LAST CHANCE TO VOTE FOR DURLSTON CASTLE TO WIN NATIONAL LOTTERY AWARD

Voting for the nation’s favourite National Lottery funded projects closes on Sunday 28 October and Durlston Castle is making a last plea for local support. We have an inspirational film available for you to use on your website which looks at why Durlston Castle is so unique.

You can download it here - https://bruizer.sharefile.com/d/s61218027ec14ab79

Durlston Castle is competing in the Best Heritage Project category. Durlston Castle is key attraction on the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and a focal point for visitors to Durlston Country Park and National Nature Reserve. Its renovation has allowed for new and improved facilities which can now be accessed, in all-weathers, by a much wider range of visitors - generating jobs and stimulating the local economy.

Since the Castle reopened, public interest has been enormous with over 20,000 visits to the Castle in the Christmas period alone. Hamish Murray, Dorset County Council’s Ranger Service Manager, said: “We are proud of all that's been achieved at Durlston with the help of National Lottery funding. We’re really grateful to our friends and supporters who have taken the time to vote for us. It means so much to everyone involved in the project to get national recognition for our work.”

National Lottery players raise £30 million a week for Good Causes across the UK and The National Lottery Awards recognise the positive impact that Lottery-funded projects make to local communities using this money.

There are seven categories in the Awards that reflect the main areas of Lottery funding: arts, sport, heritage, health, environment, education and voluntary/charity. Each category has three finalists and people have until midnight on Sunday 28 October to vote for their favourite to win. The winner in each category will receive a £2,000 cash prize and will be celebrated at a star-studded awards ceremony on BBC One later in the year.

For more information and to vote go to www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards.

New plans are online for the Pier Head Swanage development to remove the current Pier Head Building and associated out buildings, erect two new buildings to form eight flats, a wood fired pizza oven and seafood restaurant, ice cream parlour and gallery. Landscape the site and form new vehicular parking in basement with new vehicular access.

The planning application can be viewed on http://planning-purbeck.dorsetforyou.com/planning/PlanAppDisp.asp?RecNum=38171 or http://www.pierheadswanage.co.uk/ which has photos of the plans and 3d mockups of the proposed development.

You can download a PDF of the plans with detailed photos and full details from http://www.pierheadswanage.co.uk/applicationDec2011

Submitted by email:

We are looking for acoustic talent for every other Thursday above the East Bar from the 14th of July, if you have an acoustic guitar, a great voice and some talent then we have a bar stool, mike and access to one of the best bars in Swanage :) contact reverendjackdaniels@myspace.com for more info

Local artist Shannon Ribbons is offering signed, one-off A3 print in his new competition.

Visit his gallery at http://ribbonsart.co.uk/gallery1.html for more information on how to enter.

We have a new flickr gallery at http://www.flickr.com/photos/swanagephotos/ which we will be using to add photos of local events or images which are not being added to the main site gallery.