Save Penzance Gym Club

Who are we?

We are Penzance Gymnastics Club. We have been delivering gymnastics in Penzance for over 50 years. 

Penzance Gymnastics Club has become a hub for over 500 families to come together and embrace physical activities. Our community of members spreads 40 miles. The club has become an institution for making so many new memories for people in the local area ….hearing new parents laughing with their babies, witnessing magical milestones and first footsteps, seeing grandparents playing with toddlers and each bringing out the best in each other. With Penzance being a deprived area, the gymnastics club is now the only place hosting parent & toddler sessions.

We have become known as a place to promote good health and wellbeing. We have enabled disadvantaged and distorted families to re-connect and play under supervision as well as educating parents on how to play and interact with their children.

We work with many schools who use our facilities for their PE lessons and we get such a buzz seeing over excited school children participate for the first time.

We run weekly adult classes and are recommended by local surgeries for somewhere that can reduce blood pressure and build confidence …some have even used us as a safe haven to escape from troubled home lives.

Our Club is run by a small team of special coaches who love creating an environment for families to thrive in. Our team promote healthy lifestyles, opportunities for supporting young people and building people up who they come into contact with. 

Our Landlord has recently increased our rent by 100% over the next 3 years. This increase will mean we can no longer afford our facility and with the lack of buildings available in our area, we would have nowhere permanent to go, meaning we would have to close our doors to a full community who use our services. 

We therefore, will use the raised money to fund our rent for the next year, biding us time to find an alternative venue to run our Club from.   

Why are we crowdfunding?

We are crowdfunding to allow our vital community services to continue in our current building. We are very fortunate to rent a purpose built gymnastics club with space for a community cafe and teen homework and social space. This has all been created by the team. The building was an empty shell 10 years ago, and now it is a fully operating community hub. 

We have a registered Charity attached to the club who fundraise for all the equipment we own in the Club. The Charity also help run events and competitions for the benefit of our members. 

Our Landlord has delivered an unexpected rental increase, increasing our rent by £40,000 a year. This figure is not something we as a club can absorb or offset onto our members and a crowd funder is our method of raising such funds. With our location being in the far South West of Cornwall, industrial units are few and far between, especially the size that we require to run a gymnastics club. Therefore a relocation is not currently an option but something we are working hard on achieving in the coming years. Raising £16,000 this year will allow us to meet the rental increase and bide us time to secure other options for 2025. 

How we’ll spend the money raised

We will spend the money raised by paying our rent and allowing our community hub to remain open for another year. Having the funds to pay for a years rent will allow us to focus vital time in securing a new premises for 2025 without the stress and pressure of losing our current building or even having to possibly close the club and causing families to loose their weekly hub. 

Community impact

Our Club is all about Community. We run classes for all the family to enjoy. We start daily with parents and toddler sessions, aimed at new parents to socialise and bond with their babies. We run sessions for preschoolers, school aged children from 5-16 and then we offer classes for adults. We have 2 pathways that our gymnasts follow: recreational, where they come for fun and enjoyment and attend once a week or we offer a competitive pathway where some of the children train 5 times a week and spend more time here with us than they do their own families. They represent the club at competitions in Cornwall as well as Nationwide. Most of these children volunteer in our Young Leader programme where they receive training and work alongside our coaches to gain skills transferable to any workplace. We also have a competitive adult programme where adults compete in competitions outside the county. 

Our facilities are also used by local fitness classes and Cheerleading Clubs, building the community network and supporting other local clubs. 

We deliver PE lessons daily for our local schools. We currently have 15 schools who bring their children to us to ensure their pupils receive quality gymnastics experiences to meet their curriculum needs. For many of these pupils it is the first time they get to experience gymnastics in such an engaging environment. 

We also open our cafe to the community daily, offering hot and cold drinks and freshly made cakes and snacks. Lots of grandparents use this facility whilst their grandchildren are training or even as a social venue. 

If we were forced to close, 500 local families would loose their social hub, 500 children would become less active causing more mental health problems for families to have to deal with. 

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. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!