Cafe Culture

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Limited Edition - March 2013 www.cafeculturewakefield.co.uk

“Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us.Life is so endlessly delicious.”

― Ruth Reichl

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Introduction by Dr Andrew Furber 4

About Café Culture by Judi Alston 6

The Place, Airedale 8

The T Bar, Kinsley 20

No. 26 - Sheila’s Diner, Portobello 32

Addy’s Café, Knottingley 44

Acknowledgements 58

Contents

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IntroductionI am delighted to be able to write a few words about the Café Culture project funded through Wakefield Council Creative Partners, Wakefield and District Housing and Public Health.

Café Culture is a vibrant, engaging multimedia project set in Airedale, Knottingley, Portobello and Kinsley. Café Culture uses the arts to demonstrate and promote all that community cafés offer as healthy, safe, cultural spaces.

The need for such spaces within our communities has never been greater. I am writing this foreword in the wake of the horsemeat scandal and with daily headlines about the challenge of obesity. Many people living in the district struggle to buy affordable, healthy food. The stress of living through the current recession does not help.

In this context community cafés can offer hope. Many people have learned through their visits to these cafés that healthy food can be prepared quickly and cheaply. Whilst processed foods can

seem attractive and quick, in reality they are often unhealthy and more expensive than preparing your own meal. Community café provide a safe space where people can admit how little they know about preparing food and learn the basics. The Café Culture project captures some of this development in a way that can be celebrated – individuals gaining new skills and confidence, families becoming more resilient and communities taking control.

Cooking skills and a better understanding of food is not enough. Many people lack confidence. One in four people will experience mental health problems during their lifetime. Low level stress and depression are very common and can be extremely disabling. Again community cafés provide that safe place where confidence can be built, social isolation overcome and friendships developed. The importance of developing wellbeing rather than just physical health in our communities cannot be overstated.

“The need for such spaces within our communities has never been greater.”

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Research tells us there are five ways to wellbeing:

• Connect… With the people around you. • Be active… Step outside. Exercising makes you feel good.• Take notice… Be curious. Savour the moment• Keep learning… Try something new. • Give… Do something nice for a friend, or a stranger.

Community cafés can help with all of these. But understanding the difference that has been made can be difficult when our wellbeing is necessarily subjective. This is where the Café Culture project can capture the impact and applaud the achievements of individuals and communities.

I hope you enjoy this book and that it encourages you to find out about and visit the community café in your area.

Dr Andrew FurberDirector of Public HealthWakefield Council

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Café CultureCafé Culture is a media arts project focused on four community cafés in the Wakefield District. Through film making, storytelling, photography/digital imagery and song, a vivid creative picture of what makes a successful community café and their unique place within each community has been captured. Participants of Café Culture are café regulars, staff and volunteers, community activists and agency representatives.

Each of the cafés is based in a Priority Area defined by Wakefield Together as being in the 10% most deprived areas of the district. Agencies are working hard to reduce inequalities and improve the quality of life at a neighbourhood level.

The Place, Airedale; No. 26 - Sheila’s Diner, Portobello; Addy’s Café, Knottingley; and the T-bar, Kinsley and Fitzwilliam Learning and Community Centre are four very different community spaces. The way they run, the length of operation and the size vary considerably, but what links them together is their offering to the local community and the loyal customer base in each setting.

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Community cafés provide a day to day safe space, a place where people feel that they belong; supportive relationships and social networks are cultivated. The cafés also have a positive impact on their communities; they are a hub, a vital meeting place, somewhere to come together, to share the ups and downs of life or just to take time out from the rest of the day. The cafés offer a reduction in social isolation; provide volunteering opportunities, local jobs and skills development.

The community cafés featured in Café Culture all share the idea of providing healthy eating options at a low cost. Encouraging residents through the door to spend locally increases the local economy with some of the cafés now looking to source locally and increase their range of home-made dishes.

Café are great spaces to hold arts projects as they are a focal point for the community, a place to celebrate local heritage, explore and take part in culture and arts activities. Cafés can be transformed into gallery space, cinemas and performance areas. The support from local agencies working in these communities adds value and sustainability to the cafés. Wakefield has a growing number of community cafés; this is a great addition to the creative and social offer of the District and long may the cafés continue and thrive.

