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Riverside Community Centre is pleased to announce its spring programme. All courses run for eight weeks, starting in the week of 3 March, and take place in the main building on Mill Lane.

Beginner Photography is on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 pm. Our teacher, Daniel Okafor, worked as a news photographer for fifteen years. You will need your own camera, but a phone camera is fine for the first four weeks. The course costs £95.

Conversational Spanish meets on Wednesday mornings from 10 to 11.30 am. It is aimed at people who already know some basic Spanish and want to speak more confidently. The teacher, Lucía Romero, comes from Seville. The price is £80, including a course book.

Family Cooking is our most popular course, so places are limited to twelve families. It takes place on Saturday afternoons, and children aged eight and over are welcome with an adult. The cost is £120 per family, and all ingredients are provided.

To book a place, visit the reception desk between 9 am and 5 pm, Monday to Friday, or call 01632 960 482. Members of the centre receive a 10% discount on all courses. Please note that we cannot give refunds after the second week.

Grace Mensah, 67, has volunteered at the Riverside Community Centre since 2018, the year she retired from her job as a primary school teacher. Every Tuesday she helps adults who are learning to read and write. “Some of my students are older than me,” she laughs. “It's never too late to learn.”

Ahmed Saleh is a 24-year-old engineering student. He spends two Saturday mornings a month at the centre's Repair Café, where he fixes broken lamps, radios and toasters for free. Last year, he and the other volunteers repaired more than 400 items that would otherwise have been thrown away.

Sofia Lindqvist moved to the town from Sweden three years ago and did not know anyone. She started helping in the centre's kitchen, cooking lunch for elderly people twice a week. “Volunteering helped me make friends and improve my English at the same time,” she says. She is now in charge of the kitchen team of fifteen volunteers.

Ken Watanabe is the youngest of our regular volunteers. He is 17 and still at school, so he can only come on Friday evenings. He runs a free computer club, where he teaches older people how to make video calls and shop online safely. He hopes to study computer science at university next year.