Today we have received the final comfirmation from the Charities Commission that our application to become a Charity has been accepted. We are now officially The Red Shed Project Charitable Incorporated Organisation – or to us and our friends we’re still just The Red Shed.

It has been a long journey and one that began back in 2018 at the very founding of the organisation. The reason behind becomming a Charity is to make The Red Shed more sustainable with a broader group of people running the organisation, bringing a variety of skills and expertise. Now we are a Charity we have a Board of Trustees. Fran Neville (our Board Chair) and Margaret Frost have been with us since the beginning and Trevor Brown and Tara Patterson who have joined the team more recently. We also have Rosemary Sherry as a Board Secretary, keeping everything in order!

We have lots of plans for the future including recruiting some more trustees and of course continuing to grow and develope our unique and wonderful service as a fully fledged Charity.

Our first QUIZ NIGHT to raise funds for The Red Shed work was an amazing success. We raised £847.14 on the night and some additional donations brought the grand total to £1178.54 – and all while having fun and eating fish and chips!

The Quiz Master was one of the carers who come along to The Red Shed and the whole evening was organised and kept running smoothly by a team of our volunteers. People joined us from the local school (who’s hall we borrowed for the night), the local church, the local community and lots of friends and families from all those involved with our project.

We also received generous donations from Tesco, Cinabar, The Forge and Stevenage Borough FC to add to our Raffle prizes.

All in all a good start to our fund raising program for this year and definately an event to be repeated!

2023 is here with all the promise of another exciting 5th year for The Red Shed. We have lots to look forward to and we have now got our Values to make sure that we retain all that’s good and important to our organisation in everything we do now and in the future.

Values in our organisation are about the standards we work to, our culture and what helps drive us forward – so they’re significant and not just words.

In recognition of their importance, we asked people involved with The Red Shed what Values they felt were a part of what we do. The final 5 have been decided on by a range of folk with different connections to the organisation.

So SUPPORT, TRUST, INCLUSION, COMMUNITY, KINDNESS are the values we have chosen and we will unashamedly STICK to them……

The team at The Red Shed have many talents and keep our organisation running effectively all year round. But…..we don’t always have enough time for all the maintenance needed to keep our Garden looking fabulous and sometimes we need a little help with things like using Excel Spreadsheets or making the best of Social Media.

We are very VERY lucky to have support from our good friends at Viatris – They are a global pharmaceutical company with an office in Hatfield. We have now hosted 3 volunteer days where teams of Viatris staff have given time to painting, clearing, digging and giving us some vital IT support. Their time makes a big difference to us and we are grateful to them all.

As founder of The Red Shed, I was very proud to receive the Caring Award at The Pride of Stevenage Awards this month. I was nominated by a carer who comes along to The Red Shed Garden Clubs, which made it even more special. The Red Shed Project has been a challenge, a joy and source of great personal pride…but it goes without saying that it wouldn’t exist, be as effective or be such a wonderful community without the support of everyone else involved.

Thank you all ! Su

What a month! We have experienced record breaking hot weather and an acute lack of rainfall.

The Red Shed garden has suffered and even with copious watering we have lost some of our plants and the vegetables are poor.

It’s not only the fuana that suffer but our participants have as well. It’s been a god send to have the extra space we developed last year as this has provided welcome and necessary shade for our garden clubs.

We did have to succumb on the 15th August when there was a red weather warning and we took the decision that people would be safer at home.

Dementia can effect the way you body reacts to temperature. It may stop you feeling hot or cold or simply not recognise a, possibly dangerous, change in your body temperature. If you don’t know that you’re hot you may well make poor decisions about clothing, seeking shade or taking on fluids. All of these can become real issues if they are not reacted to appropriately.

Medications can also cause the body to react differently to temperature so it’s important not to second guess anyone who is living with dementia – you may need to react for them.

It was great to open our garden gate again this year

and welcome in the friends and families of everyone

involved at The Red Shed.

We also had visits from various organisations and funders we work along with the Lady Mayor of Stevenage, the Lady Mayors and the Deputy Mayor.

A good time was enjoyed by all!

As part of the annual Stevenage Day event this month, local organisations were invited to get involved in creating flags to represent their work in the town.

It was great to be invited along to the Intro Evening where the initial plans were set out. The idea was to have a flag for older peoples services which included dementia but, at we always say at The Red Shed…. ‘dementia does not just affect older people and older people don’t all get affected by dementia’…Pleased to say our suggestion of a separate flag for dementia services went ahead and after getting in touch with other organisations – we created something special to highlight our presence in Stevenage.

Above is the wonderful outcome – it’s big and beautiful and contains the logos for Open ArtBox, Music 24, Imagination Dance, Hertswise and Hertswise Young Onset Dementia, GEMMS…and of course The Red Shed. It’s a good start to highlighting the presence of valuable and varied dementia friendly activities and services in the town.

We ran our first trip out into the community today, taking our Croquet players to visit the Letchworth Croquet Club.

It was a great evening and everyone enjoyed themselves very much – even the terrible weather didn’t dampen our spirits or drown our tallents!

For those effected by dementia it was an opportunity to go somewhere safe and relaxed with familiar faces. Thank you LCC for making us so very welcome!