Judi AlstonCreative DirectorOne to One Development Trust

“What links these cafés together is their offering to the local community and the loyal customer base in each setting.”

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The Place AiredaleAddressThe Airedale CentreThe SquareAiredaleCastlefordWF10 3JJ

Phone: 07981 815337Email: [email protected]: www.healthyeatingandlifestyle.org.ukTwitter: @healthyeatnlifeFacebook: facebook.com/pages/ Healthy-Eating-and-Lifestyle-Ltd-HEAL/184323754931986

Main contactsDebra Atkinson & Clair Mason

Café OpenedMarch 2011

Current Staffing and ManagementNo. of staff: 3 full time, 2 part timeNo. of volunteers: 7 Managed by: HEAL (Heathly Eating And Lifestyle), a social enterprise

Ethos“We have a management ethos that we should work hard but that work should be rewarding and nourishing to everyone involved in the organisation, whether paid staff, volunteers, partner organisations, customers, in fact, anyone that we come into contact with. This came about from us both being in work where it was so horrible that you woke up crying in a morning, we vowed that we would create an organisation where we do our absolute best to never make anyone feel like we had, to create a space where people are valued and respected for who they are, where everyone feels a part of the organisation.” - Clair Mason

Two top tips for running a Community Café1. Go and visit other projects to see how they run2. Don’t be precious, share knowledge and understanding

“It’s made my life lovely volunteering here. I love working here and helping out. I don’t know where I’d be without this lovely café.”

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Signature DishFlapjack (serves 15)

250g butter or margarine6 tablespoons of brown sugar3 tablespoons of honey500g oats (add a few more if needed)4oz of any dried fruit5oz of glace cherries or fruit (banana, cranberries) chopped with a sprinkle of cocoa powder

Melt the butter, sugar and honey until dissolved, then add in the oats and fruit, mix well.

Line a baking tray with grease proof paper and press the mixture in firmly, make sure it goes into all the corners and is firm to the touch.

Bake at Gas mark 6 / 400f / 200c for around 20-25 mins or until golden brown.

Cut into slices while it’s still hot but allow to fully cool before taking out of the tray.

“It’s the hub of the community; more and more people are coming to use it.”

“You don’t get this atmosphere anywhere else; it’s a good place to relax.”

Summer, autumn, spring or winter

Between the Library and the Family Centre

Gateway to services for body and mind

Nourishment of the pleasantest kind

With a lump of f ap-jack, profoundly fulf lling

The staff in the café at the Place await.

Arts and crafts with friends, or just chilling

Every kind of sustenance served up on a plate

The Place to meet, the Place to eat

The place to get you back on your feet.

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Debra, one of the two sister-partners who run the café, is eloquently clear about their shared vision. They want the café to be a central hub for the whole community. In an aside guaranteed to discomfort the most cynical commentator she adds, ‘everything we do, we do with love,’ yet the overall atmosphere at The Place displays no hint of preachiness or revivalist meeting enthusiasm. Speak to the sisters, listen to their back-stories, witness their day-to-day commitment to the vision and you are soon convinced. They mean everything they say.

Drop In

When you feel yourself alone

When you feel it to the bone

When you want good company

This is where you need to be

Every season of the year

You can f nd us gathered here Side by side and face to face

Round the tables at the place

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GroupsAiredale Friends

The ‘Airedale Friends’ group sums up that spirit at work. Group-members can be found on any day, tucking into occasional breakfasts, dinners, or snacking quietly in between appointments. Monday afternoons, they meet together formally as a group to enjoy a range of activities; arts and crafts, ‘knit and natter,’ cooking, making story-sacks, decorations for the café walls, Halloween and Bonfire night paraphernalia, Christmas wreaths, armchair exercise for those with restricted mobility, as well as encouraging each other to move on, for example into adult education courses.

Joan runs the group on a voluntary basis. She describes her own journey out of depression and debilitating obesity. In a single year she has shed eight stones. She is now an advocate of healthy eating and drinking as well as regular exercise. Joan wants to share what’s possible. Building up the confidence of vulnerable members and trying ‘to get folk out of their shells.’

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“Coming here has really made me happy, it’s colourful, clean, and it’s beautiful.”

