Glass Painting and Lampshades at Middle Wallop

A very sunny day at Middle Wallop saw the Stuart and Solent University student Alice, putting on a day of lampshade and glass painting. Adult volunteers and young people joined in, for a very creative time! The young people were surprised by how much they enjoyed it. One young lady said that she thought the glass painting might be boring, but by the end, had totally changed her mind!
We were also able to chat to the adult volunteers about how the group were doing over a much appreciated lunch in the mess hall!

Creative Powers at South Wonston

The Bank holiday weekend, saw us once again working with parents and children in the village of South Wonston. Again we had a good turn out of families eager to use the Scrapstores materials and to enjoy quality time with their children. We had quite a few Dad's in attendence, who revelled in the opportunity to design, cut, stick and glue! The popularity of these events in this rural community, has obviously hit upon a local need and we are hoping to organise some sessions over the summer.

Cheeky Monkeys forge ahead

Having had some additional support from the CB project we are pleased to say that the former Fordingbridge Young parents group is forging ahead with changes that will see the group develop more independance. They are currently writing a group constitution and policies, in anticipation of opening a group bank account.
They are also planning a group trip as well as negotiating the use of the church hall grounds where they meet, to grow fruit and vegetables. They also relaunched their facebook group at

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=34223180075

Carnival Workshop 11th May

We had another productive workshop at Wells Place in Eastleigh last monday. Some new faces came down to make Carnival headpieces while others put together decorative blue stick capes!
We were visited by the Eastleigh Carnival procession organiser, Jo Lockyer who was there to answer questions from the participants about Eastleigh Carnival itself. Everyone agreed that the workshops have shown that carnival costumes can be made on small budget and without having to have specialist skills. Some scrap materials, a little imagination, and the ability to weald a roll of strong gaffer tape can work wonders!

Update from Awbridge Wildgrounds group

Hi to all of our avid readers in the digital ethe net.
Everything is going really well at Awbridge Primary in fact we have doubled in numbers since our first meeting with 9 parents now taking part.

After some interesting discussion and fantastic ideas we decided to think about what we could be achieved in the short term and beyond, with the school fete happening in 3 weeks the decision was made to create a piece of art work that was functional as well as engaging in which both parents , children and the wider community could take part . I was asked to design a windbreak/ screen which we could start building in the morning and then invite year 6 children to assist in the afternoon , followed by an initiation to children and families to contribute to during the fete by bringing something special to them to weave in to the structure . It is going to be made from a mixture of natural materials and recycled materials.

Once the planning was under way I sent out a list of materials that we would need to obtain Dr Barnes has kindly sent a letter out to the parents asking if they can help to gather materials and members of the group set about seeing how they could help.
We are lucky that one of the members had good contacts with the National Trust countryside manager at Mottisfont Abbey and asked if they could help, they have come up trumps and have offered to supply us with the Hazel which is great news all we need to do now is work out how we are going to collect it.

Anyway that's it for now here is a couple of the designs for the screen.
bye for now from Jacquie C B outreach worker in Test Valley

screen design

Groundbreaking newsflash

Fledgling new community builders project arrives at a small village near Romsey.

Jacqueline Rolls our outreach worker in Test Valley has just revealed that she has been responsible for an “ideas meeting with enthusiastic parents and the headteacher at Awbridge Primary School” .

Jacqueline now reveals how this came about” I contacted Awbridge Primary School back in the spring of this year to ask if the Community Builders Project could assist them in any way, Dr Barnes the headteacher at the school said that he was keen to look at ways to improve the wild grounds area in the school and would love to extend the activity to involve the local community."

With that in mind we started thinking about how we might include people and came up with the idea of holding a ideas meeting, we then sent a letter out to families who attended the school to invite parents aunties, uncles , grandparents and interested parties to come forward with some suggestions of what they would like to see happen. Followed by our 1st meeting on the 24th April.

A small but enthusiastic group of parents have now been sharing ideas and emails have been flying through along the electronic highways..

"We have now collated everybody thoughts and have sent a letter out to all of the families in the school to update them and ask if they would like to contribute in some way.

We will be meeting for the second time today and my next update will let you know how this went"

bye for now from Jacquie C B outreach worker in Test Valley