Growing Ideas

Growing Ideas and Wingrave School Partnership

Kevin McNamara — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:12:56 +0000

Growing Ideas and Wingrave CE Combined School in Bucks have confirmed a curriculum development and support partnership that will run for the rest of the school year (2012-2013). This exciting new project will see Growing Ideas supporting the planning and delivery of the creative curriculum across all of the year groups for the spring and summer terms 2013. The staff at Wingrave will work alongside specialists from Growing Ideas and will be supported while they get the chance to develop new skills and try out new and engaging activities. A collaborative approach to planning, delivery and the development of new learning resources will be facilitated by the use of the new Growing Ideas, Moodle based online learning platform.

Valerie Britnell, headteacher at Wingrave, said ‘This is a fantastic chance for staff and children at Wingrave to learn in a more creative, engaging and effective way. We are all looking forward to developing this relationship’.

Kevin McNamara, Managing Director of Growing Ideas said ‘This is exactly the kind of partnership that we love to work on. It’s an ongoing collaboration over two terms that’s going to benefit the staff and the children at Wingrave long beyond the end of the project and it’s also going to help Growing Ideas to develop and improve’.

If your school is looking for the chance to develop a partnership approach to improving learning for staff and for children please get in touch with us via the Contact page.

Growing Homes 2012 Funding in Place

Kevin McNamara — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:14:33 +0000

Our partnership for our 2012-2013 Growing Homes project is now in place. This is the start of a brand new and very exciting, four-way partnership project between Growing Ideas Ltd, Southern Housing Group, the Isle of Wight Council and the Hampton Trust.

Funding from Southern Housing Group and the Adult and Community Learning Grant Programme as well as in-kind support from the Hampton Trust will lead to the delivery of the 2012-2013 Growing Homes project by Growing Ideas Ltd. The Hampton Trust will be running training for young people in collaboration with Southern Housing Group as an integral part of the project.

This link will take you to the Growing Homes project website – hosted and supported for free by Growing Ideas Ltd.

7 Tonnes of Raised Beds!

Kevin McNamara — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:09:18 +0000

The Growing Ideas raised bed construction team took delivery of nearly 7 tonnes of wood to kick start raised bed delivery for 2012. That’s enough wood for 100 or so brand new beds. As well as installing them as part of our award winning Growing Spaces project we’re taking an increasing number of orders for other public sector organisations and private sector clients too.

If you want to discuss options for raised bed design, installation and support please get in touch via our Contact page – we can provide a bespoke, one-off bed for a quiet corner of your garden, or 200 at a time for a new housing development.

Raised Beds for the Ryde Foyer

Kevin McNamara — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:26:46 +0000

The Growing Ideas raised bed team today worked with members of the Foyer’s Gardening Club in Ryde to install a set of bespoke raised beds in their gardens. The Foyer provides accommodation and support for young people aged between 16-25 who are in need of housing or are homeless. We worked with the young people and taught them as many of the skills associated with designing and constructing the raised beds as possible. They helped with every aspect of the job from initial measuring, cutting the wood and finally filling the beds with soil and compost.

Joe Brown, a raised bed stalwart from Growing Ideas, said ‘It was a great way to spend the day and the young people were keen and threw themselves into the activities. They listened and learnt new skills and certainly weren’t afraid of a bit of hard work!’

Community Training Events

Kevin McNamara — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:25:33 +0000

As part of our ongoing delivery of the Growing Spaces project the Growing Ideas community learning team have delivered a series of hands-on soup making demonstrations at venues across the Isle of Wight. Members of the community got the chance to watch the demonstrations and to find out tasty ways to make use of the vegetables they’ve been growing in their raised beds. They were also given the ingredients for making their own versions of the soup at home.

For more information please go to the Growing Spaces website.

For advice and to get information on partnership delivery of community projects please get in touch with us via the Contact page.

Growing Spaces 2011 Training Events

Kevin McNamara — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:34:48 +0000

Growing Ideas are currently running the autumn community drop-in support sessions for Growing Spaces 2011. Six sessions in locations across the Isle of Wight (Ryde, Newport and Cowes) will include training and advice on healthy cooking, preserving and pickling – all focused on the produce from residents’ own raised bed. Fruit Tree Giveaway Project participants will also be offered the choice of a free fruit tree or bush to plant along with their raised bed.

