Fancy building a kitchen?

At the end of May, I received an email from Barbara Lo Giudice, the Head of Virginia Primary in Shoreditch, which sounded like pure GoodGym treasure, "Would you be able to help us with some work we are hoping to do on our Early Years play area? Our mud kitchen and sand box have unfortunately rotted away after many years of use (the children really enjoy them) and we were wondering if you had any volunteers with the knowledge, expertise and willingness to build us some?"

I imagined GoodGym involvement would consist of a shout-out for members with some decent practical skills, followed by a small Community Mission of holding planks of wood as the kitchen was assembled.

But following a site visit to the school, I realised our assistance would be a little more along the lines of design, timber-sourcing and construction.

"Johnny, I don't suppose you have time to cast your eye over this?", I asked architect and TH regular, Johnny Lui.

Before I knew it, Johnny had arranged a site visit and was heading over to the school to talk plans with the team.

As the weeks unfolded, so did the planning and prep, taking an evermore exciting turn each week:

• Johnny started by drafting perfect plans for the kitchen in his spare time.

• He then recruited the support of the Canary Wharf Group, who along with James Johnson, sourced and funded the timber for the project, and proceeded to build the kitchen.

• The kitchen was installed on October 22nd.

A task-and-a-half.

The biggest thank-you's

Shout-outs don't really do it justice. Suffice to say, our Johnny, Andy Unwin and the whole team at the Canary Wharf Group; ditto James Johnson, have achieved so much in a few months for this school.

Thank you.

Beth, Alex and I met up this morning at Virginia Primary School to help the Boundary Estate set up the Fun Palace in the school's playground and provide a free day of interactive art, science, sport and history for the children in the community.

We were first tasked to put up four gazebos: one for the farm stand, where Spitalfields City Farm kindly provided two gorgeous (live) chickens for today's entertainment, and three other gazebos to be spaced out in the playground. We spent a fair bit of time trying to fix one of the gazebos whose metal support bars were broken, before it was decided that it was too dangerous to use...

We then made our way to St Hilda's East Community Centre 200m away, to pick up thirty chairs and ten tables St Hilda's was good enough to share. As the trolley/cage to transport the tables were not available because of another event happening at St Hilda's, we bravely made several journeys back and forth carrying the tables and setting them up around the school's playground, where the various stands were being prepared. Luckily, St Hilda's was able to share a trolley for us to move the thirty chairs to Virginia Primary!

We were finally done by the time it started to rain and the Fun Palace stands began to take shape. What a great way to start the weekend, thank you team!