community

A music and arts festival is being held to raise money for Devon’s first permanent recovery café. The RISE 'n' Shine Festival will take place on Friday 27th November from 6pm at Sidwells Street Methodist Church in Exeter. Proceeds will go towards setting up the county’s first permanent community café for people recovering from a drug or alcohol issue. The project is being organised by RISE Recovery, which provides drug and alcohol services across Devon. The recovery café will be opened at the Exeter RISE base in Uplands Business Centre, Heavitree Road. The music and arts festival will...

Exe-Arts, the community arts initiative set up by Superact's Patsy Lang, has reached the halfway milestone after a busy two months of fun creative workshops for all ages in art forms ranging from environmental sculpture and photography to graffiti art and experimental drawing.

As a culmination of the project, many of the pieces will be exhibited at the community festival on 12th December, which will also include a lantern parade and live performances. There are pictures and reflections of the sessions so far on the Exe-Arts facebook page. The Exe-Arts initiative also includes some...

RGB Building Supplies is delighted to announce that Exeter Foyer is the latest beneficiary of their Well Built Community Fund. The centre will be receiving £1,000 worth of building materials from RGB’s Exeter branch enabling them to create a fitness room to help improve the health and wellbeing of the young people they support.

Exeter Foyer is a supported housing project providing safe, secure and affordable accommodation for young and vulnerable homeless people between the ages of 16 and 21. It is designed as a preventative service to long term homelessness giving young people the...

Over 30 community energy groups across the South West will come together next week in a coordinated Day of Action to urge the region's MPs to take urgent action to protect the future of community renewable energy projects.

Community energy groups will be meeting their MPs on the 16 October to warn that Government proposals to cut renewable energy subsidies by 87 per cent will lead to the loss of jobs and investment in their local area. Groups will ask their MP to write to the secretary of state calling on her to take immediate action to ensure the enormous benefits of locally-owned...

Exeter’s railway was a triple winner at the national Community Rail Awards held at Torquay’s Riviera International Centre on 1st October.

In front of an audience of more than 330 rail industry staff and volunteers, a campaign to promote the counties’ most scenic rail routes won first prize in the Marketing category. The campaign included the GreatScenicRailways.com website, a stall at London Paddington and an eye-catching advertising campaign. This led to a 40% jump in website traffic for the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership in their work to attract more tourists to the region...

Social enterprises in Exeter are being celebrated at the weekend as part of a nationwide initiative - Social Saturday.

Saturday (10 October) marks a UK-wide day of activity to celebrate, raise awareness and buy from social enterprises.

What sets these businesses aside from traditional businesses is that they trade for a social or an environmental purpose. They reinvest or donate their profits to meet this purpose.

Exeter City Council is recognising the importance of social enterprises both to the local economy and to the city’s culture by getting involved in the day...

Earlier this week I found myself on a train between Exeter and Birmingham which was stopped at Gloucester because of a gas leak and where a two hour wait and chaos ensued. Eventually I arrived at my destination almost 3 hours late and the fragmentation of our once effective railway system is very apparent.

It is clear that the train operators and station companies do not always have contingency plans and, as usual in such situations, official communications are very poor with nobody seeming to know what is going on.

What really happens is that the institutional life of the...