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The café is able to nurture other groups that spring up in response to community needs. One determined gathering of young mothers assembles in the café for mutual support around issues of breast-feeding.

The women articulate the difficulties involved in feeding successfully, particularly when young mothers are isolated, or unsupported by family or partners.

Group-members offer each other advice, reassurance and encouragement. Growing confidence is broadening the agenda into more wide-ranging discussions of women’s roles and status, including the media’s role in undercutting ‘trust’ in women’s sense of themselves doing what nature intended.

Mums’ Group“All my friends are here and I made most of them here.”

This is where we want to be This is our community Warmth and welcome guarantee Friends in need are friends indeed

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After School Club

Photo

Photo

Kids are piling in from school

Mams are with them as a rule

In the Place’s vestibule

T’Place is ace for making stuff

In the twinkling of an eye

Tables two or three feet high

Fifteen hundred things to try


Witches’ hats as black as ink

Will her hair be red or pink?

Give the xylophone a plink


Wind your sticky tape around

Round and round and round and round

Make that crackly, sprackly sound


Every kid can innovate

Improvise and re-create

Ask the mams, they think it’s great


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“We all have the same aims with our projects but rather than working in isolation we are pulling our resources together and its getting results.”

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The café offers an encouraging environment, warm, welcoming and intimate. They organise regular sessions with NHS health and wellbeing activators and other outreach workers across a range of health issues. Traditional diets are challenged. Carbs, proteins and fresh fruit have entered the general conversation. Everything cooked in the café or available on the menu reflects those agreed priorities. It is no coincidence that the children’s story-sack created by the Airedale Friends Group turns out to be that celebrated hymn of praise to healthy and nourishing eating, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar.’ An ‘Eat Well’ award certificate sits framed on the wall behind the counter. Café workers are all proud of this achievement.

The ‘Eat Well’ plate mounted on the wall to the left of the serving area, modestly acknowledging that collective success makes unmistakably visible The Place’s overarching ethos, as well as paying more than lip service to the group’s developing prowess in arts and crafts!

Partnerships

“People often feel more comfortable talking to PCSOs here, they get to know us and see a friendly face. It makes us more approachable.”

Eat well, move more, live longer Spread the message deeper, stronger Change 4 Life workers agree ‘Healthy’ means connect all three

This is our communal space D

edicated to the Place

Creativity for all Represented wall to wall

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Aspirations

We always saw the café as our first project, our company is called HEAL, Healthy Eating and Lifestyle Ltd. Our aims are to increase the health and wellbeing of people in the Wakefield District and surrounding areas. We would like to develop the café and have some more things going on in the café itself, new groups, some health and wellbeing courses, and more arts and crafts sessions. We’d like to look at maybe a creative writing group, which being based in the library would link in really well.

We are looking at a number of projects based around emotional health and wellbeing and are in the process of developing a project around life skills and communication skills for people with learning disabilities. Food and nutrition will play a big part in all that we do. We are really excited about what the future holds for HEAL and The Place.

- Debra Atkinson

“I’d like to see the Café grow to be a bigger place to reach to more of the community.”

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Hope is the glimmer,

The glistening,

The quiet soul listening.

It’s the visceral churning,

The butterflies,

The yearning.

It’s the dreams coming alive,

Even when locked deep inside.

It’s the embers.

It’s the phoenix.

It’s me.

© Clair Mason 2012

Photo

Face to face friends, face to face Face to face friends at the Place

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The T BarKinsley & Fitzwilliam Learning and Community CentreAddressKinsley & Fitzwilliam Learning and Community CentreWakefield RoadKinsleyPontefractWF9 5BP

Phone: 01977 610 931Email: [email protected]: facebook.com/kinsley.fitzwilliam

Website: www.kfcommunitycentre.co.uk

Main contactMichelle Rayner

Café OpenedSeptember 2002

Current Staffing and ManagementNo. of staff: 2 full timeNo. of volunteers: work placement opportunitiesManaged by: Kinsley & Fitzwilliam Learning and Community Centre Ltd (not for profit organisation)

EthosOur ethos is to provide a community café where people have access to good food at low prices and can meet and make friends in the community

Two top tips for running a Community Café1. Give people what they want to eat but try and prepare/cook it more healthily2. Be realistic and not expect to make a profit

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Signature DishChicken Fajita

ChickenPeppersOnionsTortilla Wraps

Place chicken in pan and fry.When cooked place peppers and onion in pan. Sauté until soft.Then add fajita spice mix and stir all together.Add fajita to a warm tortilla wrap and put together with a crispy side salad.Serve with a salsa sauce.

