Pulling focus

I realise I'm at least ten years behind the curve on this, but I've just recently got into reading a few blogs in an intentional way, bookmarking them and having a look every couple of days. It's been fun - they're mainly around sewing, baking and ethical fashion, but there's a couple of more theological ones in there too.

But I've been struck by the fact that all of these blogs have something mine doesn't seem to have - a particular focus, whether it's turning charity shop clothes into new outfits, making cakes and taking beautiful pictures of them, or writing about church from a different perspective to my own. 

But then the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether actually there might be some themes that run through my blog. So I did a little research - entirely subjective and non-scientific, I should point out. I had a look at the labels I've given my blog posts to see which ones crop up the most - the top five are future (15), work (15), fair trade (11), church (10) and creativity (9) with baking, community, money, ethical and potential close behind.

Now I suppose some would argue that this is a fairly random, incohesive list, but I see some interesting connections (although I would - it's my blog, after all!!).

Eight years ago, this blog started essentially because EVERYONE had a blog (well, at least that was the impression I'd got) but I had no real sense of purpose or direction for it. Now I'm enjoying blogging and I'm finding the stuff that I'm genuinely passionate about, rather than stuff I think I should have an opinion on. So the question I'm starting to ask myself is whether to continue with this blog but narrow its focus slightly, or start a parallel blog which explores some of these ideas (probably the ones around fair trade and creativity) in more depth. Or do I not worry too much because come Easter I'll run out of steam and go another year without writing anything?!

Incidentally, if there are blogs you think I should be reading, please let me know - I have bookmarks and I'm not afraid to use them! Equally, if you have friends who you think would enjoy reading about ethical baking in church, you should absolutely share a link to here!!

Keeping In Touch

Arnesby is a small, sleepy village in Leicestershire. Once a vibrant farming community, its population of around 350 people now includes an intriguing combination of commuters, retired farmers, Leicester Tigers rugby players and young families. But demographic changes and a gradual loss of shared meeting places have meant that the village has lost a cohesive sense of community. It does, however, have two churches – St Peter’s, and Arnesby Baptist Chapel (ABC) where I’ve been worshipping for almost three years.

Last year I suggested to Johnny, the pastor of ABC, that the church could run a project during Fairtrade Fortnight, opening the church for a couple of hours each day as a community café, serving fair trade refreshments and selling fair trade products.

The idea was so successful that repeating the project this year was a no-brainer! Last year, the most consistent feedback from villagers was how much they’d appreciated a place to meet up with others to spend time together. Largely as a result of this the most important development this year was the decision to hold the café in the village hall on three consecutive Saturdays (as well as at the church during the week) which meant that we could serve significantly more people (around seventy each week) and make it easier to attract those who were unwilling to be part of something on the church premises. The majority of the customers were village residents, and one of my highlights of the fortnight was chatting to a local man who spoke with real enthusiasm and affection about the role the church has in the village even though, as he laughingly pointed out, 'I only ever come to things when there's food'. I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing!

But from my point of view, the value of a project like this also lies in the impact it has on a local church community. Ladies from the church baked cakes and an amazing team of adults and young people served with a smile, while over three Sundays the church’s evening services focused on our responsibility as Christians to live out the reality of our faith in a broken and hurting world, engaging with poverty and hardship both in the developing nations supported by fair trade and in our own context.

Through the window

So the big idea is this...

This summer I will serve you and your friends afternoon tea in the comfort of your own home.

That it's really!

Need convincing? Picture the scene. It's summer. The sun's shining (no, really - use your imagination). You've got a few friends round and you're peckish. But what's this? Your very own dining table laid with glassware and china, plates of sandwiches made from local ingredients, savoury snacks, cake stands with an array of homemade goodies and unlimited fair trade tea and coffee!

All this, in your own home?! But that must cost a fortune! But no, this is the genius bit - your guests get to decide what they'd like to pay, and you not only get your tea for free but there's a gift to say thank you for hosting!

To be honest, I've been pondering this idea in various forms for a while, as a few blog posts from this time last year testify. But with my newly-free Fridays (well, from April), and a slightly pressing need to start saving for college in the autumn (all things being equal) I think it's an idea whose time has come.

I want to do it properly and register for tax and sort out food hygiene stuff which is a bit daunting but, as I said yesterday, it feels like a window's opened and I should do my best to clamber through it.

It's always a bit nerve-wracking asking for feedback on an idea - the risk is that either people won't care enough to respond or they'll pick holes in your idea and it'll all get a bit discouraging! But I'm going to take the risk - I'd love to hear what you think, regardless of whether you think I'm onto the Next Big Thing or I need my head examining.

The business of celebration

So, we've finally made it to 2012, year of the London Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. I realise that there will be as many opinions about the validity of both those events as there are people in Britain but I think it's fair to say that whatever your perspective it's going to be pretty tough to avoid either!

In fact, I've found myself thinking about the Jubilee in particular quite a lot over the last couple of weeks and I'm wondering whether HMQ has given me a rather unique launch pad for a business idea.

A couple of weekends ago I finally got round to making some bunting from material I'd been hoarding for a while. It was really straightforward and as I cut and stitched I realised that 2012 is the perfect year for bunting - what June street party will be complete without the obligatory string of red, white and blue triangles hung jauntily from trees and lamp posts?! A kernel of an idea began to form...

But then I started thinking about the idea of Jubilee. It's not a concept dreamed up by Queen Victoria's advisers to demonstrate to a slightly disgruntled Empire that actually they were more important to her than her dead husband. The idea of jubilee is a Biblical one which stood at the heart of the kind of community God was calling his people to build way back during their hike through the wilderness. It's about fairness and justice that is deeply practical, and it stands at the core of Jesus' own ministry.

