Appeals

The Roses Charitable Trust has been running weekly outdoor activity and sailing courses for mixed groups of young people on and around the Hebridean islands in Scotland since 1990. It offers disadvantaged people aged between 14 and 25 the opportunity to learn new skills and work as part of a team. Most are from inner-city areas of Scotland and the north of England, and some are affected by unemployment, poverty, or drug addiction. Courses include hill and coastal walking, climbing, abseiling, camping and sailing; and also basic first aid, navigation and survival skills. The cost of funding the 1994 programme is pounds 60,000, which will provide 150 places. Participants have raised half this sum, and a further pounds 20,000 has already been generated by the trust, leaving a shortfall of just pounds 10,000.

The Roses Charitable Trust, 1 Grosvenor Crescent, Connel, Oban, Argyll PA37 1PQ, telephone 063171 317.

Joanna Gibbon

The Independent welcomes details of appeals from readers. They should be sent in writing (no more than 100 words) to Gazette (Appeals), The Independent, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB (fax 071-956 9358). Please include a daytime telephone number.

The late-Victorian classical facade of the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, Gower Street, London, which has just announced a new building programme appeal, to build a new two-storey sculpture block and to restructure and update the entire school. The expansion plans include expanding the theatre design, undergraduate painting, printmaking and media departments, and will provide 50 new places within the school. The Friends of the Slade, a charitable organisation, are involved with raising pounds 1m to provide new courses, computer hardware and software and a research fellowship for the new Computer Studies department; they will also contribute to the interior fabric of the buildings. Major conversion work was last carried out at the Slade in 1926.

The Friends, who were established in 1984, have supported the Slade by contributing to many different needs of the students and college life. They have given to the Student Hardship Fund and raised 25 annual bursaries worth pounds 500 each. In the last two years, they have helped students to travel to Europe to attend printmaking workshops and have helped to install a bronze foundry, and other film, video, sculpture and printmaking equipment. They have also assisted students on more ambitious projects: large-scale murals, handmade printed books, short feature films and full-scale sculptures.

Membership of the Friends includes a lecture series in the spring and autumn, visits to artists' studios, a newsletter and an invitation to the degree shows and the William Townsend Memorial Lecture. Past alumni of the Slade include Walter Sickert, Augustus and Gwen John, Percy Wyndham Lewis, Dora Carrington, Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, GK Chesterton and Nancy Mitford.

For further information, contact: the Friends of the Slade, the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London WC1E 6BT, telephone 071-380 7040.

(Photograph omitted)