Thanks to some sacrificial giving and great generosity our Straw Bale fund has now reached over £120,000.  That means we’re nearly a third of the way towards our initial fundraising target of £380,000.The figure includes a grant of £15,000 from the Church & Community Fund, but the rest has been mostly given be members of Holy Trinity Church.

Our next fund-raising focus will be the church Gift Day on June 15th.  However, what we also need now is to find some support from local business, the wider circle of Holy Trinity friends / former members, and some success with large grant applications.  Unless we have a large injection of external funding, it will be impossible to fulfill this project because the financial resources here in Tulse Hill are so scarce.

Could you become a Straw Stacker by donating £1,000 or more?

Click here to find out more.

We are of course putting together applications to various trusts, but it is difficult at this stage because the design is not finalised and fully costed, and the more a trust gives, the more detail they want from us. Meanwhile, of course, we continue to have various initial design expenses.

Now that our Straw Bale Communion Table is being given official permission by the Archdeacon of Lambeth, we need a more decent top for it, rather than the old bit of MDF we had knocking around the church basement!  So here’s the new top, with varnish drying in what was earlier a sunny window!

I wanted to use the project to experiment with some ideas:  the wood is ordinary osb, varnished.  I had an idea that it would complement the straw, and that in due course, we might want to use it for flooring in the hall.  It looks nice, but there are still some questions to be resolved about durability.

Then I thought I would make my own clay to fill the routed cross.  Since we are having the garden dug up for a new water main, there was plenty to hand.  The experience convinced me to buy ready-made clay plaster when the time comes.  There are lots of little stones in the average garden, and it’s jolly hard to get it to a workable consistency.

And then it cracked – which of course, is now part of the rustic design!

Our first bid for funding has been successful. The Church of England’s Church and Community Fund has awarded us £15,000. We bid on the basis that the process of self-building will increase community cohesion and enhance the church’s mission. We need to spend the allocation within two years. Thank you CCF – we’re making a good start!

Find out more about the Church & Community Fund here.

Becoming a Bale-Builder for Holy Trinity’s Neighbourhood Hub couldn’t be simpler. The cost of a delivered bale of straw is about £4.00 and to cover the total cost of our building we need the equivalent of about 95,000 of them!

To be a Bale-Builder, just decide how many bales you can contribute – it may be 3, 10, 30, 100, or even 1000. You can decide on any number. Multiply that number by 4, and that will be your contribution in £s.

Next, actually give the money. If it is a small amount you could donate by text. Otherwise, our preferred method is a direct bank transfer: details are here. If you want to give by card, you can do that through our Bmycharity page – though we have to pay a small commission for that.

Finally, find two other people you can persuade to also support the project.  You might even get them to find another two people each!  It might help if you give them one of our leaflets, which you can download here.

Once we’ve got most of our target fund of £380,000 we can start building.  At that point you’ll be able to actually join us on site, get training, and be a hands-on bale-builder!

Our new Bale-Building leaflet is now published and is beginning to be actively distributed. This tells you how you can support the building of Holy Trinity’s Tulse Hill Neighbourhood Hub.

The leaflet gives you background on the context, the commitment of Holy Trinity over the last 150 years, the size and viability of our amazing vision, and why community building with straw will make such a huge difference to so many people.

The principle of being a Bale-Builder is that you give something and find two other people to do the same.  You can download the leaflet here.