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Millie’s Trust wins first place in Vernon Community Awards 2020

Vernon Building Society has announced this year’s winners of the Vernon Community Awards, sharing its £10,000 pot among 14 hugely deserving local organisations. The Vernon Community Awards celebrate Stockport’s amazing charity and not-for-profit sector and has donated over £80,000 to local good causes over the last eight years. This year Vernon had 66 entries, and the 14 finalists were chosen for their support of communities in Stockport and surrounding areas.

Alexander Deakin, Marketing and Brand Manager, – pictured below – presented the building society’s first digital awards ceremony, and said: “This year’s awards were extra special, with the pandemic making it especially hard for organisations to fundraise. All 14 of our finalists are so deserving and we wish we could have celebrated their achievements in person. That wasn’t possible this year, so we did the next best thing. We screened a virtual awards ceremony with all the glitz, glam and Stockport spirit we could muster – dedicated to our amazing winners.”

Accolade for Where the Light Gets In

Vernon launch Christmas Toy Appeal

The Vernon has launched its Christmas Toy Appeal to help children supported by Cheadle-based charity, Together Trust.

The online fundraiser has been redesigned this year to be Covid-secure, while allowing people to help fund toys for vulnerable children across the North West. Instead of donating actual toys, a website has been set up for donations, and Vernon has pledged to contribute an additional £5 for every £5 or more donated (up to £5,000) to boost the number of Christmas presents that will be purchased for local kids in the appeal. Together Trust supports young people, adults and families with autism, a learning disability, physical disability, complex needs and emotional and behavioural difficulties. Last year over 1,100 brand new toys were donated across Vernon’s branches in the building society’s first ever toy appeal – and it’s hoping to do even better in 2020.

How you can help: Visit www.wewillhelp.co.uk to donate and, for every £5 or more you give, Vernon will match it with an additional £5 (up to a maximum donation of £5,000).

Merseyway Workshop set to open

News Accolade for Where the Light Gets In

Following the recent announcement that Stockport’s most acclaimed restaurant, Where The Light Gets In had received the 3 AA Rosette award we had a chat with Sam Buckley, owner and head chef and were immediately surprised to hear that he hadn’t been expecting the accolade. “No, not at all.” He insisted, “There are a few channels with Rosettes, you can send out and get training off them and things like that and bigger restaurants will always contact them and say look, we’re open come and see us, which you can’t do with Michelin at all but Rosette do have that communication channel.”

Sam was also quick to highlight that they had not actively pursued any awards or titles as it was never a high priority for him or his team to get that classification but he remains extremely proud to have gained the award and agreed it is a great thing for Stockport to have such an award associated locally.

During recent times, Sam and his staff have been expending a great deal of effort on a feeding local kids initiative. Sam was “enraged” about the government’s decision to not offer free school meals during half term and this led to the restaurant feeding local people who were in need. “We’d make 150 baked potatoes and offer them with a new topping every day.” These included chilli, ratatouille and more. Sam is full of praise for the council’s efforts (with a special mention for Kathryn Rees) at mobilising and getting Heaton Norris Community Centre to help with the delivery and distribution of the freshly baked potatoes.

In the future Sam has plans to start cooking lessons but in the current environment that of course is not possible. He explained his next idea of “targeting a few families at a time for six months, maybe one Sunday a month” to help share his culinary expertise and help them develop the skills of cooking. He emphasised wanting to “sit down, eat and open a bottle of wine” to share positive experiences with local people who need it most.

Sam is “well aware that [his] restaurant is not fixing the food problem at the bottom, so being able to help and getting involved in the community is great”. This is something he wrestles with personally and giving back is something high on his agenda for the future.

When selecting ingredients Sam prioritises sustainability at the top of the list. He works with farmers across the country to handpick and curate produce that matches not only his environmentally conscious principles but also those of the customers that visit. “We work directly with farmers,” he told us, “the first thing for us is ethical and regenerative farming and the quality that comes with it”.

Sam puts special emphasis on the energy use in food production as this is a large indicator on how sustainable food really is - he believes the food miles argument is currently misunderstood in the public sector and that a focus needs to be redirected to production.

This led us to discuss The Landing - a community style allotment created by the WTLGI team on top of a Merseyway car park! The aim here is to grow food, use it in the restaurant and involve local people in food preparation from farm to table.

At the time of our chat, Sam and his team planned to have a four week rest, taking some space to reflect and to spend more time on The Landing.

In more relaxed times, Sam is perfectly happy spending his spare time in the town, “When I’m In Stockport I’m in SK1 Records nearly everyday, it is an amazing record shop. I love Plantshop, I love Rare Mags, I love these new businesses that are taking a chance and have a bit of edge to them. I also love the Arden Arms for a pint and a sandwich”

As we know it is currently a difficult time for all businesses especially those in hospitality but Sam’s optimism about the future is something that all of us can get behind.

Merseyway Workshop set to open

Set to open in January, the Merseyway Workshop is described by the people behind it as: “A community focused, inspiring place for innovation and collaboration. A DIY-style hub on Stockport’s pedestrianised high-street.” Both parties are used to running workshops in their own right and such happening in the upstairs space, once that area has been refurbished.

The Workshop will be a collaboration between community focussed design team Easy Peel Studio and social enterprise Plastic Shed and will see a 600+sq ft former shoe shop transformed by the team into a free and open space where the local community can make, learn, share and inspire.

By coincidence both Easy Peel and Plastic Shed were looking for a high street retail space and both were shown around some empty spaces by the same person at CBRE. When both parties realised what the other with the team envisaging events that might include ceramics or music. which has our values on it, informing people of what we’re doing and

was planning to do, a collaboration was inevitable.

To get the ball rolling, the team launched a funding drive on Spacehive and were amazed to see their target of £2,988 reached in two days with an over-funding which will enable them to run more workshop experiences when the unit opens.

The Workshop concept is that part of the ground floor space will be an exhibition area showcasing a variety of things which will change each month. The team already have a list of local artists and craftspeople point, into which they would like the people of Stockport to deposit the

who are interested in showcasing their work in the space.

Another area will showcase products people can buy. On their own website Easy Peel have traditionally sold a variety of products crafted from into something useful - will begin by selling aprons made from old vinyl banners that they have collected from places like The Lowry. Such banners are very hard to recycle and would otherwise go to landfill. They will also be making things from shredded plastic which can be melted together to create a very workable product.

events will be a key feature of the community element of the Merseyway site. They see the ideal situation being that there are constant drop-in activities running so people could come in off the street and take part in something either low cost or free. And at the same time they could sign up for more in-depth workshops which would be Those workshops would be half a day or a day long and they might involve something such as designing and making your own stool.

Other local artists will also be welcome to run their workshops here, As they worked on completing the Workshop, they were also taking steps to find out the sort of things that local people would want from the Workshop. In much the same way, Easy Peel’s Tom explains “Our first exhibition will be interactive, we’ll be creating a blank canvas why we’re doing it and encouraging people to add to it. We’d like it to become a public mural over time. It might even be colour coded...”

An early recycling initiative at the Workshop is the bottle cap donation wood, while Plastic Shed - whose raison d’etre is turning plastic waste

detritus of their lockdown nights in. Who knows what they might be turned into!