Author: Kim Fry
Access For All: St Catherine’s Students Help Town Plan
Thursday, 13th March, 2008 at 2:28 pm, Isle of Wight
As part of an Assignments lesson on Friday afternoons, during the next few weeks, Grove Hill FE Centre (part of St Catherine’s School) is going to be helping the Town Mayor, Susan Scoccia and Community Project Manager, Mark Compton-Hall, with the Ventnor Town Plan, under the Community Values section: ‘Access for All’.
This will include looking at key facilities such as: the Library, Boots, Lloyd’s pharmacy, the Post Office, The Winter Gardens, Somerfields and the Doctor and Dentist’s surgeries.
A group of learners will be walking around Ventnor’s town centre, on a selected route, this Friday 14th March.
During this walk the learners will be conducting a survey about access into the main shops / facilities in the town and the state of the pavements and walkway routes.
The groups will be taking photographs on their chosen route in order to document the survey. They will be considering access from the point of view of people with a variety of disabilities, but particularly those with limited mobility.
Pavements and entrances/ doorways will therefore be the focus of the survey to see how accessible Ventnor is for everyone, locals and visitors alike!
As you are all probably aware, St Catherine’s is a national charity working with children and young people with speech, language and communication impairments.
Its residential centre on the Isle of Wight encompasses a specialist main school and a further education centre.
Painting by Maria Ward of St Catherine’s reproduced courtesy of the school and copyright remains with them.
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March 14th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
I apPreciate all thE work thats been out into the town plan (Its not the first one! ) but its all smoke and mirrors and misses the real issues about Ventnor and its future. I was at one of the meetings and what emerges are all personal preferences.
The real issues are two fold and they will be fudged by people who have the current anodyne list in mind.
1. Absent landlords and second homes . Ventnor has a voters roll of under 7000 but in a town with all the houses here there should be almost
16000 voters.
2. Industry.lack of. We have two dilapidated industrial sites where there are few jobs.The town needs more workers earning money in it to be prosperous . The county planners focus on sites in Newport and all development money goes there or to Cowes.
Its all too easy to be sidetracked into believing that TV cameras and a paint job will make it better.
Nobody on our council seems to have the vision to see beyond the cosmetic approach.
THATS THE PROBLEM!
March 15th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Louis, that’s not really related to the important work of surveying the town for accessibility. The right of access for all people is definately not a cosmetic issue and it is to our shame as a society that we do not take it more seriously.There is a clear need for documentation and what better way than to get young people involved so that they feel part of the future of ventnor.
March 16th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Louis,
Your statement comes across as political rhetoric.
We are sure there is place for negative comments such as yours which is the Forum. But not under the excellent news in this article.
Please take your negative and uninformed views elsewhere !!!!
We should celebrate what the young people of St Catherine’s are doing!
March 18th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I would just like to say that the article was written by two of our learners from the Further Education Centre at St Catherine’s. I only submitted it for them so I cannot take the credit for this great piece.
March 18th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Would love to hear how the day went.