and paper £300

Gardening supplies £700

Thank you for your support  and please come and join us Mondays and Wednesdays 9:30-1:30