The café’s won its ‘Eat Well’ award For dinners regularly highly scored ‘What they got today chalked up on the board?’ Even the babies are licking their lips

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“The café has grown over the last few years, it’s better now, more food and more space.”

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Drop InThe café sits at the crux of a network of busy intersecting activities. The Community Centre hosts a whole range of different educational, training and health-related developmental activities. Posters and adverts on notice boards publicise maths, English, child-care, office administration, ICT, plumbing, floristry, support teacher certificates, retail team-leader and volunteering courses. Sexual health and wellbeing check-ups rub shoulders with Regional Growth Forum consultations and ‘Homemade cakes for every occasion.’

Young mothers taking babies for doctor’s appointments, some with kids in the Red Roof nursery, or already in school take advantage of breakfast. Others meet up for a ‘cuppa and a cal’ before the Wednesday ‘parent and toddler,’ or Granny Ann’s ‘Mamz, Nanz, and Kidz’group.

Local workers or passers-by in need of sustenance park themselves alongside students, participants or spectators. What they all have in common is the café’s food and drink.

Everyone cites the atmosphere, the welcoming environment, the economical price, the quality of the food, and the cheery company, as reasons for choosing the café.

Meals are consciously ‘healthy.’ Winning a ‘Good Food Award’ has filled the staff with pride and lunch every day is cooked with the same aspiration, that shared commitment to ‘quality.’ A culture of mutual banter is the only thing in this café hanging in the air.

Some people with learning disabilities, one in a wheel-chair, come for Keep Fit. They participate also in the Thursday morning ‘walking group.’ Time in the café is part of the whole therapeutic experience.

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“This centre and the café is the best thing that ever happened to this community.”

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Groups

“Doing the photos has been good, I’m giving mine to my husband as he’s serving in Afghanistan so he has nice pictures of the kids.”

“The group is friendly and fun. Since the café’s been extended we can get our pushchairs in and meet up beforehand.”

Mamz, Granz and Kidz Group

“The grans have all got a tale to tell ‘It brings some o’ t’ little uns out o’ their shell’

It works with some of the mams as well As they start to unwind if not relax

Cos kids always know which buttons to press

It’s a bit of a breather, more or less In between occasional heart attacks

Meet in the café, then join the troop Of the Mamz and Nanz and Kidz group, whoo!

Give us a celebratory whoop

Well you can’t say it’s totally void of stress

For the Mamz and Nanz and Kidz group, yeah”

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Tuesday and Thursday mornings the café serves as a waiting room for those queuing to see the ‘Helping Hands’ welfare rights advisors. To speak to those waiting is a chastening experience. Some arrive as early 8:30am for the 10am start. Tickets are collected first-come first-served from the office, and often people are still sitting there two hours later, without a murmur of complaint or frustration.

Some cases are immensely complicated. Welfare legislation is intimidating. The forms individuals have to fill in to pursue their entitlements are increasingly impenetrable.

What you do hear is fulsome praise for the two ‘Helping Hands’ workers, who almost unbelievably offer their energies and skills on a completely voluntary basis and provide a service beyond value.

Helping Hands

People speak openly about ways they’ve been helped to confront seemingly insuperable problems. Lots of teas and coffees are drunk. Modest breakfasts consumed.

‘It makes you feel so bad about yourself,’ one woman says,’ when you’ve worked all your life and never claimed a penny, then when you need help they (society) make you feel like a scrounger.’

Others suffer depression. Some finished on ill health after work-place accidents. One hasn’t left the house for three years.

Her Union will fight her case but she can’t bear the thought of completing the copious forms. Everyone fears the forms. ‘Lots of people can’t walk without crutches,’ says a man with a stick,’ that’s what Helping Hands is, a crutch for them that needs it.’

“A lot of people feel suicidal. They often say ‘what have I got to live for?

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Walking Group“The café is our base, we start and end our walks here. Good social time with a cuppa.”

