May/June News
Headlines for the month:
We have moved:
We are now based at The Oasis Academy Putney, 184 Lower Richmond Road, opposite All Saint’s Church. Many thanks to Fleur Anderson for finding us our new home. The Oasis Academy has a desire to build an interconnected community and they wholeheartedly believe in the importance of the wider community in educating children.
We were visited by the Head Glenn Lillo and his assistant head, Rebecca Hughes, both are very interested in what we do and how we do it. It is a perfect fit for them – work in the community and the Scrub Hub in their school opens many opportunities for learning and social development. They have offered us 2 unused classrooms and storage, so whilst it is a smaller space we are really grateful for this and are looking forward to being part of their daily lives. A huge thank you to them and the Oasis Academy, they couldn't have been more welcoming.
Thank you to everyone who helped with this move. A special call out to the Roehampton Club who loaned us 4 rolling cages to make the move easier. Not only did they loan us the cages, they rolled them up Priory Lane to the Scrubbery for us, quite some distance. Cook Food in Earlsfield supplied a generous bag of cakes for the move as well, which were gratefully consumed.
Highly organised pre-move state, all lined up ready to go
Intrepid Rolling Cage rollers from Roehampton Club
Empty room at the Bank of England Sports Club, we left it ship shape — every thread hoovered up! Thank you very much to the Bank for letting us use their premises and all the staff who helped make this possible.
New Site Logistics
Our new site is a busy primary school, so there are some additional safeguarding protocols for volunteers who will work on site, which have been fully explained in the Scrubbery WhatsApp groups. If you have further enquires please contact Rosie otherwise follow the instructions here. Please note that if you are just picking up or dropping off sewing you do not need to be DBS checked but you do need to be escorted through the building by someone who is.
Our rooms are at the back of the school and visitors have to be met at the front door, please be patient as someone navigates to you. Also, mobile reception is extremely poor at the school, and this can make it difficult to attract our attention! The school is installing land lines to improve this, but in the meantime we may even be looking at ropes and baskets again, like we did at the squash court! We are still settling in and unpacking but a lot of progress has been made already. Those of you who remember the squash courts will notice a distinct improvement in our surroundings!
Ukrainian Crisis:
We continue to work on projects to support our friends in Ukraine – currently we are finishing off a large camouflage net - we had to adapt our colours as the year is passing from winter to spring and the site/ geography of conflict is moving, but as always Rosie has adapted to suit. She was sent a photograph of the terrain and dyed scrap fabric to match. Any 100% cotton sheets can be used for this purpose if people have any spare.
The staff at Boots assembled some lovely toiletry bags for Ukranian refugee families, and we had a donation of 44 of these bags. Through the Oasis Academy network of 52 schools and other contacts we hope to distribute these to newly arrived Ukrainian families. If you know a local Ukrainian family who would like one of these please do get in touch.
Our new hosts, Rebecca Hughes and Glen Lillo, holding the bags of toiletries donated for Ukrainian families.
Project Linus update:
There are still many scraps of material to be cut into squares – large and small for quilting purposes – so do please come and have a go – it is very therapeutic.
Duke of Edinburgh Awards
Congratulations to Millie Bradshaw and Evie Thomson, two of our students who have successfully completed their Duke of Edinburgh community service with us. We have really enjoyed having them to help us and glad that we have also been able to assist them and teach them new skills.
Scrubs for the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability
A big thank you to all those who stepped up to help us get our consignment of rainbow scrubs finished and delivered before we moved. We sent off a load of fully packed bags to our contact there and the feedback was:
THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU
The SCRUBs are AMAZING
We really appreciate them
THANKS AGAIN
We think they were pleased…
Welcome to our new volunteers
We are always looking for more friends to come and help out, you do not have to be able to sew although machinists are especially welcome. Sending a special thanks to those who have just come on board.
Tabards:
The Hub has been working on providing some specifically designed tabards with comic or lighthearted designs for the southwest London vaccination centres who are now offering doses to children. We have handed over a large batch – it has been logistically complicated with our existing workload and the move, finding time and space to hand cut the co-ordinating bias binding, replacing the motor on the industrial machine when it failed, being sent the wrong sized binding foot and so on, but I think you will agree they look tremendous and well worth the persistent effort to complete them if they make the process of vaccination less daunting for the children.
We had lovely feedback from Maggie at the Queen Mary Hospital Vaccination centre:
"Thank you so so much to you and your team for the wonderful work on these children's tabards - they are brilliant and the kids will love them!
...
Rosie, thank you again for all that you do to support the NHS. You have brought a lot of joy to us at Roehampton with your lovely rainbow scrubs!"
Consignment of Scrub Hats for St George’s
We were delighted to be able to send across another load of hats duly finished, folded and packed in bags of 50. Again, if you want to contribute there is always work to be done.
What has Rosie up to recently?
As you may know Rosie was asked to go across to Venice to demonstrate her considerable skills at the recent Michelangelo Foundation - Homo Faber Event 2022. Whilst it was indeed exhausting it was also a wonderful experience for her and her 2 erstwhile helpers – Christo and Raphael. They were full on days of demonstrations and advice in an incredible setting, and at the end Rosie was personally thanked by the organisers for being one of the most popular exhibitors. Just to put that in context this was a position that she was nominated for by her peers as a master craftsman. Well done, Rosie.
Fleur Anderson, our local MP, asked Rosie to come and speak at the House of Parliament for an International Women’s Day Event on 10th May. This invitation was, of course, on the back of her work in running the Scrubbery. Rosie talked about her background and how the Scrubbery came to be, and the talk was very well received.
Baton Relay
Also related to the Scrubbery Rosie was nominated and selected to be a baton bearer in The Queen’s baton relay which is a journey of 7,500 runners across the Commonwealth for the Commonwealth Games. There were 8000 nominations and 2022 people from all over the United Kingdom and Ireland selected to run. The baton has been designed with a 360 degree camera in it to record what the runner sees - it also records the heart beat of the runner. It looks really beautiful and Rosie says “I feel honoured. I run for all of you. Well done all of you.”
Her segment took place in the Jubilee weekend and started under the Olympic Bell in QE2 park, with a choir as backing! Rosie, feeling fragile after a week of moving, asked the choir if they would sing Chariots of Fire so she could run in slow motion. Surrounded by men in black with earpieces, Rosie did run her distance, somewhat to the startlement of the security detail who could be heard remarking “Oh! We have got a runner”, before haring off after her. It should be noted that she took a couple of breaks to spell the support staff, particularly the heavily laden official photographer!
You can find out more about the baton here.
