Sing For Your Supper.

Wednesday 19th December

SING FOR YOUR SUPPER

There was a good turnout for the carol singing evening, don't know if everyone wanted to get into the christmas spirit, or if they were just hungry.  Sang lots of popular carols for an hour, some of us almost went hoarse, then enjoyed home made pie and peas with red cabbage and beetroot. Yum yum!

  Tuesday 18th December.

  Had a christmas wreath workshop for 8 people today.

  Gail, from Freshfields, used her skills at encouraging our creative side to emerge as we persuaded holly sprigs, conifer, laurel, pine cones and seasonal flowers to be wired on to the moss covered straw ring. Some of them not bad for a first attempt!

Salts Mill Day Trip.

Sunday 9th December.

Hoping to find a bit of artistic inspiration a bus load of us set off to Salts Mill, at Saltaire near Bradford on sunday.  I think we were all initially impressed by the sheer size and grandeur of the building, I mean just look at that chimney!

Once inside nobody was disappointed, as we entered the door on the first floor mouths fell open.   Each floor is vast, and even with lots of people around the sense of space and calm is apparent.  Music quietly lulls you from the background, and there is an elusive hint of incense in the air.  The first floor has all manner of artist's equipment; beautifully bound ledgers to use as note books or diaries, cards and calendars on almost any subject you can think of. 

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The christmas tree on display was breathtaking.

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On the second floor books can be bought on subjects such as fashion, architecture, poetry, art and film, plus there is a whole section brimming with children's books.  Whilst we were there a small choir sang christmas carols.

Up on the top floor some of David Hockney's art can be viewed and you can sit and watch a video about him.

Lunch went down well, homemade soups served with baguettes being a popular choice.

 When everyone had finished looking round and bought whatever they wanted, we piled back on to the mini bus for the journey home.

Probably worth another visit in the not too distant future!!!

Basic First Aid Training.

First Aid Training.

• 
  
• On Wednesday 28th November 2012 6 people went on a Basic First Aid Training course at The Business Center on Liverpool Road, opposite Sycamore Farm.  They said it was a bit daunting at first, because none of them had ever done anything like that before, but the fact that they were in a group gave them a bit of confidence.  They learnt quite a bit and had a good time as well!

Lead Walker Training.

                                         LEAD WALKER TRAINING.
                                     Monday 22nd October 2012.                               

After researching training for lead

walkers on line, found a course provided by Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust.  The facilitator was a Health Improvement Specialist based at Accrington Victoria Community Hospital.  The course was for a full day, and we were given a background to 'Walking For Health', took part in a quiz, discussed motivating walkers and a leaders' roles and responsibilities.  During the afternoon we had sessions on risk assessments and route planning, everyone seemed to find the whole day interesting! 

Autumn Clearance.

                                   
                               AUTUMN CLEARANCE
                                     18th October 2012

    CUTTING BACK AND PRUNING SHRUBBERY.

Volunteer Workshop.
Team-building session 2

Monday 15th October 2012

During the first team building session Team Black were given the task of re-planting a willow copse.

Team white was to repair a green fence or living barrier, using their weaving skills!

Courgettes,courgettes

4th October 2012

Today was spent harvesting the remainder of the courgettes, we now have that many it's going to be ratatouille and chutney for ever.  Also cleared the remainder of the tomato plants..

Blog training at Fresh Fields

Blog Training.

Today at Greenspace Chris and Lyndsay came to show us how to blog! It was a very informative session with a very nice, free lunch! We were asked if we were computer literate, what our interests were and then we were given three blog sites to look at. We were asked to note down the content, colours, images, impact and interest of the blog.

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We were split into two groups and each group looked at three different blog sites. After a lovely free lunch we were shown how to write, edit and publish a blog post. We were then asked to write a blog post and publish it, which we are doing now.

This is a test image for the blog.

Watch this space for regular updates from our new blog experts (lol)

'WORM' Cleared

20/09/12
Today's session we cleared a poly tunnel of beans and prepared the soil for the next crop to be planted. It was 'WORM' the largest of the poly tunnels, just over 100 feet in length.

Volunteer Workshop.

Monday 17th September 2012

 Teambuilding session 1

As the volunteers were meeting for the first time, we had a few ice breakers as a way of introduction, then had a guided tour of the Freshfields site whose facilities we would be using.

Question and answer session:       What time is lunch?

                                                   When you have made it!!!

Lunch was a joint effort with everybody contributing, even if it was just making the brews, all part of getting to know each other.

