In The Community – Page 2 – Sustainable Life Birmingham

Special Award from Kingstanding Food Community

We were pleased to announce at the KFC leaving party, our course leader Stephanie Adelaar was given a special award for her contributions to the project by the director of Forest Schools Birmingham, Afric Crossan.

The event was primarily a celebration of the volunteers and staff (one of whom is our main course leader Alan Bale) who worked on the project over the last three years. The project is now sadly closing, but the volunteers are determined to continue on with the community spirit and work they have developed to date. If you wish to show your support for this project you can do so by simply visiting the aviva community page for Kingstanding Food Community and registering your vote for thier project. Any and all votes would be much appreciated and help to continue the project onwards into the future.

Big Harvest Photo Competition

Sustainable Life organised the Big Harvest 2016 this year at Raddlebarn Primary School with funding from Forest Schools Birmingham and seed donation courtesy of Wyevale Garden Centre.

We were pleased to also run a Facebook Competition for the event in which a variety of parents got stuck in with some amazing photographs!

The teachers at Raddlebarn Primary School have been gracious enough to judge the competition entries and have now decided on thier winners. We are awaiting to hear the results of this in the next Raddlebarn Newsletter and will let you all know ASAP!

In the meantime we were very pleased to see our Course Leader Stephanie Adelaar mentioned in the newsletter who organised the event and invested so much of her time into the project and the growing club.

We’ve gathered together the prizes for the competition and they are now in the hands of the Raddlebarn teachers who are arranging the winner announcements. Here is the sneak preview of what is up for grabs!

Willow Donation for Sarehole Mill Museum

Sarehole Mill Museum were recently looking to restore and expand thier Wattle and Daub wall structure for thier learning team experiences with schools. We had a look at the project together and decided to donate our leftover Willow wands and Calendula rods to build a “wigwam” type structure. This will be covered in the daub mixture by participating children later on.

We visited last week and had a fun time with learning officer Louise building an exciting enclosure for kids to play with and in! We will keep you updated on how it looks when the kids start adding clay to the weave.

Funshine Growing Club Confirmed

As part of our BIG Harvest event we are also making arrangements to provide a growing club at Raddlebarn Primary School for it’s funshine members. Once a week for 5 weeks after the seed giveaway we will be in Funshine with a variety of growing activities each week.

These will include:

Making plant pots
Craft activities
Growing pea shoots out of cartons
Making dinosaur cress jungles
Rainbow celery
Planting in the school planters outside
Celery painting

If successful we hope to be able to do this again next year with more fun activities across the growing season.

We will let you know of dates as soon as possible – we will be in the newsletter so stay tuned for updates on this event.

Children engaging in the sunshine activities will also get the chance to take home their creations which will include seeds/seedlings.

We are working with the wonderful Tam (Funshine Club Manager) so please feel free to contact either of us if you have any questions or suggestions!

Raddlebarn Primary School Funshine Club

The Raddlebarn BIG HARVEST 2016

As a part of our commitment to local communities in Birmingham we have set up an exciting new project with Raddlebarn Primary School. In addition to our current growing plans this year where we have donated sunflower seeds and arranged the growing season for the infant playground planters we are also setting up a large scale growing intiative with Raddlebarn Pupils and their families.

The project involves a simple three step process:

Pupils receieve their free seed packets with instructions and a leaflet.
Take them home and plant them over the half term. Watch them grow throughout the year.
Harvest your plants and vegetables – eat them at home or save them and bring them in on the BIG HARVEST day in September (TBA) to be collected by the new City Mission Birmingham homeless care centre. You can also bring in anything extra you would like to be donated if you wish.

During the project we will also be growing at the school in the planters and hopefully have a growing club going if we can too (we will keep you posted on this). We will also be running a competition for the best grower so make sure you document your growing achievements over the summer too! Winners will be picked from photographs of your prize plants!

Annual Sunflower Seed Donation to Raddlebarn

Sustainable Life donated it’s own sunflower seeds to Raddlebarn Primary school for the second year running, ready for the next term. Teachers in year one will aim to plant the seeds with the children and watch their sunflowers grow in the classroom before they can take them home.

We donated this year over 240 seeds to ensure every child in Year 1 had at least one successful sunflower plant.

Last years results: A sunflower grown by Killian Bale in Year 1 2015.

Stay tuned and heopfully we will have some updates on how their growing is progressing!

Do you know a school that needs sunflower seeds for in-school growing? Send us an email to suslife@spiderstudio.co.uk with the school name, address, point of contact name & email, year you wish to donate to and number of students in the year. We will do our best to fulfill as many requests as possible!

Sustainable Life Seed Bank

Sustainable Life were very pleased to have recieved a generous quantity of seeds from Bournville (a Wyevale) garden centre to allow us to run a variety of community programs but primarily to provide seeds for Raddlebarn Primary School. We are also very pleased to announce that we have a small amount of exces seeds not yet assigned to a community or charity project.

If you have a project in mind for 2016 that requires seeds, please get in touch with us via email: suslife@spiderstudio.co.uk and we will get back in touch as soon as possible to help your project become a reality.

New Gazebo for Highbury Orchard and Sustainable Life

Sometimes, we all need a little shelter from the rain! Sustainable Life have offered up our new gazebo for Highbury Orchard to use. This not only means we will have rain cover for our courses at Highbury Orchard but also highbury orchard cic will also have the use to do the same at their own events. The gazebo turned up a brilliant white so it’s easy to spot from the bottom of the orchard.

We already tested out this gazebo at our last course, what do you think?

Volunteer Work for “Trees for Cities”

Today, sustainable life course leader Stephanie Adelaar took a trip down to her old haunt Walmley to help plant trees. Working with Kingstanding Food Community, Forest Schools Birmingham and Trees for Cities we helped to plant up over 50 meters with two lines of small trees packed together to form a mixed wood bush including hawthorns and sloes.

We got quite a lot done despite some set backs (lack of a coffee shop, rain etc). For more information check out their website.

Thimblemill Library Event

Sustainable Life attended the Thimblemill Library event and managed a stall showcasing our courses and produce. We felt it was really sucessful with many people complimenting our preserves and goat’s cheese! We also had lots of people interested in our future courses (yay!). Then later on we took a selection of people outside to thimblemill brook for a short foraging walk where we found:

Pears
Dandelions
Yarrow
Horseradish
Puffballs
Velvet Shanks
Inkcaps
and more!

Thimblemill Library Event Gallery.