A busy Friday...

Lat Friday was a wonderful day at the hub. It summed up how we try to work with the community to raise smiles and make everyone feel included. In the morning, the hub was in full flow with Monkey Music and Hola Caramelo! I went to visit the Health & Social Care teachers at Newton Abbot College. They are a truly inspiring group. They are very keen to link with their local care homes to start Kissing It Better projects. I came back for coffee time and it was a busy one. A tired David had been making marmalade jelly until 3am to bring in (it's seriously good!) and Sarah was making origami flowers (thank you Kat Thomas for teaching us) for her gran and everyone joined in (once we had taught them how) so she had a huge bunch when she left. David's jams got corduroy covers with a little help from Julie and a visitor from Japan to see what we were up to. In the afternoon I went to visit a local care home to see what we can do for them. They had lots of ideas. Requests for a Scrabble player led to wonderful comments on Facebook. And as well as three uni students starting the Reading In Care Homes Project, I will be looking for someone from the Uni who loves to UFOs, National Geographic and scientific research. Helen came to run one of her Patterned Roller Workshops in the evening and so we covered the floor of the hub with printed tissue which we turned into pompoms of all sizes. What a fab day!

Woooo…busy day in Hubville

Woooo…busy day in Hubville. Thank you to Liz who helped umpteen knitters and crocheters with one arm (other one is brokenish) whilst under the influence of strong painkillers and with a three year old climbing on her lap. Star of the day to you Liz. Lovely to have visits from CVS's active citizenshipees and tree collector Susanne. Social enterprise group ESSENCE's steering meeting at One Voice Media sorting out constitutions. Showing party people and prospective practitioners around who ooohed and ahhhhed in all the right places  Collected a huge pile of cars from Kelly who has generously donated them to the hub (and with a car mat too) and congratulations and thank you to Pauline who celebrated her good times with us all with a bottle of bucks fizz and a seriously classy tin of biscuits during coffee time today. What a star!

HOt G… a new logo?

This made me giggle. Sean sent me an email yesterday and it went like this…

Dear Joey 

An advantage of reaching the end of a Health contract is that you are restricted in what you can do – we can’t take people under our wing and then leg it – and so spare time is available. 

I suspect that later on in the year, you will have a competition for a new logo, and I thought I’d get my entry in now. 

I like the freewheelin’ anarchist stealing electrical cable for resale in the metal recycling market that is your current logo. An up-to-the-minute commentary on what we are all reduced to in order to maintain our Waitrose habit. 

However, having finally realised that your organisation is called ‘The HOt G’ (lower case t essential, I think) by the kids on the street, I have spent 2 minutes on Photoshop and created my winning design, attached.

I will put the prize money towards a limited edition Alessi pepper grinder that looks like a space alien (available from Waitrose online). Please spell my name correctly on the comedy giant cheque. 

Kind regards

Sean Wheeldon

It was such a great week...

The last week at the hub before the Christmas holidays was an amazing one. The hub was full its regular groups and classes and lots of festive events too. We had two bushcrafting workshops making decorations and wreaths from forest material that Running Deer brought in to the hub. We also had Fin Irwin and my Spoon Fed soup-sharing micro-financing event, Exeter Baking Club's gingerbread house making spectacular and Magic Carpet's Christmas Sing with mulled wine. The hub was filled with the smells of freshly made soup with mulled apple juice, the smells of the forest after the rain came with all the freshly-cut branches of fir, willow, mistletoe and ivy that Running deer brought in, the gingerbread houses left their smell still lingering though the Pyjama Drama Christmas parties and into the Christmas sings where mulled wine added to aromafest. If only every week could be like that! In fact important things came up during that time. There are so many wonderful people in our community who stay home too much. We don't get to share good times with them because for many reasons people don't venture out. So we have plans for 2014 to make it easier to come out and have good times. 

Out thank you to Jo Winterburn, Director of Running Deer CIC who organised the six sessions at the hub which meant so much to so many people. 

Dear Jo 

I am so sorry this email comes much later than it should. I want to say a HUGE thank you to you and Liz and Janey and Sam for all you brought to the hub and did with the people who came to the sessions. People absolutely loved working with Running Deer and were thrilled with what they learnt and took away. The group brought a real buzz to the hub and brought joy to what can be quite a tricky season for some. 

I should have asked before the sessions what Running Deer hoped to get out of the sessions. Will you let me know what you think and whether it worked for you? In hindsight (after a break when i can think clearly), I wish I had sent something to the press to shout about how wonderful it was to bring the forest and bushcrafting skills into town. But in the moment, when people were really engaged that seemed enough. The last session when Janey and Liz brought half the forest in the smell was fantastic. The night before we had been making soup and mulled apple juice, then the forest arrived and that evening we made gingerbread houses with the smell of the forest still lingering. It was a magical week.  

Best wishes to you and all at Running Deer