Our aim is to bring the local community together to help rejuvenate and maintain one of the town's great assets and links to the past. We want to leave not just a legacy of the past but a milestone for the future. Traditionally the Warehouse transported goods in and out from around the NorthWest. We now see this as transporting ideas in and out across a much wider area. The Men's Shed that we launched nearly four years ago now, has a core group of members and not all just men. Mental health and well being is at the core of what we offer as a building, even if it isn’t always what people see. When we started the Men’s Shed back in May 2022, we anticipated a small group of men using a corner of the Warehouse, with a few hand tools, once a week. The success of the enterprise has meant that they now meet a number times a week and total on average twelve at any one time. The results have been more than tangible, with strong bonds formed and noticeable changes in those participating in the group. The Food Bank has now been running since December 2020 and it’s also outgrown the space it’s in, which it shares with our storage and volunteer tools, mowers, shears, spades et al. Nor can we make that a warm place for the people who staff it. Barratts have kindly offered one of their containers which we will fit out as a self-contained unit, lighter, more welcoming and, importantly, pest proof. This then frees up the space to construct a much better workshop; not only for Men’s Shed use, but for us to offer craft courses for those unable to make the stairs. We are based in Whaley Bridge, a town of around 7000 people; in the central wards of the Borough of High Peak. Our Food Bank and Men's Shed have users from across that area and beyond. We have always tried to put on a range of activities, to draw in people from across our community; brass band performances, storytelling, school visits, police drop in centres, advice bureaus, Men's Shed, Food Bank, as well as being just a friendly safe place to drop in to. Half the board lives in the town, our Food Bank and Men's Shed are largely led or led by locals. The land and building are made available to other Community groups. The town carnival and Christmas events have relocated to our site as a result of the work we have done. We have been working with Burnage Academy, a school in South Manchester whose academic roll is largely from the poorest percentile neighbourhoods of South Manchester and 90% Asian male. They have an old building in Bugsworth, our neighbouring town, inherited from its former grammar school days in the 1960s and now in poor condition. We have been helping them to develop their outdoor pursuits offering, introducing the students to kayaking and canoeing. Alongside we are also negotiating with the Canal and River Trust As part of our ongoing talks with them we have agreed to bring in partners that the school have had a previous relationship with a view to take over management of the "customer experience" at Bugsworth basin; and as a result introducing water sports and educational activities to the wider public as part of a new opportunity and so benefiting local users as well. Whaley Bridge Canal Group has been operating as a volunteer group since 2011, in that time it has done it’s best to turn around a derelict and redundant piece of land and building and transform it into a community asset. Over the intervening years we have built on this and established ourselves as a real community hub. We run a monthly market, a book shop, coffee shop, food bank, Men’s Shed. We are a community resource, where we have also acted as a collection and sorting point for international disasters, including campaigns for Turkey and Ukraine. The building usefulness really became apparent as Lockdown hit. When we started the Men’s Shed back in May 2022, we anticipated a small group of men using a corner of the Warehouse, with a few hand tools, once a week. The success of the enterprise has meant that they now meet a number times a week and total on average twelve at any one time. The results have been more than tangible, with strong bonds formed and noticeable changes in those participating in the group. We wished to uncover stories of working-class people who lived and worked in the High Peak town of Whaley Bridge from the early industrial revolution to present day. Through both archival research and oral histories, local young people would uncover stories based on five key themes (to be agreed by the project team). Working with creative practitioners, five local schools we then turned collected research into five performance pieces of oral storytelling as performance pieces that will be performed by the children for the wider community at the Whaley Wharf Weekend. Whilst the project did not travel in the path we first envisaged, as Douglas Adams pointed out and to paraphrase him, “We may not have gone where we intended to go, but I think I have ended up where we needed to be.” The feedback, from not just the public when the shows were being performed but from teachers and parents as we were engaging with and working with the schools was delightful. As project leader, I took particular pride in addressing all the youngsters from the schools and telling them they were going down in history as the first people to write down stories about the building they were in. They took particular joy in me advising them that the building they were in and the lives of the people that they were recording were even older than their headteacher. Might be being wistful but I feel that they took me at my word when I told them that the Transhipment is their building and so is the town.

We are based in Whaley Bridge, a town of around 7000 people; in the central wards of the Borough of High Peak. Our Food Bank and Men's Shed have users from across that area and beyond. We have always tried to put on a range of activities, to draw in people from across our community; brass band performances, storytelling, school visits, police drop in centres, advice bureaus, Men's Shed, Food Bank, as well as being just a friendly safe place to drop in to. Half the board lives in the town, our Food Bank and Men's Shed are largely led or led by locals. The land and building are made available to other Community groups. The town carnival and Christmas events have relocated to our site as a result of the work we have done.

Both Nicola Shrimpton and Neville Clarke work in the book shop/coffee shop.

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