Pioneering Update – July 2024
Barons Cross Outreach – Winter of Wellbeing funding from Hereford Council (From DWP) enabled us to provide food and activity sessions at Barons Cross Communty Room over the winter. This was exteneded until May. At the request of parents we offered cooking sessions for adults on a fortnightly basis from May - July. We then recieved funding for summer WoW sessions. This means we are offering 6 meal and activity session over the summer holidays. These include indoor and outdoor activities for families. We have requested donations of snooker and table football equipment so that we can offer use of the 'Youth equipment' which lives in the community room.
We are present at the Barons Cross support surgeries which happen once a month and have continued to be part of Team Leominster (the multi-agency group which meets monthly and includes a special focus on the Barons Cross community).
Messy Church – Messy Church has continued to grow and develop over the last year. While Threads Through Creation was happening in Leominster Priory, we had one session at Leominster Methodist Church and another outside. We supported Leominster Festival with a pop up Messy Church on The Grange on a theme of sea creatures in Creation.
Schools Work – we continue to be part of the Open the Book team at Ivington School once a week and also support the ‘vicars assembly’ on Tuesdays. Additionally we welcomed EMC to Leominster Priory for the Year 7 Welcome service.
At Easter we hosted a week of Experience Easter – enabling our local primary schools to participate in and learn about the story of Easter at The Priory and before christmas we held a ‘signs of Advent’ day for Leominster Primary school. We also held a school visit for Lucton school in the summer term.
We supported workshops for Thread Through Creation for Kimbolton, Orleton and Ivington Schools.
Local community -Additional to our paid hours we co-led the support group for asylum seekers in Leominster which facilitated collecting clothes toys and money, organised school uniforms and school shoes, offered links to volunteering opportunities, campaigned for the return of families (due to the hotel closure and re-opening) and most importantly offered opportunities for friendship. Since the Talbot closed to Asylum seekers in January we have continued to support and visit the families who were living there and who are now dispersed in different towns around the UK. Three of the families will join us this August at Greenbelt Festival via the festival's Open Festival Scheme.
Kathy continues to manage Leominster Food Bank and Money Advice Centre and we coordinate the delivery of food share food each evening to vulnerable people in Leominster – offering both practical and pastoral care for those in need. The Talbot has reopened and is being used by Herefordshire council as emergency and temproary housing. We continue to support people who are accomodated there as well as some people who are currently street homeless.
David & Kathy lead the team providing nightly food deliveries of surplus food to families across Leominster. These doorstep encounters are valuable times of pastoral support for many families in our community.
Future - The DNA of pioneering means that things change; often at short notice as we join in where we notice God is at work. We have both been working with Lizzie Hackney to take our experience of the Intergeneration Mission project and the Barons Cross work to help shape the Diocese-wide Youth Hub project which is beginning to take shape in Leominster and Bishops Castle.
David & Kathy Bland 28/07/2024