An Even Better Arbourthorne was a project that took place over four years. The project was a collaboration with Arbourthorne Community Primary School, the Centre for Innovative Volunteering and the University of Sheffield and funded by a community lottery grant. The project aimed to develop long-term opportunities to build a better future for Arbourthorne Community Primary School’s children, their families and the wider Arbourthorne Community. We worked together to find solutions to address poverty and create an even better life for people in the community. We developed the role of volunteers and built on the school’s strong culture of working in partnership with their families. Partners and parents used a creative, problem-solving approach and collaborated to share skills and talents.
We explored the interests and challenges that the local community faces and then agreed on priorities and worked collaboratively to address these needs. For example, we have developed projects to support food growing and outdoor learning and then distributed home-grown produce to local families. We have also sought to address some aspects of food poverty and played our part in helping to reduce food waste by establishing the Community Fridge (a place to donate and receive surplus food, which is open to all), offering Family Feast (a fortnightly community meal cooked by volunteers using school kitchen facilities), set up the Red Robin Fun and Food Club (a club where children and parents learn about gardening and cooking healthy food) and developed slow cooker courses for parents, using slow cookers loaned from our slow cooker library.
The project was exceptionally rewarding and allowed us to bring our creative thinking and problem-solving skills, can-do attitude and a little theatricality into the mix! It was a privilege to work so closely with staff, pupils and parents of Arbourthorne Community Primary School.
