CHARITIES and community groups in Salisbury have been awarded funding from a pot of £25,664 by Salisbury Area Board.

A group of residents in St Mark’s Road were awarded £888 to replace ten trees, Churches Together received £1,000 for an exhibition of 20th century art at the library and Bemerton Methodist Church was awarded £948 for Kneaded, a weekly bread making group.

There was also £750 for Harnham Schools Travels Group to revise and update its travel leaflet, £890 for the start up costs of a new blind choir and £326 for an area board-led project involving the production of a flyer geared at raising awareness of autism.

The Friary Transitions Group received £350 to fund a facilitated youth group and Salisbury Quakers were awarded £870 to put on a free event promoting greener living.

Due to the total amount of funding requested being slightly above the overall budget, those grants for more than £1,000 were reduced pro rata in line with the remaining budget, leaving applicants with around 90 per cent of the amount they requested.

Thus VisitWiltshire received almost £2,700 for an out of county marketing campaign on a theme of Ten Great Reasons to Visit Salisbury, and inclusion in VisitEngland’s national Romantic Heritage Cities campaign, together with a “high quality” Salisbury map and piece of print to be distributed nationally and locally.

St Francis Church, St Mark’s Pre-School and a Salisbury Arts Centre project entitled The Odyssey each received around £4,500.

St Francis Church is planning to redevelop the external area of its rebuilt hall, providing an area for young people of the parish to take part in outdoor activities while St Mark’s Pre-School, which is relocating to its own premises on the school site of Wyndham Park, is looking to provide an outdoor learning environment.

The Odyssey will be a street-based project in the Bemerton Heath area involving 22 sessions teaching young people film skills. Those successfully completing the workshops, around scriptwriting and production techniques, will gain a GCSE-level qualification.

Finally, an area board initiative aimed at making Salisbury a plastic bag free city was awarded about £3,500. It will see 2,500 recyclable cloth bags delivered to schools.