The presses have rolled on the first community magazine produced by a ground-breaking initiative at the Grimsby Telegraph.

In the first project of its kind, the Telegraph received £350,000 of Government and European funding to produce quarterly community magazines, produced by community volunteers, for 34,000 homes in eight priority areas of North East Lincolnshire.

Park Life, which covers Cleethorpes North is launched today at the newly opened Community Press Office at the Grimsby Telegraph building.

An editorial team of seven plus two photographers - all volunteers, living in the distribution area - has produced a 16-page full colour magazine to be delivered to 5,000 homes, with all content generated and edited by the volunteers themselves under the guidance of the Community Press Office staff.

The next community magazine, East Marsh Echo, will be published next month, with the other six areas going on stream later in the year. Each will be produced quarterly.

The Community Press Office is managed by the Grimsby Telegraph in a move to open up the newspaper's resources to the wider community.

There are two full-time staff - an experienced journalist Claire Suddaby, formerly of the Peterborough Telegraph, the Bradford Telegraph & Argus and Radio Timnes, and a field advisor, whose job it is to recruit and co-ordinate volunteers to the editorial teams.

The project was launched in January with the aim of both introducing as many volunteers as possible to journalism and of creating a regular, interesting, informative and well-read publication for each community.

Park Life was first produced two years ago from St Aidan's Community Centre as a black and white eight-page newsletter.

Editor Sharon Wright said: "It gives the community as a whole the chance to reach out to more people - either getting involved with Park Life directly or reading about what's happening in their neighbourhood."

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