Registered Charity Number 1212037
The first phase of the model railway is underway
The first phase is an 8′ x 4′ layout that will be on 4 baseboard sections. It will be an urban setting based on a design concept Dennis has identified in a Pico portfolio. The photograph shows Dennis trying to figure out the track needed from the track he brought from home where it has been stored for half his lifetime!
Next, the base boards will be made with support legs adjustable to laser level the bed. Raspberry Dave is to work on the control aspects of the layout. Steve will focus on layout features. Plenty of opportunities for others to be involved.
The next phase of the project is to make the baseboards for the “permanent” long layout across the back of the room. This builds on the experience of doing the first phase and will begin probably towards the end of 2025.
Digital Inclusion for the Housebound
Whitby’s placeholder logo
Both Whitby Town Shed and Norton Shed have funds to pursue a strategy to help those who are housebound. Involving them in hybrid meetings that brings them alongside others who are together at a Shed or other active-mind activity.
Whitby’s dust free enclosure is well on and should be usable by mid September.
We used our new room on Tuesday to participate in an online presentation for newly funded digital inclusion projects. Around 35 projects dotted across North Yorkshire Combined Authority.
Below is a call put on Norton Men’s Shed Facebook page this week and shared on Norton Village Facebook. We are looking at it for wider Stockton promotion.
Our motto: Doing, Being, Belonging and Becoming.
Norton Men’s Shed is a place that isolated, lonely, lost-it-a-bit men have been coming to these past 3.5 years. It started as Sheds traditionally do with the distraction of woodwork, banter and cuppas. It has grown in all directions including in the range of activities we do, several not connected to woodworking.
What Norton Shed aims to do is to provide renewed purpose and personal paths towards “becoming”, in the future.
However, there are people who cannot easily (even at all) attend a Shed or another community activity. They also need a “becoming” path beyond the familiar 4 walls of home (or care home).
But how is that possible? By being in the digital world . . . . Norton Shed is already there, with the website, this Facebook page, WhatsApp for out-of-Shed chat and 3D design that can be done at home but with 3D printing manufacture at the Shed by sending information over the internet.
The Shed has created a new stream of activity for learning that is aimed firmly at the “housebound”, online. So much of life and independence now depends on being online – shopping, appointments, banking, news and even entertainment. Plus being in touch with those you choose to be in communication with, such as family and friends.
Confusing? It certainly can be but with a learning approach that is more like discovery it is possible to build slow confidence with using digital communication and becoming digitally included!
A main feature will be to learn about what Alexa (or Hey Google) might do for you at home if you have mobility difficulties. She can obey your voice command to turn on the hall light, listen to the news, the weather forecast or music of choice, to hear reminders and to make calls on command.
Thanks to two regional funders (Banks Community Foundation and Ballinger Charitable Foundation) we are embarking on small group learning which involves meeting others in the same boat as you. Wanting to learn but not wanting to be swept along and trying to keep up. It’s a Shed in the way things work and how people interact, but there’s only mental effort involved. Like a Shed, though, it requires regular involvement. It gives the satisfaction of achievement.
Wednesday is a day when you can come to the Shed at Norton Sports Charity along Station Road and meet up to get some 1:1 help and to socialise with a cuppa and others doing crafts, a model railway or discover what 3D printing is. For those that cannot come, we will have a period of time when those at home can take a live online look at what is going on and chip in a few comments.
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There are two current opportunities:-
1) To express interest in being part of a learning group twice a week for an hour or so, over a 6 week period. Time to connect with and get to know others.
2) To ask about opportunities to help host online sessions and to develop the project and it’s coverage. We certainly want to work with others who may be doing similar activity. If you are wondering what to get involved with to help people, there are opportunities to be part of a volunteer team. Maybe you are housebound but ready to help others – housebound or not.
By the way this is not just for men! It is work to benefit all in the Stockton community and indeed we will be working with North Yorkshire (Whitby) on a very similar project.
Simply send an email to nortonmensshed@gmail.com or text 07763 656627. Please provide your contact details for a preliminary chat. We can both make a cuppa and chat maybe!
Odds and Ends (but important)
These two owl nesting boxes going to Norton Sports Charity woodland
Those (mainly) who worked on the new IT/chat room. Also Graham behind the camera
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