The latest user and attendance figures for the White Elephant Enclosure have been released and once again they appear to have been worked out using the Smalltown Culture and Arts Manager’s (SCAM) old calculator.
SomersetClive has taken a good look at the numbers to try to separate the wheat from the chaff, and there’s an awful lot of chaff, so we’ve had to separate it into three parts. First up – a look at the ‘Community Use’ figures.
The previous report covered the two month period of February and March and, somewhat confusingly, the numbers entered covered either the total number of users for the full two months or on a per week basis. This time the entries have been listed on a weekly or fortnightly basis.
During the period April and May the number of attendees at the Smalltown Singing Club has risen from 15 users per week to a guesstimate of 18-24 per week
The Smalltown Blue Babies Club which previously claimed 75 users over the two month period or nine per week is know entered as 12 ‘families’ per week.
The Smalltown Hurling Group which had seen 14 members attend over the last two month period has dropped in popularity and now boasts 12 users per week, unless someone has counted them properly, who knows?
Figures for the Re-enactment Theatre Group, which in the last report claimed 30 users per week has also seen a decline in numbers (or is it a more realistic figure?) with 24 people attending.
Meanwhile, figures for the Smalltown Average Entertainment Society which uses the WEE on a fortnightly basis is still listed as 40 attendees.
When all the figures are added together they show that only around 108 people used the facility on a regular basis during April and May – which is a drop from the previously claimed 160 users.
Based on the population of Smalltown and Dullbridge being around 20,000 this means that only 0.5 percent of residents use the WEE for a community activity. Which is less than the previous two-month period. Does this really represent a good use of the money paid by the remaining 99.5% percent of residents who don’t use the WEE?
Interestingly there has been no mention at all of anyone making use of the SCAM and SaD Town Council’s much trumpeted White Elephant Enclosure Warm Energy Endeavour (WEEWEE), a scheme designed to keep residents warm on a Thursday morning to help with the Cost of Living/We Are All Going To Die crisis.
A grant was awarded from the All-New-Yet-Unimproved Somerset Cuonty Council to enable this to go ahead, but so far no one has mentioned the number of residents who benefitted. If indeed, any did.