Health Trainers helped set up the Walking Group and got the policies and procedures sorted out. The group now operates as an independent voluntary group.

There’s a lot of mental illness and depression in this area. Groups like the walking group bring people together and get them out doing healthy activity.

“I’ve met a nice group of friends coming to this group, it’s so much more than just a walking group”.

“Walking on your own can be a bit lonely, I’ve always walked a lot, but the way things are now I feel safer in a group, it gets you out and I like the chat.”

“Whatever problems peoples’ got, it just gets your joints going and gives you fresh air. It’s just brilliant.”

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“We all have a bit of a banter and get on with each other, it’s like a family.”

The café expansion was funded through Coalfield Regeneration Trust, Public Health, Big Lottery and Hemsworth Town Council. The money was all for capital spend i.e. the building works although the Public Health money had specific outputs in terms of healthy eating.

The T Bar is used by lots of services like Wakefield Council who meet people in the café as it’s an informal way of talking to the community.

Partnerships

The Centre offers a diverse range of courses and activities and the café is an important part of what’s on offer. It feeds the children in the nursery, there are 22 staff, 3 managed workspaces and lots of students.

“People round here call a spade a spade, there’s a friendliness in these two villages that you don’t get elsewhere, it’s a way of life.”

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“All I want for my children is for them to be safe and happy.”

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Aspirations“The café is a vital resource, it’s a warm and welcoming place. It brings people together it’s as simple as that.”

We want to encourage people to eat more healthily by choosing the healthier food options available on the café menu.

We’ve already outgrown the new bigger café, so we would like to make it bigger again and expand it further. We’d like to make it visible from the road so people passing can see it better and will be more inclined to call in.

We’d like to do things in holiday times such as projects and activities that draw more people in, so it’s not just a café it’s a project area.

- Michelle Rayner

“It’s a happy village and people are really good; we need to keep it nice for the kids growing up and the Café helps keep bringing people together.”

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No.26 - Rainbow Café & Sheila’s DinerPortobello

Address26 Duke of York AvenuePortobelloWakefieldWF2 7BY

Telephone01924 249 598

Main contactsSally Martin – General EnquiriesSheila Brook – Sheila’s Diner

Opened July 2005

Current Staffing and Management No. of staff: 0No. of volunteers (Sheila’s Diner): 3Managed by: Portobello Community Forum, a small charity set up to give a voice from the Portobello estate and help co-ordinate the work of public and voluntary sector agencies working in the area.

EthosA true community café - a space for any community activities that promote healthy eating and food where people can come together and feel safe. No 26 is here to respond to what people want and need as and when it arises.

Two top tips for running a Community Café1. Local people have a big part in it2. An inspiring manager who can use the space creatively

That’s the story, healthy eating Note the café’s brand new seating Courtesy o’ t’ Network meeting Down at Sheila’s Diner

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“Portobello is a close knit community, everybody knows everybody and people look out for each other.”

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Brief HistoryA short row of shops in the middle of Duke of York Avenue houses what used to be ‘The Rainbow Café.’ Set up by the Portobello Community Forum to help address local problems and create a focal point on the estate, the café has gone through many phases and has been home to a range of activities.

Each summer Soul Portobello is a highlight on the estate. This week-long festival brings together a celebration of community and stakeholder organisations. Each year the event has grown and ends with a ‘Portobello’s Got Talent’ event.

In 2012/13 the café was re-branded ‘No 26’. It’s becoming a hub for different projects and groups. Tuesdays and Thursdays are particularly popular, when the café transforms into Sheila’s Diner.

Change 4 Life means healthy food Food for every kind of mood For even them with attitude

Here at Sheila’s Diner

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Sheila’s DinerSheila is the major figure in a small team of volunteers still in the early days of defining what the Diner can do with and for the local community. ‘Healthy eating’ as a first step towards ‘wellbeing’ seems to sum it up.

The café works closely with NHS Healthy Eating worker Bev to devise practical ways of spreading the message, including cooking sessions on days when the Diner is not open, for ‘older people,’ and ‘Families,’ as well as after-school cooking for children.

Sheila’s ambition is to go to Graceland. Her passion for Elvis is revealed in the café’s décor, Presley portraits, glittery musical notes and shimmery stars peppering the walls.

