Darkhouse Baptist Church is a place where things happen, the venue is well used and hosts many activities for the local Coseley community.
Kim is a Deacon at Darkhouse Baptist Church and spends a lot of her time looking to keep the space utilised. Kim is also a member of the Big Local Core Group and gets involved in many activities to help her local community, at the same time encouraging local groups to use the building and the facilities.
The Coseley Holiday Club came about in 2015 after it was identified that children in the Coseley area needed something to do during the school holidays.
“The first time we approached East Coseley Big Local for funding was because we wanted to provide some sort of entertainment for the children during the school holidays. The club runs for 5 days at the end of the summer holidays when children tend to get bored and fed up. Parents appreciate that their children have somewhere to go at the end of the holidays.
Big Local have supported us every year since, in 2017 about 40-45 children came each day to enjoy storytelling, singing, crafts, a magician and dancing from local group, Aace Dance. On one of the days, several volunteers walked up to Bayer Street Allotments with the children to have a picnic and to learn about gardening, picking raspberries, carrots and rhubarb. They also planted lettuces.
They learnt about musical instruments when local band, The Coseley Comets, came to visit, the children enjoyed learning how to play all the instruments. Local young theatre group, Act One, did drama activities with the children. We provide a variety of different activities for them. The money from Big Local was used for a clown disco and an animal man to visit the club”
A lot of the children come back every year until they get a bit older. The numbers have grown over the years with more advertising. We also like to tell them about other activities at Darkhouse such as the Girl’s Brigade, the Stay and Play toddler group and the Boys Club, as we’re quite tucked away here and sometimes hard to find!”
Kim has also formed a link with volunteers at New Hope Baptist Church who help out at the holiday club.
“Since being involved in Big Local, people have started to recognise me and associate me with the venue. The space is used a lot more now that we are connected with Big Local.”
Kim is involved with a lot of things in the community and has become a familiar face for local people, this means she is able to signpost people to different things as she is so well connected.
“It’s given me confidence, I was never a confident person. Because I’ve got involved with all these things it’s something to talk about. I never thought I’d run a Holiday Club, but I knew there was a need for it and how much the children enjoyed it. As a volunteer I like working with the children, it’s great to see them enjoying themselves.”
Darkhouse is also a location for the Coseley Community Cinema
“We applied to East Coseley Big Local for blinds so that the Coseley Community Cinema could take place in the hall. We had very old curtains that didn’t work very well or block out the light. We’ve also used the blinds for Clubbersize in the summer too, to block out the light nights in the summer. It’s vastly improved the experience for both events.”
The Skittle League, which takes place in the Darkhouse hall, was an idea that came about to bring the community together. The league is very well attended by people and groups from the local community
“We applied for funding from East Coseley
Big Local for new skittles for the league. We already had a skittles alley which had been made by two local
men from the church, but the skittles were chipped and broken, so we bought brand new wooden skittles –
but have kept the old balls!
We started with 9 teams, now there are 13! It’s a chance to get together and network, chat about different ideas for things in the community. A good way of connecting and keeping in contact, it’s great to see new people on board. We’d never had much to do with Silver Jubilee Park as they were on the other side of the road, but now we’ve made a really good link with them and they have formed a skittles team.
We run 4 fundraisers at the Skittles League, 2 fundraisers for the Girls Brigade and 2 a year for the church. We also do raffles to raise money for the food bank, which is also located at Darkhouse Church.”
The Coseley Food Bank has been operating from Darkhouse Church for around 7 years and has 6 volunteers. People from Coseley can come with a voucher that they have been given from the local Family Centre, Citizens Advice or Just Straight Talk. The food bank supports around 30 local people from the Coseley community every Tuesday.