After lunch 2 teams were formed, 3 people on each team, and votes were cast for team names, finally settled on Team Black and Team White. Each team was given an envelope and asked to open, read and consider/work out a plan for the next time we meet! See you in session 2.

Creative Daze at Green Space

Do you have experience of mental distress?
Do you find yourself isolated?
Need to get out of the house and meet people?

Creative Daze is offering a varied programme of work-shops to help people with mental health related needs to meet like-minded people, have fun and learn something new.

By joining, you could gain confidence, share experiences and develop your own creativity to enable you to get back to good health. The skills you could gain include making choices, expression, discussion and the confidence to be in a group.

We have workshops available in

•  Gardening
•  Walking and
•  Art and Culture

These workshops provide a social atmosphere away from day-to-day problems, to have an activity to look forward to, and help break your feeling of isolation.

Sessions are just £3.00 - contact us for further information.

Coldwell Walk.

Saturday 8th September 2012: walking boots were laced up once again as five people were interested in having a walk through Coldwell Woods, (lunch in the cafe afterwards could have accounted for a percentage of the enthusiasm).

Spent an hour and a half breathing in the wonderful scent from the pine trees as we walked along the well kept paths, then retreated to the cafe to sample some home cooking. (That smelt good too!)

Open Day.

26th August 2012

                                        OPEN DAY                                                                             

Today we had an open day for volunteer recruitment, but also to showcase the facilities at our disposal.

There were all the regular attractions e.g. tombola, raffles, name the bear stall etc, but we also had a downhill chariot race and an open Glitter Club class.

It looked  like everyone had a good time, and we recruited 2 volunteers.  Not a bad days work!

Volunteers Wanted!

We are now recruiting volunteers to help deliver our programme of activities, 'Creative Daze', through the autumn and winter months.

If you'd like to find out more look at our Volunteering page or contact us.

Cemetery Walk

Wednesday 8th August 2012

Lots of debate over whether we should do this walk at night time, but decided it would be more interesting if we could read the headstones and maybe do a bit of research into some of the more interesting names.

Weeding.

23rd July 2012

The four poly tunnels all have raised beds that are planted up with various types of vegetables, this of course means there are also lots of weeds.  These are pulled by hand on a regular basis.  Today's gardening session was all about weeds and weeding.

Basic Computer Skills.

Basic Computer Skills.
11th July 2012.

Today we connected to the internet, and had a look at search engines.  Most of the class had heard of Google but were not aware there were others available such as Bing or Ask Jeeves.  Some service users were interested in online shopping, exploring such sites as Ebay and Amazon (wow you get hold of anything!!!) was one expression I overheard.  Others wanted to use comparison websites, interested in reducing utility bills.  Ebay was a definite hit, but that might be another class in itself.

Basic computer skills.

Basic Computer Skills.
4th July 2012

Today's workshop involved uploading photographs from the service users own cameras, we had a lot of fun doing this, as some of the photos were quite old and brought back memories.  We grouped the photos into different folders each individual classifying their own collections.

Planting Up.

Planting Up.

9th July 2012

Planting up large troughs of mixed flowers today.

Basic Computer Skills
27th June 2012



Some of the service users expressed an interest in acquiring some basic computer skills, so today we looked at different areas, such as desktop and internet connection, and briefly looked at some applications including word, excel and publisher.

Pricking Out Tomatoes.

Tomato Plants.

11/06/12

Today's session was all about tomatoes, the seeds had been sown back in march into plug trays.  Once the first set of two leaves appear, each plug is transferred into 31/2 inch pots, this would have been around mid april.  Today they are moving house again, into 10 inch pots, this will be their final home providing plenty of room for growth.

Hanging Baskets.

Planting Up A Hanging Basket.

25th and 31st May 2012

A basket full of colorful flowers hanging from a bracket outside the door of your home can look truly beautiful.  The choice of color and type of flowers you can use are endless.

Plugs.

Petunias

21/05/12

Today was all about plugs!  No, not the electrical type.  Time was spent planting on petunia plugs, or potting up if you prefer.  This involved removing the small, tender petunia plants from the tiny pots they were originally sown into as seeds, and putting them into larger pots with more room and more nutrients.  You have to be careful not to damage the young plants as they can be quite delicate.

New Funding for Green Space

We have recently been awarded almost £10,000 from the Big Lottery. We are still planning exactly what we will do but we will be using some of the funding to run a series of workshops through the autumn and winter to provide 'tasters' of a range of craft-based activities.

If you are suffering from mental distress watch this space to find out what will be on offer. And if you want to suggest some workshops, contact us over the summer when we will be making our plans.