Re-development of St John's Street Playing Fields

Aim: To improve playing pitches, changing rooms and provide facilities for every team, sport, club and community member using St John's Street.

About Us

Wigan Cosmos Football Club is a well-established not for profit sports & local community Football Club and a trusted partner of Wigan Council and the Lancashire FA we have not only attained the FA Charter Standard in 2006 but also maintained each year thereafter, showing that the club Is well-organised, safe and offers opportunities for all, has FA-qualified coaches as standard, adheres to FA Respect Policies and Codes of Conduct, Prioritises Child Welfare, maintains appropriate levels of discipline, has access to the County FA and FA regional workforces and has the coveted ‘Three Lions’ FA crest on its marketing and business materials.

Despite being just a football club we have strived to be much more than this and more than just a sports club, with our motto being “More Than Just Club” with our core purpose to make a difference and change people’s lives which ultimately led us is into launching The Cosmos Foundation CIC with our mission statement.

“Changing lives…by using the passion of football and sport to educate, motivate and inspire young and old alike in communities across Wigan and beyond…”

What We Offer

• Provide weekly training and sports fixtures for male & female junior and adult teams
• Weekly Walking Football opportunities for over 40's, allowing our older members to keep fit, play the sport they love and socialise within a team environment
• We're an officially sanctioned FA Wildcats Centre, providing a pathway for girls into football
• Selected as a provider for the FA's new pilot scheme for 12-14 girls football, Unite
• Coach education and support with coaching qualifications
• As part of the FA’s Pitch Improvement Programme and Pitch Power our team of volunteers manage and provide ground care for our site, which will see significant investment in the next 6 years
• Male & Female Fitness & Circuit Training
• Walking Club
• Volunteer support and education programme to support our volunteers gain groundsman qualifications 

Aims & Objectives

Our Aim is to renovate and develop St John's Street Playing Fields, Abram, Wigan into a state of the art sporting facility that not only boasts some of the best sporting facilities and clubs in the area but what are also affordable.  We aim to support Grassroots Football and Grassroots Sports & Fitness at its foundation level and make it afford affordable, accessible and inclusive for all regardless of age, race, gender or level of physical or mental capacity.

Community

Working alongside our partners, fellow clubs and teams on the project, not only do we aim to renovate and rejuvenate the site into a modern sporting facility fit for the 21st century but we also aim to run projects, coffee mornings, walk and talk, multi sports & fitness clubs, coaching, lifestyle and education programmes that would benefit and help develop and support the whole community without exception.

Site Development

Development of the site will take a number of years, time and money but we aim to  create and develop the open space into a practical and multi-use sports & fitness community facility that will provide services and opportunities to our local community, schools, colleges, sports clubs and sports teams for many years to come.

The Impact of Covid-19

Covid-19 has impacted our first 12 months of development at St John's Street Playing Fields significantly due to a lack of income due to not only sports fixtures and coaching clubs coming to a full stop but also the world and life as we know it. All the money raised via pitch hire is reinvested into developing the site and improving not only the appearance of the sight cosmetically but also the facilities we can offer to our community. 

We planned to launch the site with a whole community walking event and open day, funfair etc, however this was curtailed due to the pandemic. This also prevented us from launching our walking, running and cycling clubs along with our coffee mornings, our mental health support groups, walk and talk & finding space.  In addition to this we were looking to run outdoor fitness classes for male & female groups.Covid has seen the decimation of two consecutive football seasons. This has had a huge impact on revenue generated from four main areas:

• Pitch Hire
• Pre-Season Tournaments
• Sponsorship
• Player Subscriptions

Our club runs an annual pre-season tournament that has traditionally not only delivered masses of fun, friendship and football every year, they have also provided a very important income stream.

Cancelling our tournaments and fixtures has cost the club approximately £12.5k in revenue over the last two seasons, which combined with reduced sponsorship of around £2.5k makes it imperative that we try to raise money to safeguard current and future community initiatives.

These losses, combined with reduced signing fees and subs, tuck shop and hire income totalling 5K mean that these highly valued yet costly community initiatives may have to be reduced or stopped at a time when they are needed most.

Initiatives such as:

• Facility Re-development
• Pitch Improvement, investment in improving the condition and robustness of all our playing surfaces.

These initiatives rely upon income surpluses the Club generates, and with the loss of so many income streams, each and every initiative may have to suffer.

Equally impacted are the Club's longer term plans to improve sustainability and the delivery of football locally. St John's Street Playing Fields is a recently acquired facility and requires substantial investment in basic equipment such as goals and storage containers. Again, lost income as a result of Covid will impact our ability to deliver this.

These facilities are not only important for our existing members, they are also vital for future members and initiatives that will benefit the whole community. Your support will help deliver the new and improved facilities and the equipment needed to drive our community forward again post Covid.

St John's Street Playing Fields needs to be a catalyst for healthy community engagement and increased participation for the whole community.

How Your Money Will Be Spent

Site development would consist of adding:  

Defibrillator and box

Memorial garden/entrance flower bed, wildflower & shrub borders and weed sheets

Seating with park benches, patio sets, tables and chairs

A paved, seating area, wooden edging, posts and rope

Pitch work, scarification, verti-drain, aeration, over seed and fertiliser

New rubbish bins

Paint to renovate changing rooms

Wood for car park fencing and surface improvements

Wooden facia for shipping containers

Wooden gates 

CCTV

Turning Dreams Into Reality

Turning our dreams into reality will take time, money, commitment and dedication from all our volunteers, who have all gone above and beyond during the pandemic. We have volunteers from 16 to 74 who give up their time to maintain the facilities of the clubs grounds and clubhouse. It will take years or time, commitment and dedication from them all in order to develop the site into the community led sports facility that we strive to create. Covid-19 created a huge hurdle to this, affected our income, service and the development of the facilities that we are working hard to offer. This is the main reason we opted to try Crowdfunding in order to allow people to help support us over this very large and unforeseen first hurdle.

How does crowdfunding work?

We have set a target of £5,000 which we estimated to be an achievable target over 8 weeks and would go half way to replacing the losses incurred due to the Covid pandemic. So please share our page far and wide on all your social media - we need our 'crowd' to be huge. Even the smallest of pledges will help make a huge difference.

Wigan Council have also pledged to support our project by donating £1,000 from their "Crowdfund Wigan Borough Fund" if we are successful in raising over £3,000 and gaining over 20 different pledges.

Power to Change have also pledged to support the project by donating £1,710 from their "Community Business Crowdmatch" fund, if we raise £1,250 with over 20 different pledges.

We have also applied to the Sport England "Return to Play: Active Together" fund which could pay up to an extra £10,000 if we are able to raise funds and over 20 pledges.

Have a good look at our pledge levels, as there really is something for everyone, with varied rewards at each level from a simple thank you! Along with the club sponsorship opportunities, rewards gifted to us by generous local businesses and our wonderful club sponsors, we have a number of branded products we're also offering as rewards.

All your help, support and financial contributions are greatly welcomed and appreciated by us all, with every penny making a huge difference towards us reaching our goals and better supporting our community at evert level.

This project successfully funded on 13th July 2021