ORGANISATIONS and community groups in West Devon are celebrating their success in the latest round of Awards for All lottery grants. Mid Devon Pony Club has been awarded £5,000 and the Okehampton-based folk arts group the Wren Trust has received more than £4,000. Mid Devon Pony Club applied for a grant to buy lightweight show jumps which will improve riding and training opportunities for local people. Lindsey Svensson, pony club treasurer, said: ?I am delighted. It gives us an opportunity to take these jumps out to a wider area and opens up the opportunity for people to use high quality equipment. ?These jumps are lightweight and much easier to handle and transport, so we can use them for both training and competition. ?This is the type of equipment people see if they go up to a national final ? it can be a bit daunting to be faced with bright red walls if you are only used to old equipment. ?It will also help us generate a lot of funds because there will be times when we can hire the jumps out and then plough the money back into the club.? Wren Trust has been awarded a grant of £4,068 which will go towards a project using sound to assist the development of basic communication skills for children with severe learning difficulties and physical impairments. Wren staff will work with a speech therapist and a music teacher and pupils at Ellen Tinkham Special School in Exeter to develop suitable song material for a CD. Marilyn Tucker, Wren director, said: ?Ultimately, we want to produce a CD which can be used by special schools, by specialist units in mainstream schools and also by families. We want it to be enjoyable as well.? She said it was likely to take a year before any CDs would actually be produced. Awards for All is a scheme which can give grants of between £500 and £5,000 to help projects which enable people to take part in art, sport, heritage and community activities. The scheme also funds organisations and voluntary groups which promote education, the environment and health. l Ashwater Parish Hall Committee received a grant of £5,000 towards professional fees to engage a firm of architects to draw up the final design of a new hall. The committee hopes the grant will move forward plans to build a new hall on land to the east of the church and village, so fundraising for the major scheme can get underway.
