Our Annual Town Meeting took place on Tuesday 9th May 2023 in Sedgefield Parish Hall. After the meeting, the annual Citizen of the Year Award was presented and the Mayor of Sedgefield awarded donations to his chosen charity and local groups.

With both children soon to be at university, Wendy started working at the Pop In, a friendly group for older people which recently celebrated their 25th anniversary. Wendy’s dedication to sourcing and providing varied entertainment and activities, with support from her essential volunteers, has led to the group becoming such an important network for many elderly residents. The club also regularly takes part in community events, providing some of the best baked goods we have ever tasted!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wendy went out of her way to contact the club’s many members regularly (and our source says the family even had to upgrade their BT plan!) until the club could be safely re-opened. We are incredibly proud and lucky to have Wendy play such a large role in caring for our community. Congratulations!

These annual awards are organised through a partnership between Sedgefield Town Council, Sedgefield Rotary Club and Sedgefield Development Trust. At the beginning of each year, residents are invited to nominate candidates through a form included in the Sedgefield News and then a panel of judges (including the immediate previous holder of the award) select the winner.

The Mayor of Sedgefield, Councillor Dave Jasper, raised over £13,000 during 2022/23 through very popular fundraising events and bucket collections. A large sum was donated to his headline charity, Cancer Research UK. At the Annual Town Meeting, Dave presented money to the following local causes:

DIDO, Explorer Scouts, Guides, Memory Café, Methodist Church, Pop-In, Sedgefield in Bloom, Sedgefield Players, Sedgefield Veterans, Sedgefield Youth Club, Sew Easy, SPYS, St John Fisher RC Church, St. Edmund’s Church and U3A.

 

We would like to express a huge thank you to all involved in organising and overseeing the town’s coronation celebrations across the Bank Holiday weekend. Special thanks go to the 700+ Committee for putting together the programme of events, Sedgefield Area Churches Together for holding a special commemorative service, Sarah Guest and all SCA volunteers for overseeing the celebration event at Ceddesfeld Hall, Sedgefield Youth Club for running the Crown Making Workshop and to Sew Easy for creating the lovely bunting that lined the walls of St Edmund’s Churchyard and the Parish Hall. We hope you all enjoyed the celebrations, despite the groggy weather!

Take a look at some images below:

 

The lovely bunting made by local sewing group Sew Easy which was used to line the walls of St Edmund’s Churchyard and the Parish Hall. We were able to use bunting the group had made previously inside Ceddesfeld Hall too.

  

Sedgefield in Bloom held a special evening dance to mark the occasion and decorated the Parish Hall so beautifully. They even had special guests! These decorations have been kept up for other groups celebrating at their sessions over the coming weeks and are a welcome change to the main hall.

The weather didn’t stop the fun over at Ceddesfeld for the Community Celebration Day with lots of musical acts and refreshments from local cafe Aubergine.

Sedgefield Youth Club also ran a crown making workshop throughout the day with the crowns being judged by the Mayor of Sedgefield. Congratulations Sonny, Scarlett and Alana, we hope you enjoy your goodie bags! The youth club also picked their own winner who will be receiving a prize directly. Well done everyone!

 

We’ve had a fantastic time over the Easter holidays! We prepared 5 activities across the two week break, all funded and supported by Durham County Council’s Fun and Food Scheme, East Durham Rural Corridor Area Action Partnership and Sedgefield Town Council. The activities were open to any young people in school year 3+, with new attendees registering with the club and attending at least one site-based session before taking part in an off-site activity.

We held one of our usual Monday evening sessions to help encourage new attendees to meet the staff and existing members. We cooked lasagne from scratch (which was delicious!) and had lots of fun playing games.

We’re always looking to find new ways to make our core sessions more fun and have just purchased a new games console and lots of games like Just Dance to keep us busy and active!

On our second day, we had an Easter egg hunt in the local park. Although the weather could have been better, we enjoyed the physical activities, the picnic and some classic games like egg and spoon race! We did have to run inside the Parish Hall to eat our lunch when the rain got too heavy, but we’d definitely do it again.

We each got an Easter egg of our own to take home too!

On 6^th April we held a disco. With the help of our favourite DJ we spent the night dancing away and playing lots of party games with some cool props (and lots of prizes) and tucked into a lovely buffet.

When we hold our next disco, we’ll definitely get some more entertainment like a face painter and/or hair braiding as these have been so popular at out other parties before.

The following week, we held an afternoon tea where members baked in the morning and were joined by family members in the afternoon to enjoy the goodies they’d made. It was a lovely day, with 21 relatives joining us for a special treat. This is one of the first activities we’ve held where families were able to join in and spend some quality time with their children and the staff in a familiar setting. We were happy to be able to box up some leftovers for family who couldn’t attend. We collected feedback on each activity and it’s clear that the members loved spending time with their friends and family at the same time and many listed afternoon tea as an activity they would like to do in the future.

Our last event was definitely the most popular, with a trip to Billingham Forum Ice Rink. 45 minutes on the ice goes so quickly and we hired some snowmen skating aids that we had so much fun with. We had been hoping to get some food on site, but as we attended an evening session, it was closed. Not to worry, once we got back to the Parish Hall, we picked up a local takeaway and enjoyed lots of pizza, sides and pop as an extra special treat to bring our Easter fun to a close. The activity gave some of the members a chance to come out of their shell and try something they had been a little bit afraid of previously.

We’re always so glad to welcome new members and provide families with some support and relief outside of term time. We hope to secure funding for the summer holidays too so please keep an eye out on this website and Sedgefield Town Council’s twitter account @SedgefieldTC nearer the time!