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David Lawrence makes a final visit to one of the annual Community Project Award Winners
The first week the ‘Carpenter’s Arms’ opened for its weekly drop-in session in Ashton under Lyne, all the ingredients were ready, the tables set, the volunteers trained and eager to start. No one came. The second week, no one came. The third week, no one came. After a month of high hopes and good intentions, no one had come. In week five, Graham turned up.
It had not been all plain sailing getting to that opening day. The idea that there were many people around the community who wanted – needed – to talk but had no-one to turn to came first of all from retired head-teacher and non-stipendiary URC minister Barbara Plenderleith. Barbara’s idea, which soon found an echo, was for the local churches to create a warm and welcoming place where people could find someone to listen without judging.
Churches Together in Ashton under Lyne liked the sound of the initial idea and called for a more detailed study. But when firm proposals came back, some churches had reservations, not least that they felt too hard-pressed to make a financial commitment. Unwilling to let go of the idea, a band of enthusiasts went ahead with a scheme based on the support of two Anglican, two Methodist and a Baptist church, plus the Albion Fellowship, the single URC pastorate which meets in three different buildings within the town.
The scaled-down scheme was not to be quite as grand as first envisaged. The original idea had called for a drop-in, coffee bar and bookshop, all on non-church premises. The proposal now was to offer a weekly drop-in using premises that would cost as little as possible – and the Charlestown branch of the Albion Fellowship came up trumps, offering use of its buildings for free.
An appeal for volunteers met with a good response and a six week training course in listening skills was arranged, led by a professional social worker. For good measure, some basic first aid training was thrown into the mix and two members who did not think they were cut out for the ‘listening’ role went on a food hygiene course in preparation for running the kitchen.
Posters were distributed around the community in places like doctors’ surgeries, libraries and local authority housing offices; a constitution was agreed.
And then four weeks without a single person responding.
Looking back, veterans of the Carpenter’s Arms regard those first four weeks as a good foundation. While some of the team used the time to knit items to raise funds, the most important outcome was a month without pressure in which the volunteers could get to know each other and bind themselves into a team.
And then came Graham. Graham felt lost – and not without good reason. Both his girlfriend and mother had recently died; he lived alone; he had never worked. He felt as if he had no purpose in life anymore.
By the time he left that day, with a good meal inside him, he had a purpose. Barbara Plenderleith appointed Graham as an ambassador. His task was to make sure as many people as possible knew about the existence of the Carpenter’s Arms. And he did.
secret of success
These days there is no problem with lack of response. From the time the drop-in opens its doors mid-morning to closing time after a leisurely lunch-time, there is steady stream of people. On a typical Tuesday the Carpenter’s Arms will serve around 25 lunches – for the Christmas lunch it was 37. Drinks and biscuits are available the whole time and snacks such as cheese on toast up to 11 am. The lunch itself is the centerpiece of the day. Served at tables of four – with one of the four being a trained listener – the preparation begins a week in advance.
Part of the secret of the success of the Carpenter’s Arms lies in the ingenious way in which menus are prepared. The budget for the year is based on a ‘membership fee’ of £50 from the churches who back the project, together with individual donations. But money is only a part of it – the specially-built store cupboards are crammed with food donated over the year, mostly around harvest time. The task of the catering team, led by Methodist Brenda Brown, is to come up with attractive recipes combining fresh ingredients with the largely tinned foods in the store. The main course will usually be based around fresh meat of some description, prepared at home, with trimmings cooked on the day in the small but modern kitchen. Dessert can be anything from a fruit crumble to ice cream and tinned fruit, again drawing on the store cupboard. So extensive is the store that a special team of volunteers ensures that it is sorted and that food is used in the correct date order. Though the store runs down as summer approaches, at harvest time the gifts will flow in again.
The result of all this is that the Carpenters Arms serves around 25 lunches a week, plus snacks, drinks and biscuits, at no charge to the guests, on a remarkably small budget of around £2400 a year.
warmth and acceptance
Some of those who turn up on a Tuesday are simply lonely. A number of the younger men and women have drug related problems, often referred from the drug clinic which backs onto the premises. Many have been in prison and are pleasantly surprised to find, in the Carpenter’s Arms, somewhere they are welcomed and accepted, without anything being expected in return.
Over the years the sense of warmth and acceptance has wrought a noticeable change in the attitudes of guests. In the early days the atmosphere was often quiet and people kept their heads down, not wanting to talk or attract attention. These days there is an easy familiarity – the heads are up and people meet each other’s eyes as if to say ‘We are at home here’. Volunteers even notice, over the years, the way guests – who are often used to the harsh rules of the street – have softened in the way they talk to each other. A recent innovation, which has gone down well, has been grace before the lunch – one guest insisted on taking part, working out a shared grace with a minister.
The training, everyone acknowledges, helped immensely in setting the right tone. Even so, keeping the atmosphere right still requires vigilance. Recently the size of the volunteer team has increased and there has been a tendency to speed up the service to the tables, notes Brenda Brown. Soon, she hopes, there will be a team meeting to remind everyone that speed is not the aim – keeping things leisurely gives people time to sit back, relax and talk.
a place for everyone
The Carpenter’s Arms shows many of the marks of church community projects that succeed.
First and foremost it is based on the perception of a real need in the local community. URC minister Alan Wickens, who was involved in the start-up the project while a student training for the ministry and later returned to Ashton under Lyne after a time in Dorset, sees the project as a vindication of the decision to maintain a separate congregation in Charlestown rather than combine all the town’s three fellowships into one worshipping centre. It is work done in a particular community which relies on there being a Christian presence.
Secondly it is practical. The Carpenter’s Arms no doubt has its own problems to face – not least the fact that dry rot has been found in the building at Charlestown – but it does not live on the constant financial knife edge of some more ambitious projects. It is work well-tailored to the relatively limited resources available and it makes remarkable use of those resources.
Last, but not least, it is based around a committed (and increasing) core of volunteers and, though the scope of the project might seem limited, provides a variety of roles to suit people’s talents. Not everyone feels up to relaxing with someone living on the streets and struggling with a drug problem but the team of listeners can only do their work because they are backed by kitchen workers, servers, stores supervisors and other helpers. There is a place for everyone and an atmosphere that clearly makes it a pleasure to turn up at nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning.
David Lawrence was Editor of Reform from 1996 to 2006
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The 2006 Community Project Awards are
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