The stairwell at Lansdown Hall

I have had a rather busier than expected day, and it got busier as the day went on. Before I went to collect Woodpeckers from her last job of the week, which is a task I now do every week, I spent a very frustrating time trying to get some photos printed in a local shop. I hadn't tried to do this for decades, and hadn't realised what a trial it would become. I didn't manage to get any after various failures of equipment, so had to return home to burn a CD of the images to try again.

That meant returning to to town after picking Helena up and then having to hang about for another hour for the prints to be processed. So I headed down to Lansdown Hall as I had received a request for some photos of the exterior for the new website they have commissioned. I pottered about without much success as the sun was shining brightly on part of the frontage and leaving the side in deep shadow.

After a couple of minutes Jeremy appeared to do some work in his office in the Hall. He is chair of the Trust that runs the Hall and Gallery on behalf of the council. I am chair of the working group of the council that is responsible for its regeneration so we work quite closely together. I popped inside and had a look at the gallery which was awaiting its next exhibition to be mounted at the weekend. The ground floor gallery space was the first area where improvement works were performed last autumn to provide access for all and to reopen the original entrance from the street.

We are waiting to hear if our applications for grant funding have been successful so that the next stages of the improvements can proceed. We have just been granted £30,000, and we hope that two more bids of £25,000 and £30,000 will be offered to us, which the council will match with its own funds. We probably need £350,000 in all so we have quite a way to go.

I liked the empty space here in the early evening light, with Jeremy climbing up the main stairwell to the main Hall on the next floor. The transformation so far has been very well received by both artists and the public, and the improvement to the running of the building has been enormous. The team that runs it are all volunteers bar one part time paid staff member. They are doing a fantastic job., and it feels really good to be involved in providing this community space for Stroud, which we expect to be the equivalent of a village hall. When the main Hall on the floor above is complete, there will be room for audiences of up to 320 people to watch drama performances, music of all sorts, public meetings as well as myriad classes and private events. It will then be the property of the town for evermore to make use of in whatever way it sees fit.

A view of the Hall upstairs