Saturday, October 23, 2010

A place for blokes to be blokes

Grab this Dominion Post article about Wellington MenzShed guys. Just ignore the photo!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

MenzShed 22 October

Tom Says Make More Use of the Shed

Tom White the Wesley Community Worker who is one of our founding members wants to see the more use made of the Shed.

A couple of points sheddies:
The shed is used for at most, one to one and a half days per week! Feel free to find ways to utilise the other 5 and a half days (before we even begin to think about evening use).We have upstairs office/accommodation space still to utilise also.

Setting up this shed took three years and the combined efforts of half a dozen people. I would really love to see any sheddies with spare time, energy and oomphhh for our lovely Shed to step up and offer to be more deeply involved in the operation of our current shed to make it even more successful. For example we are still in need of a ‘shed coordinator’ to manage the daily use of the shed”. All the best, Tom

Longer Opening Hours!

We’re always willing to help out a nice lad like Tom so next Wednesday, 27 October we’ll try opening up the Shed from 10.30 to 1 for workshop activities . Then, as usual, from 1-3 Norman’s Grumpy Old Men group will take over the place to talk about a variety of erudite matters such as Why do Albatross’ Wings Ache to Why is There Such Zeal for the Zioty.

Fire Engine Makes it’s First Call

The fire engine that’s been part of the shed for some months now has left the Shed for its new home at the Johnsonville Kindergarten. The kids were absolutely thrilled so see the Fire Engine, although they didn’t know it was brand new engine specially built by the MenzShed. There was an immediate competition toset a new record for the number of preschoolers that you can fit on a Fire Engine. The local newspaper turned up to cover the event and I understand the paper has already been published in the Johnsonville area. I was planing to give you a spread of pix in this newsletter but my computer had a melt down and they were lost.

Health and Wellbeing Expo

Garry Procter and myself spent a day in the Wellington Town Hall manning the MenzShed stand. Thank you Garry for your company and enthusiasm. Thank you to Nigel, Doug, Bill and Tom who also popped into give us moral support. It was disappointing that there were so few visitors to the free Expo were. I know that Helen Young worked tirelessly to make a show a success but despite substantial advertising, we spent most of the time talking to ourselves.

Help for Vincent

Please keep your ears open for some part time workthat might suit Vincent, our Artist in Residence. The current recession means that people are cutting backon buying artwork and that affects Vincent.

People News

If you know that someone is leaving the Shed for good or moving away or joining please let me know, so that we an let all the sheddies know. I’m bringing a potential new member tomorrow. He Chinese and speaks little English, so speak to him slowly. Hisname is Jin Hua. See you there. John- shrapnell@clear.net.