So I'm thinking about bunting and about jubilees and that gets me to thinking (again) about fair trade. The end result is entirely logical - what about fair trade Jubilee bunting?

After conversations with a few people over the course of the last weekend, I've decided to bite the bullet and this morning ordered several metres of fair trade fabric (which is expensive and not particularly easy to get hold of). Over the course of the next couple of weeks I plan to turn it into many, many metres of bunting and sell it! We're running a fair trade shop at church over Fairtrade Fortnight (27 Feb - 11 March) and I'm running a fair trade evening on 6 March so we'll see what people think. If you'd like some bunting or you have any thoughts on how a embryonic fair trade textiles business could develop, get in touch!!

Grand Designs?

I'm a closet Grand Designs fan. I'm not particularly into architecture or buildings, and I have no desire to build my own home. But I love seeing the way people think creatively about how and where they live, and there's nothing like a good story of triumph against the odds.

But more recently I've found Grand Designs a pretty unsettling programme to watch. Against a background of world-wide recession and increasing austerity I've found that the financial excesses of people often driven by an almost obsessive but frequently unconscious desire to make some kind of statement has left me with a fairly unpleasant taste in my mouth.

The example of this I've found most difficult came with a build re-visited in the currently series. Roger Gaukroger's decision to build in the Lake District was motivated by the fact that as a child growing up he and his family had never had somewhere they could really call home. But rather than choosing to create a modest, comfortable house, he designed an enormous building several times larger than the three-bedroom dwelling which already stood on the plot. Even at the outset he only had funding for 25% of the projected cost, and as the build descended into chaos Roger was threatened with bankruptcy and had to seriously consider putting the far-from-finished house on the market.

Although the project was eventually completed and the Gaukrogers were able to move in, Roger ended up with debts he would never be able to pay off therefore leaving his children to inherit not a home but a burden of financial responsibility that completely undermined the whole reason for building.

Interestingly, while Kevin McLeod and, by extension, the programme's producers, are happy to affirm or criticise the choices made by participants around ethical building materials, conservation issues and investing in local or specialist craftsmanship, they seem unwilling to challenge financial choices beyond asking leading questions about budgets and borrowing.

However, this week's episode has restored some of my faith in the Grand Designs raison d'etre! In another re-visit Kevin returned to Cumbria to visit Alan Dawson, a master steel worker who had spent over twenty years creating a new prefabricated building system. With his steel works under threat from the financial crisis he chose to commission his own team to build his house with the dual aim of keeping them in employment and essentially using the building as a showcase for the ailing firm and its craftspeople.

Clearly this approach had significant risks but it seemed to me that these were genuinely motivated by a sense of responsibility for the welfare of others, and a willingness to think imaginatively about strategies for sustaining a business in challenging times.

Unfortunately the business didn't survive but a new and wholly unexpected twist underpinned the almost pastoral element of this project. The newly patented approach to construction had attracted a lot of attention, including catching the eye of a New Zealand designer who had seen the potential for the system to form the basis of new earth-quake resistant buildings. His plan was to take the system back to Christchurch to explore its potential in contributing to rebuilding the city after this year's destruction.

Now that really is a grand design.

Money-making Opportunity 1: Mince Pies

Anyone who's read any of my Facebook statuses this week will know that there has been much talk of mince pies. I've always enjoyed baking - one of my earliest memories is being up to my elbow in eggs, sugar, butter and flour, making fairy cakes with Mum. In fact, my kitchen experience was so dominated by sponge cakes that I got to university and suddenly realised I couldn't actually cook anything useful. Like dinner. (It's tempting to digress here and tell you a story about the day I made a lasagne with red wine vinegar instead of red wine, but that can wait.)

A few years ago, back from uni (having mastered the art of the lasagne) and living at home, I decided I would attempt to master Christmas baking. Mince pies seemed a fairly obvious place to start, and Mum had a recipe so on I cracked. From that first batch I was hooked.

Last year saw another breakthrough as I embraced homemade mincemeat. I had always assumed that mincemeat must be really hard to make or why would you buy it? Mum dug me out another recipe and I was staggered to discover that essentially you stick a load of dried fruit, sugar, suet and fruit juice in a bowl and...er, well, that's about it! Give it a mix, cook it on a low heat, add some brandy and job's a good'un.

So that means that my homemade mince pies are now 100% homemade. Which is nice.

It also means that, provided you shop around, you can essentially have a fair trade option, something you'd be hard pushed to find in a supermarket. In fact, I've discovered it's actually pretty tricky to find fair trade dried fruit in supermarkets, but fortunately Leicester has a great little fair trade shop, Just, in the city centre which stocks a basic range of food products. I know thinking ethically about food almost inevitably costs more, but I find it difficult to justify not paying a little extra when the impact on the life of someone else could be so profound as a result. And, if I'm honest, not to take the ethical option at Christmas seems to me to undermine the whole reason Jesus came in the first place.

Last Tuesday I left my job and we decided to have afternoon tea in the office to say goodbye. I thought I'd make my first batch of mince pies for the occasion and was absolutely blown away by the reception they got. The next day on Facebook an innocent request for suggestions of things I could do with my new-found spare time led to a series of requests - some serious, some not so - for me to make mince pies for people and today I've had my first firm order!

Now, let's be honest. It would be almost impossible to actually make money from what is essentially a luxury product with a very small seasonal window. But I'm thinking that even if they just keep my hand in and give me something productive to focus on, and I don't end up out of pocket, there's nothing to lose!