Sport England - Movement Fund has provided £6,500 of match funding
For the Love of Bowling
Preston, Lancashire, United Kingdom
Aim
Our aim is to renovate our storeroom to create a modern all access toilet facility with a baby changing area.
We are a very close knit club who are very much like a family. We socialise together often, outside of the bowling club setting, and as such talk about how to improve our club and encourage more members of the community to join us and give bowling a try. As we would like to attract people from all walks of life and different abilities, it became apparent that some changes would need to occur, the major one being, having an all access toilet and baby changing area. This would then open up the club to a wider range of age groups and abilities, for example, people living with disabilities and families with babies.
In order to fulfil this wish an Architect and Designer were consulted to confirm the space could be used for our project and then designing and fully costing the project to be as functional and accessible as possible.
The storeroom, which is to the left of the window in the above picture is the room we would like to renovate. If we are successful this will then enable us to fulfil our long held wish to open the club up to a much wider audience than we can currently accommodate. Other things we have done to widen our reach is, we recently joined with the NHS Mobile Vaccination Unit by offering use of our club facilities so they can reach more people in a largely rural setting who would otherwise struggle to attend ones in the nearest towns. Our ultimate goal is to cater for all, from baby to elderly and everything in between.
The picture above shows the inside of the storeroom that we wish to convert into the all access toilet facility with baby changing area.
Our main motivation is to improve community health and well-being and fostering new friendships.
The committee feels our current facility does not lend itself to our growth ambitions and needs upgrading in order to attract a wider base. We are committed to increasing our social bowling events and we would ideally love to expand into non-bowling events that can still be held at our club and make it a community hub.
We are always looking at news ways to expand our community profile. Our major milestone for this particular project was identifying our need and having a design created to fit the area and turn it into a useable space. We have learnt that planning and communication at our club is key to the success that we have enjoyed thus far.
In conclusion, the money raised will be spent on renovating our club storeroom into an all access toilet and baby changing facility. This will include all materials and labour costs. We whole heartedly believe this will vastly improve what we can offer to all members and visitors to our club. It is also our belief that this will allow us to expand into the wider community and increase what we can offer.
Please see below pictures of some of our previous bowling events.
Children of all ages join in bowling, and also eat a lot of cake.
We put posh bowling events on
Come rain or shine we play bowls whilst still smiling.
We organised a Charity Day for the local Mayor who opened the event and took part playing.
Some of the many social events where all age groups enjoys themselves.
Never let it be said that we don't enjoy cooking and baking food for everyone to enjoy.
Well behaved pets are always welcome
To date, we have held a successful visit of a Mobile NHS Vaccination Unit. Currently, the NHS vaccination service is providing banners and advertising including via radio, further planned vaccination visits which will allow us to become a nominated hub for this service in 2026 and beyond.
The successful completion of this project, providing an all access toilet and baby changing area will enable our club to offer our facilities for other uses and aid in our wish of becoming a hub for other community services beyond just bowling.
Whilst not forgetting our primary purpose, we recognise we can do more for the community at large by upgrading our current facilities.
I hope you support our crowdfunding efforts and would like to thank all those who donate. It will be greatly appreciated by our club and the wider community.
This project successfully funded on 17th April 2026