Yore Vision: Help Boroughbridge Help You

Like so many local community projects these days, Yore Vision in Boroughbridge is struggling to find new volunteers. How can you help?

First of all, just what is Yore Vision and how does it work? It’s a community facility for residents of Boroughbridge and the surrounding Lower Ure Valley including Alborough, Skelton and Tockwith; it’s backed by annual grants from Harrogate Borough Council and membership is free.
Yore Vision has several aims but basically it is there to make local life better. It has remits to look at housing and to encourage workshops and charities while working alongside the town and parish councils to improve life in the town. The group has organized a series of concerts and shows – from ceilidh bands to tribute bands – in Coronation Hall as well as carol services and poetry evenings. Yore Vision is also there to help draw tourism to the Lower Ure area and one of its great successes has been the production of the award-wining Walks Through Time leaflets available in the tourist office.

“As happens in local communities, no-one else has stepped up to the mark to take over from me.”

Yore Vision also initiates local events. It was the driving force behind the Yore Vision Cricket Festival and the highly successful Plot to Plate foodie day, which has now passed to the capable hands of the Boroughbridge Allotment Society.
But most importantly, Yore Vision is run by a small pool of volunteers. And this is where you come in. Yore Vision is on the look out for new blood. Local musician Jane Barber is – among many other things – chair of Yore Vision. “I’ve been chair of Yore Vision for eight years,” explains Jane. “As happens in local communities, no-one else has stepped up to the mark to take over from me.”
This is a comment often heard from Boroughbridge community leaders, including Mayor Graham Archer, who has remarked to On You Doorstep in the past, “People get home late from work and want to spend time with their families rather than turning out again. It means that very few younger people are contributing to the life of the town.”
So the town has a diminishing pool of people who are prepared to volunteer their help and that pool of people is – to put it politely – not in the first flush of youth. Yore Vision is after new, young blood too.
Yore Vision chair Jane Barber also runs Ure Music, is on the committee of Yore Film Society and is a Friend of Roman Alborough. But not everyone needs to give so much time for free.
“No work for Yore Vision involves a fixed commitment,” Jane says. “Help is always welcome from anyone, whatever spare time they may have.”
One project that Yore Vision is currently trying to get off the ground is Locate, a European-based incentive to spread the word on social media across the community. Along with local marketing consultant Roy Smith, Jane is arranging a series of sessions in Boroughbridge library; anyone with an interest in learning how to use social-media tools business marketing purposes can drop in on their next meeting, which will be Monday April 13 at 7pm at 1 Hall Square. As Jane explains, “Yore Vision runs projects to benefit your Boroughbridge community. If you have an idea for a project or would like to join a working group, please get in touch with me.”Jane would also love to hear from anyone who can help with putting up posters advertising events around town.