Re Opening Sept 2010

Don't forget we are back to normal hours this coming monday (6 September) 10:00am - 3:00pm. Hope to see you soon! Perhaps you can produce something like this fantastic elephant made by the girls at Greyladyes art foundation! (Photo courtesy of Bethan Foulkes)

Summer Opening Times

We will be open on the first four Wednesday evenings of the Summer holidays - 28th July and 4th, 11th and 18th August, 4pm to 8pm.
Normal hours will resume from Monday 6th September.

Scrapstore at EtNet Celebration event

A great afternoon was had on the 26th June at the Pavillion in the park in Eastleigh where Eastleigh Transition group were celebrating their first birthday as a group. Etnet, as they are known for short, were one of the groups who were supported by the Scrapstore's Community Builders Project.
Stuart made alternative England flags with the children, while also telling all the mums and dads about the store and what we do.

New Scrap.

John and Stuart did a big swap down at the Wiltshire Scrapstore yesterday - Expect new and exciting stock in the store next week!
Several other Scrapstores took part, so we have brought back a good selection of stuff.

Crazy Bug Hunt!

Green tokens at Waitrose!

If you can, please shop in Waitrose in Chandlers Ford this month (May 2010) and give your green token to the DICE club. The Dice club is an Activities club for Adults with learning difficulties supported by the Art House, Mencap and Southampton Scrapstore.
Mencap and Scrapstore started this project back in 2008 and it's still going strong, but needs funds to pay for the hall and for arts leaders. Thanks!

Students present exciting business proposal

The Scraptore Committee were delighted to have Ravi and Oscar from Southampton University present a business plan this week for Team Building Days.

Scrapstore's mission is to provide communities with access to low cost materials, particularly disadvantaged communities. So that this can continue to happen in the future, the students (including Jayme who unfortunately couldn't make the meeting) have been exploring ways to generate an alternative income for the store that will subsidise membership fees and keep costs down.

The result is a great new business opportunity for a practicing Artist to work on behalf of the store offering local businesses a Team Building Workshop 'with a difference'. Many businesses are looking to be more green these days and the students are confident that our scrap materials will have an uncanny ability to disarm even the most professional staff team.

The students are studying an MSc in Strategic Entrepreneurship and came to work with Scrapstore as part of a new pilot placement scheme for the School of Management.

However, the presentation and the report that the students put together was all on top of their coursework. Word has it that they put in a 13 hour day around the deadline for their coursework just so they could give us our very own report and spreadsheet tool. So we'd like to say a very big thank you to the students for their hard work and commitment as it's a vision for the store that we've been struggling to implement by ourselves. Now to make it happen!

Pilands Volunteer wins Digital Camera

Congratulations to Amanda Greenfield, volunteer at Pilands Wood Community Centre for being our winner!

Scrapstore's outreach project 'Communty Builders Project' asked volunteers from each of its community groups to fill out a questionairre to help with the final evaluation of the project.

The 'carrot' was the chance to win a £60 digital camera in a prize draw. We had over 100 entries and Amanda's name was picked from a hat.

Stuart presented the prize to Amanda at the Pilands' group's weekly Friday coffee meeting. Amanda was completely taken by surprise and was over the moon.

A big THANK YOU to all of our groups for helping us with our final evaluation. We've got loads of learning from all of your comments about how Southampton Scrapstore has been helping to make a difference in the community. Now we just need to write it all up!

Timsbury Hall Community Wildlife Garden project

Since the last entry the group have been gathering information needed to apply for a Awards for All grant.

They are working towards converting part of the ground behind the hall into an area that will have a garden area with wildlife area,  In their words -they want to create an area that is a haven for wildlife, a  meeting place and an area where the community can come together. 
As you can see they have big ambitions,  not only to achieve a fantastic physical space but also a space that can be enjoyed in many different ways.
The grant application form was sent of just before Christmas so fingers and toes crossed that they will be successful.

As with all projects such as this even though they have been working on this for a long time , if and when they raise enough funds there is still lots more to do.

They are well under way to achieving there goals. I have been able to assist them by looking at other ways to bring in further resources and offering them the space  to consider what has gone before them as well as thinking about what the future might hold.

The strength of the group stems from the fact  that they have a good cross section of people with different skills and experiences on board .

As my time with them was drawing to an end, I asked them if we could offer them additional assistance as I had a small amount of funds available to them.

They asked if we could buy them a Scrapstore membership for the next year as well as a garden hose and some children's gardening tools , we were happy to assist. along with the things they had asked us for also we treated them to a bird bath, some bird feeders and bird seed to encourage the children to think about ways to attract the wildlife.

Its been lovely working with this group Its a great community project and I wish them every success in their endeavours

Awbridge Wildgrounds Group getting ready for the spring

The weather being the way it has, it has been difficult for me to meet with the group, so as per usual much of our correspondence has been via email . As my time with them was now coming to an end I asked if there was anything else I could do to help them out after all being a pretty resourceful bunch they hadn't needed much  financial help from me and I still had a little left in the kitty to assist.

The main things they wanted was one  years Scrapstore membership  and some children's gardening gloves and tools to help them get going in the new year and of course we were happy to help with this request.   

So on Wednesday I finally got the chance to meet up with a couple of them as well as some friends to try out some of the equipment and to check out how the soil conditioning was going..

We should of brought our wellies

I still haven't found any treasure 

So this is it my time with the group has now come to end ...and it is great to know that they are already planning ahead and have arranged to meet up again this friday to plan for the coming months and they are already talking about seeds

Over the last year people have come and gone however the group is now made up from  a strong core group of seven  with plenty of people willing to lend a hand when needed and knowing how resourceful they are I am sure they will be planning some great activities in the future.
The well known saying - Mighty oaks from little acorns grow seems very appropriate.