The Make Bank

During the Covid-19 Lockdown period, Fenner Paper has supported a social project called The Make Bank. It was set up a year ago by Kirsty Thomas, founder of Tom Pigeon, to provide support and materials for disadvantaged school pupils to enable them to pursue creative education and creative careers. Their work is predominantly with senior pupils and they have sent over 200 kits out to young people in the past 12 months.

During the lockdown period The Make Bank have created ‘Mini Kits’ for the UK's most vulnerable primary pupils to help them create and learn at home. The kits have been sent to kids nominated by their teachers who are dealing with poverty, domestic abuse and extreme living conditions.

Kirsty approached us to see if we were able to supply the paper for the packs...

During the lockdown period, Fenner Paper has been open for business running with a skeleton staff. Using our spare time during the day, a team of three of us have hand collated packs of A4 plain white paper, together with 20 sheets of assorted coloured papers and boards.

We collated 250 packs, which will go with drawing and colouring materials to help make the kits for the kids.

We were particularly pleased to be able to help as we normally use our offcut papers to support the St Brides Wayzgoose where last year, we raised £357.00 for the St Bride Foundation. This year's Wayzgoose was due to be held this coming weekend but has been cancelled due to the Covid-19 lockdown.

You can read more about The Make Bank and how YOU can support the project here: https://www.themakebank.org.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.05.2020

Minecraft meets real life

For those not in the know Minecraft is a computer game (and phenomenon) which allows you to build and create your own places and spaces. Having only been released in 2011, it has been amazingly successful with over 33 million copies in circulation. Minecraft is a creative platform allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. Activities in the game include exploration, gathering resources, crafting, and combat.


However, as great as virtual worlds are, we live in the real world!

In a bid to get kids off their screens for a couple of hours, Pigeon Pop Ups hosted a children's workshop called Minecrafting  as part of a series of community workshops in June. Kids were given the opportunity to build their own character heads based on the key characters in the game - and they used some of the very best materials available - our Colorset 100% recycled 120gsm.

The final pixelated creations, in a real world environment - I can spot Colorset Solar, Tuscan Brown, Sandstone, Mango...

Pigeon Pop Ups are run by Kirsty Thomas from Lovely Pigeon and the pop up shop and work-shopping space is based in the seaside town of Anstruther on the East coast of Scotland. It looks like it was great fun and quite messy! Thanks to Kirsty for sending the pictures of our paper in action.

http://lovelypigeon.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 15.10.2013