Growing Spaces is our flagship, award winning community project – Growing Spaces won the National Housing Federation’s What We Are Proud Of 2010 award for the south east. Growing Spaces is delivered by us in partnership with Medina Housing Association – it’s a raised bed project that aims to give people everything they need to start to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Click here for the Growing Spaces page on this website or here for the Growing Spaces project website.

Growing Ideas Wins Growing Homes Funding Bid

Kevin McNamara — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:41:40 +0000

Growing Ideas has been awarded grant funding by the Isle of Wight Council’s Adult and Community Learning Service to deliver a training project in a hostel for the homeless. The project, provisionally named Growing Homes, has been put together in partnership with Southern Housing Group and will achieve the following:

Conversion of an underused and unwelcoming grassy space and portion of car park into a thriving, engaging and beautiful raised bed garden and recreational area;
Delivery of informal, hands-on training sessions for residents throughout 2011-2012 – covering planning, design, construction, planting, plant care, harvesting, preserving and cooking produce, composting and recycling.

As well as the benefits to the residents associated with learning new skills there are many other potential positive aspects to the project. Residents should find that their mental health will improve and they will also be encouraged to live more healthily via:

Growing their own food;
Meeting new people, making friends and developing new hobbies;
Increased outdoor exercise;
Feeding themselves and their families more cheaply, with fresh produce;
Living a more natural, proactive life;
Becoming more environmentally friendly by creating new, garden based habitats and developing a low carbon lifestyle by consuming local produce;
Increasing opportunities to become involved in the local community.

Sessions will be informal, innovative and very much focused on a hands-on, non-threatening approach to the learning. Mark Meredith, Senior Community Regeneration Officer at Southern Housing Group said ‘This is a very exciting project and we’re looking forward to making a difference to the residents and staff at Yarborough House as well as working with Growing Ideas again.’

Raised Beds for Community Centre

Kevin McNamara — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:37:12 +0000

The Growing Ideas raised bed team today installed a selection of raised beds at the Downside Community and Learning Centre, Pan Estate, Newport. The raised beds include a couple of our double-height design, specifically aimed at supporting the disabled and elderly during their gardening. These raised beds were put in as part of our award winning Growing Spaces project. The beds are going to form an important part of the gardening club’s activities as well as producing fruit and veg for sale in the Isobel Centre cafe.

As well as installing raised beds as part of our award winning Growing Spaces project we’re taking an increasing number of orders for other public sector organisations and private sector clients too. If you want to discuss options for raised bed design, installation and support please get in touch via our Contact page – we can provide a bespoke, one-off bed for a quiet corner of your garden, or 200 at a time for a new housing development.

Growing Ideas and the NHS Change4Life campaign

Kevin McNamara — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:00:21 +0000

We ran our first ever day of activities for the Isle of Wight’s Passport2Fun programme. The programme is part of the NHS Change4Life campaign and aims to help children and their families achieve a healthy weight as part of a healthy, active lifestyle. A day of outdoor Survival sessions made sure that everybody concerned got the chance to have fun, eat well and play together as a family. Despite the fairly awful weather we managed to build shelters in the woods, light fires and to do some campfire cooking too – the vegetable soup was definitely the favourite.

Erica Myers, NHS Healthy Weight Advisor and programme lead, said “a healthy lifestyle isn’t all about food; it includes wellbeing, confidence, self esteem and families working together. We had a great time building shelters, cooking soup and making fires! It was a great celebration to the end of the programme.”

Ryde Summer Fun

Kevin McNamara — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:12:58 +0000

Growing Ideas are working in Partnership with Barnardo’s once again this summer to provide a range of educational activities, with a heavy emphasis on fun, in a number of primary schools in Ryde, Isle of Wight. The schools we are collaborating with are Oakfield Primary School, Haylands Primary School and Greenmount Primary School. There are 9 activity days on offer and they include the following themes:

Rockets and Rocket Cars
Solar Power
Wind Energy
Survival

2011 is the second year running that we will have provided Ryde Summer Fun activities for Barnardo’s and we’re looking forward to another successful summer.