Sheila’s colleagues in the kitchen are Annie, and Annie’s grandma Iris, known to everyone as Gran. Gran’s scones are legendary

The backdrop to every activity is the chirrup and warble of kids’ voices. A quarter of the room is a play-area. Children are not inconveniences here, but part of the communal furniture. The toing and froing of kids between adults makes it difficult to figure out who belongs to whom.

Sheila has been a foster-carer for years. One foster-son did the Elvis pictures. The Diner is an extension of that fostering.

‘It’s like the young lads who hang about outside the shops because there’s nowhere else for them to meet. When I go to Asda to buy the stuff for the café, they’re here straight away to help you in with it.’

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“We’re delivering lots of different sessions here from healthy eating, to learning how to cook, for different ages and different groups.”

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Sheila’s Diner‘It’s t’way you’re brought up that does it,’ adds Sheila, ‘and how you bring your own kids up.’

‘Beller-dwellers,’ locals call themselves. A strong sense of communal togetherness is obvious. Café users will tell you.

“Outsiders think that Portobello’s a terrible place but that’s because they don’t know it!”

Some of the lads eat at the café. You can get a Sunday dinner midweek.

“Sheila’s is fantastic. Where else can you get food that’s cheap for this quality? They do family meals that folk can afford. They do classes to get kids eatin’ healthy. People han’t got much money round here, and this is brilliant.”

“Without this we’d just walk by each other in the street and say ‘hello’.”

Some of the lads wear hoodies and conform to those stereotypes easily applied to young men from many other estates or urban settings. Scary if you are of that mind. Outside the café is their collective meeting place, the geographical heart of the estate, where the summer ‘Soul Portobello’ festival is held. Unsurprisingly, there have been dialogues with Community Bobbies.

“It’s like a big family, here. It’s a close community. Everybody knows everybody, and they look out for each other. Not like big communities, where old folk get mugged. None o’ t’ old ladies here get mugged. We look out for ‘em. It’s us they ask to cut their grass!”

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“We shop better now and pick things with low fat or no sugar.”

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“People outside make out Portobello is bad but it isn’t really, it’s changed. But the bad reputation from years ago has stuck.”

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PartnershipsA lot of agencies work on the estate and The Portobello Community Forum encourages partnerships with a range of organisations including: NHS Wakefield District, South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Wakefield Council, Groundwork, Wakefield and District Housing.

The Forum also works with local voluntary sector organisations and schools.

No 26 and Sheila’s Diner provide a great place for Portobello Community Forums’ partners to meet and run projects. Work through the NHS is continually developing and the café is now part of the Community Café Network. The range of groups and activities running at No 26 changes and is responsive to local need and opportunities.

Some outsiders choke and scoff

Bureaucrats will smirk and cough Partnership is paying off Here at Sheila’s Diner

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“We’re delivering lots of different sessions here from healthy eating, to learning how to cook, for different ages and different groups.”

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AspirationsWe’d like to secure the future of the café and increase its links with the local schools, planning is underway with both the local primary and secondary schools. No 26 has the potential to be a training kitchen for groups and a great place for families to meet and eat. We’d like to encourage younger peoples’ groups to use it as a space to meet so we can give a voice to that generation.

- Sally Martin

Children’s cooking after school Friday’s families as a rule Counting calories is cool

Here at Sheila’s Diner

Learn to cook the healthy way Well, even if you’re going grey Monday’s ‘Older People’s Day’

Down at Sheila’s Diner

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Addy’s CaféKnottingley

AddressThe Old Quarry Adventure Playgroundc/o 93 Sycamore AvenueKnottingleyWF11 0PJ

Phone: 01977 670953Email: [email protected]: facebook.com/theaddyknottingleyTwitter: @TheAddyWarwick

Main contactHolly Ellis

Café OpenedOctober 2011

Current Staffing and ManagementNo. of staff: 1 part time paid worker serves healthy snacks to children after school 5 days a week. No. of volunteers: 3 volunteers who are hands on in the kitchen preparing luncheon club meals for the elderly and food for events and meetings. Managed by: The Old Quarry Adventure Playground (charity)

EthosLocal, passionate, committed staff and volunteers who have the drive to provide great snacks and meals for a hungry community from the ages of 0 – 99! Local people enjoy and benefit from affordable and nutritious food in a welcoming environment. The café is a place where food is served after school, people come to meet, exchange ideas, share skills and utilise talents. We cater for all and involve anyone who has a passion for development and working on our estate. The café is a place where we can appreciate and inspire one another!

