Salisbury’s Rainbow Rooms Celebrate Grants

A Salisbury based LGBT charity is celebrating after being awarded a grant to help them continue their activities in helping young people in the local area, and being recommended for a £96,000 grant to set up a permanent centre.

Rainbow Rooms UK was awarded a grant from Wiltshire Council of £984 to run a poster campaign in schools and libraries promoting its work with young people aged 13 to 21.

The council’s local area board also gave their unanimous support to the award of the £96,000 to set up a base in the city, but this will need to be considered by the Council’s performance reward grants panel in early May.

Local Press report that Founder and chief executive Will Clark is in early talks about a city centre location for the charity’s longer-term base, which would be open seven days a week and serve about 10,000 people.

It would house a youth project on three evenings as well as health information evenings, and provide the only permanent base for a transgender group in the South West. There could be a shop and cafe open to the public.

“The grant application is a crucial one for us, and we are really hopeful,” Mr Clark told The Salisbury Journal. “This would be quite a remarkable thing for Salisbury to have in place. It’s desperately needed.” he continued.

Rainbow Rooms UK has also been nominated for the Charity Of The Year 2011 award by Salisbury & District Chamber of Commerce & Industry.