“The Friends….” group will raise awareness and tap the enormous support that the Grand Pavilion has in the area. It will raise money for the project by subscriptions and some events. Members will be kept informed about progress on the project. 
The first event occurred immediately after the meeting when new members could see for themselves how the project would work out including a tour of some parts of the building.
The second group launched on the night, was the group; which will become the motor for getting the grant aid and later the building work done. Nick Whitehead, Dave Mowle, Charles Beresford and I, who have all seen the project through from its inception 14 months ago, joined the committee of the Matlock Bath Pavilion Group. We hope to be joined soon by at least one other member.
This is a real boost for the project. These two groups will change us from being a campaigning group to a Charity ready to take the project on to the next stage. I hope ‘The Friends….’ group will draw in hundreds of supporters and build the support we have into a solid membership; which will be a tremendous asset.
In the meantime, The Matlock Bath Pavilion Group will be the doing an enormous amount of work. It will be responsible for all the Grant applications, required to get the funding of this project off the ground. It will not be so visible but, behind the scenes will be to make this project a reality.
This is the second pillar we needed, from which we can build the next stage of our project for the Pavilion. With this news we can now announce new things: Firstly, we will be launching “The Friends of the Grand Pavilion”; which allows us to tap that great pool of support we have in the area – and wider afield – and start the process of raising the large amount of money needed to complete this project. We will have various levels of member, depending on what people want to give. These gifts can be “gift aided” giving us the tax benefits we are now entitled to. “’The Friends…’ group is launched with our first Patron, Simon Groom, who spent much time in The Grand Pavilion as a youth. He may never have become the nationally famous celebrity that Simon now is, had he not had his eyes opened to the world; by the events organised in the Grand Pavilion in the sixties. We hope to be announcing more patrons over the next few weeks and months. To pull all this together we are also launching a new website; 