Two top tips for running a Community Café1, Be Friendly, engage with the community, consult and make sure it’s to everyone’s taste – (Michelle, café playworker) 2. Come and get it while it’s hot! – (Anna volunteer cook)

“It’s a great kitchen and we want to do a lot more in it, but it’s early days and going well.”

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Signature DishAnna’s Scones

6 oz self raising flour3 oz sugar3 oz stork margarineBreadcrumb together with your handsAdd some milk and mix in until it is a stiff consistencyAdd in cherries, sultanas, other fruit or cheeseDivide them up and brush them with milk to make them go brownPut in a warm oven turning up the heat to 180-200 degrees c Enjoy especially fresh from Anna’s oven

It’s a caring kind of caff The friendliest of places Where people know, to laugh Takes the wrinkles from your faces

So park your skin and bones And sign up for a luncheon The sweetest little scones And a sausage like a truncheon

“It’s the food andthe company - justbrilliant!”

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“We’ve recently started trying out healthier food options for the playground sessions, Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes are good fun and the kids are liking them.”

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Brief HistoryThe café at the Addy is an undertaking brave in its determination and chastening in its accomplishment. The café offers its services at key times a week, these currently include when the Playground is open for sessions with children and young people, for the weekly luncheon club, to provide hospitality at regular resident/ agency meetings and for functions. The café is in the early stages of its development.

Young people worked through the Café Culture project to name and brand the new café.

There’s fry up in the pan There’s tea bags in the caddy The kettle’s always on

In the café at the Addy

“If this weren’t here the youthie would be rubbish. Sometimes we get food and cook stuff.”

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“In 2011/12 we got funding through Reaching Communities and then Big Local and UnLtd to develop our kitchen as a community café. It’s going great and has totally taken off.”

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More specifically focused than some other ventures the Addy has dedicated itself to cooking and serving a healthy and fulsome meal to older people. The café can be found, one afternoon each week, in the big room of the hall adjacent to the children’s adventure playground, nestled deep at the heart of Knottingley’s Warwick Estate.

The room will have been transformed, furnished and table-clothed by the team of trusty volunteers led by Centre Manager Holly. For two hours or so beforehand, under the direction of celebrated scone-baker Anna, the stainless steel surfaces of the kitchen have been ringing to the sounds of peeling, chopping, scraping and panning. The array of helpers varies week by week but occasionally can include a Community Bobby showing off his spud-mashing technique.

Any ‘older person’ who can get to the Addy on a Thursday dinner-time can savour, for just three pounds, a handsome meat and two veg feast, plus sweet, with a game of bingo chucked in. The definition of ‘older person’ seems encouragingly

Older People’s Luncheon Club

flexible. One or two are in their sixties, most in their seventies, some well into their eighties and a couple over ninety. Out of the twenty to thirty regular attendees the vast majority are women. The banter is infectious, at times uproarious, like when Doreen shouts to the Bobby, ‘Don’t leave any bloody lumps in!’

Let’s raise up a song for the grannies

The nans of the Warwick Estate Who saved up their pennies and ha’pennies

And made us what we are today

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Residents on Warwick, or from surrounding communities, comment on how difficult a place the estate is to travel to. Holly organises transport to the Addy for those who find it problematic. The majority of café users are in good spirits when they arrive. For some it’s their only outing all week and they seem determined to make the best of their short time in good company.

And the verdict on the food is unanimous. ‘Beautiful love, beautiful.’

‘It gets you out o’ t’ house love, some-times you don’t see anyone for days.’

‘And we have a laugh. Having a laugh is good for you, it takes t’ wrinkles off your face.’

And washing the whole of their lives

They laboured from morning to evening And they were all mothers and wives

Our grandmothers never stopped cleaning

They followed the men and the coal

They tell us their stories to warn us Then laugh till the tears start to roll

They came from the country’s four corners

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Older People’s Luncheon ClubAs winter draws on, in conjunction with NHS workers and Age Concern, a fashion show is organised in the café, as an awareness-raising exercise to remind everyone of the necessity, along with a good diet, of dressing properly to keep warm. Particularly popular with the ladies are a couple of young male models strutting their stuff beneath an avalanche of encouraging hoots and catcalls.

