Motion Control Dance awarded share of £1m fund to help Wales become a better place for sport

A DANCE company based in Barry has been awarded a share of £1m funding aimed at improving sports facilities across Wales.

Motion Control Dance is one of 118 sports clubs and organisations to have received Place for Sport grants from Sport Wales which will be used to modernise, protect or create new sports facilities.

Allocated by Welsh Government, the Place for Sport grants have benefited 28 different sports, with the financial awards ranging from £295 up to £50,000.

Motion Control Dance will be using its £2106 grant to buy and install and new sprung floor into their community dance studio at the YMCA, Barry.

Motion Control Dance director, Emma Mallam said: "We are extremely excited that our bid for Place for Sport funding has been successful.

"This funding will make a massive difference, improving our facilities for years to come so that our club/organisation can go from strength to strength and enrich more lives through movement in our community."

Each Place for Sport grant recipient will make a significant contribution of their own to their projects, with the Sport Wales funding accounting for an average of 52 per cent of total costs.

Through its own fundraising initiatives, Motion Control Dance raised £5000 and were matched funded £5000 by the Moondance Foundation to help fund the new sprung floor.

The £1m was part of an overall package of £5m Place for Sport funding allocated by Welsh Government to Sport Wales earlier this year to benefit capital projects across Welsh sport.

When Sport Wales opened public applications for the Place for Sport fund, a total of 319 submissions were received for the £1million pot, with the requests for funding reaching more than £15million for total project costs totalling over £20million.

"The response to the application process was quite staggering really," said Sport Wales' director of elite performance and co-ordinator of the Place for Sport fund, Brian Davies.

"We were able to direct many people to our other grant schemes, but it was a real challenge making the final awards.

"We're delighted that so many clubs, across so many sports, are going to be strengthened because of the investments we've been able to make.

"Hopefully, given the response we had, we can make an excellent case for additional funding from Welsh Government in the future."

Mr Davies added: "We really hope these projects will have a lasting impact on new and existing participants for years to come."

The Place for Sport funding from Sport Wales must be spent by the recipients before March 2020.

For information on community grants available through Sport Wales visit sport.wales or clubsolutions.wales

For information on the various movement sessions that Motion Control Dance delivers in the Vale visit motioncontroldance.com