Who are we?
Salle Holyrood was founded in 2011 by respected coaches, and former international fencers, Sean Walton and Keith Cook. Their vision was of a space where everyone could enjoy the sport that transformed their lives - whether they were 8 or 88, complete beginners or performance athletes, able-bodied or wheelchair fencers, advantaged or disadvantaged. And whilst we are also brilliant at creating world class fencers, our ambitions to be a true community sports club haven't changed.
Keith and Sean, starting out in 2011 and now in our new home.
Community impact
We know that our work changes lives - The environment we create and the coaching skills of our team builds people's confidence, encourages physical activity and develops skills for life not just for sport.
And now that we are in our new home, we are better able to fully realise the vision that Sean and Keith had for their community club.
Why are we crowdfunding?
In May this year we moved into an amazing community space, called The Wee Hub, in what was previously a Debenhams store within Ocean Terminal Shopping Centre in Edinburgh.
This amazing blank canvas gives us the opportunity to reach more people in the local community through regular club sessions and targeted support for specific groups: young people struggling at school, wheelchair users, people with sensory impairments and lots more. It is our dedicated space, we can use it day and night and it is easily accessible.
As a club we don't have significant reserves and like most sports clubs, covid times hit our bank balance hard while we tried to keep our members engaged. But the new space comes with set up costs to enable us to do all that we hope to and this is where you come in!
How we’ll spend the money raised
In order for us to maximise the use of the space and offer sessions for a variety of groups, we need to invest in the following:
FLOOR MATTING
We need a large area of rubber floor matting so that we can make an area suitable for lots of different uses: conditioning work, yoga, taster sessions, additional fencing space to roll out more pistes and club chats.
We need around 160 mats, each costing £30. Total cost just to purchase the mats (not including arranging collection and delivery and laying) = £4,800
TRANSPORTING PISTES
We have been very fortunate to have metal fencing pistes generously donated by Scottish Fencing and Edinburgh University Fencing Club which were easy to transport as they were local. We have the opportunity to also be gifted additional metal and roll out pistes from Leon Paul London - not so local and the cost for this is around £2,000.
How you can play your part
There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.
1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!
2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.
3. Create a fundraiser of your own. Use the button on our page to get started. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!
4. You can also sponsor a piste at a cost of £500 which will help with the upkeep of equipment and our brilliant new space. Your name/company logo will be displayed on a vinyl floor sticker by the piste as a thank you. If you would like to support us in this way please donate here but also email [email protected]
THANK YOU!