As one happily fed veteran puts it, ‘worth more than any number of leaflets or posters!’

A lull descends on the room as bingo paraphernalia is prepared, till the precise moment of ‘eyes down’ as a voice sails above the players’ heads. It’s Doreen offering a vote of thanks to the ‘spud-masher’.

Scarves to keep the cold at bay If you look a little plumper It’s a tiny price to pay

Wear your thermals and your jumper

That’s the chorus to repeat While the winter sun is sinking Maximise your body heat

Insulate yourself, keep thinking

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“When you’re on your own like most of us are, it’s company. It gets you socialising and makes your day.”

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“I’d like to see it open every day, it needs more staff and volunteers to make it work. And of course, funding.”

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By working collaboratively with different partners who have influenced and supported the Addy Café in the past year, we have achieved great things and worked together and made the café more environmentally friendly, healthy and offering opportunities for work.

One to One Development Trust have been inspiring in redeveloping the community spirit through working with the lunch club, children and young people and branding the café. The PCT have helped promote healthy lifestyles arranging special cook and eat sessions. The Addy Café has provided a space where communities’ members and agencies can meet together, a successful example of this is the Warwick Ahead - Big Local project.

PartnershipsWorking with the police, Healthy Lifestyles, Job Centre Plus and Leeds Metropolitan University has brought in volunteers, providing advice and support.

The café is a safe place where friendships are made, nurtured and shared. People are now reaping the benefits of this great appetizing café!

It isn’t always sunny

But every now and then Someone tells you something funny

It might be rain again

And forget your little paddy No one puts on airs

In the café at the Addy

So pack away your cares

“The luncheon club has really brought a lot of people together, residents, volunteers and agencies.”

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Aspirations

We would like Addy’s Café to be open every day and certainly more regular hours. It is already a hub for the community but it could be so much more.

We are keen to keep it user led and expand it based on residents’ needs and suggestions. On the estate we are trying to get growing projects off the ground and we would like to grow our own produce for the kitchen.

We are keen to train up local people in catering and would like to offer a training programme linked to local schools for canteen staff.

- Holly Ellis

“The Addy is the heart of this community and we are working to make it go from strength to strength.“

“Volunteering at the Addy has changed my life and helped me engage much more in the community.”

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“Recently the Wallbottle Pub closed down where our group, Recycled Teenagers, used to meet. So there’s nowhere to go. Without the Luncheon Club, there’d be nowt.”

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Acknowledgements

A very special thank you to all the residents, volunteers and staff who have taken part in Café Culture from The Place in Airedale, T-Bar at Kinsley, No 26 – Sheila’s Diner in Portobello and Addy’s Café in Knottingley.

Key contacts in the communities deserve a mention, thank you for your help and support: Debra Atkinson, Clair Mason, Michelle Rayner, Sheila Brook, Sally Martin, Holly Ellis.

The Café Culture film, book, songs, photographs, website and permanent art pieces has been made possible with funding from: Wakefield Council – Creative Partners, Public Health and Wakefield and District Housing.

Thank you to staff from these organisations for your support: Public Health: - Dr A Furber, Jo Parkin, Rachel Wilcox, Helen Monks, Kerry Murphy | South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation: - Bev Juniper | Wakefield Council: - Andrew Balchin, the Creative

Partners Team | Wakefield and District Housing: - Helen Wordsworth

One to One Development Trust’s Café Culture Project Team:

Judi Alston - Creative director, print and film editor; Andy Campbell - Design, graphics and layout; Ray Hearne - Writer and musician; Dean Hinchliffe - Camera and film editor; Hannah Furlong - Photographer; Neil Ferguson - Sound engineer

For more information and to see all of Café Culture online please visitwww.cafeculturewakefield.co.uk

Produced March 2013by One to One Development Trustwww.onetoonedevelopment.org

For information about the The Wakefield Community Café Network contact Jo Parkin: [email protected]

Cafe Culture

Documents

Transcript of Cafe Culture