Although we’re not able to host events and workshops at Bell House itself, thanks to the enthusiasm and dedication of volunteers working on all sorts of projects we are able to continue supporting our community and reaching a wide audience from our homes. Without further ado, this is what’s been happening over the past few weeks at Bell House.
Bell House in Your Home has provided a platform for learning new cookery skills – Courtney from BogleBoy Club has taught us to make dumplings, and thanks to Lorraine at South London Ferments we’ve also tried our hand at sauerkraut and kimchi. May also saw Matthew Collins host a workshop on voice and vocal habits and the first of our Meet the Musicians series, through which we will showcase talented young musicians from the local area with a Q&A and a recorded performance every fortnight. We’re also proud to be able to host Dulwich Players’ first online offering, Open Your Ears 2020, via Bell House in Your Home.
The Bell Health webpage is in progress and soon it will be populated with information about the project and with links to various useful resources. You may have seen the informational videos on periods and smear tests on the website and Instagram already. The weekly New Mums’ Group has made a successful transition to Zoom, which the team are really thrilled about, and we have been keeping everyone active with circuits, yoga and stretching online with two different classes suited to beginners and those in need of more gentle exercise. We’ve also been able to run a number of mental health webinars on wellbeing, panic attacks and anxiety – there are more in the pipeline!
We’ve also been able to continue offering our dyslexia support programme through remote one-to-one advice sessions, updates to our blog and an Instagram Live on supporting dyslexic learners at home and beyond.
Our volunteers have also been hard at work bringing the ESOL project online, so that they can continue to deliver the brilliant work that was begun at the house in January, and our film-making volunteers have been keeping in touch with students from their popular weekend courses earlier in the year through online workshops and idea-sharing.
Many of our quilters have been incredibly busy sewing masks for family and friends, and scrubs and wash bags for NHS staff at local hospitals. They’ve also found the time to continue working on other projects, including collaborative quilts, which you may have seen on our Instagram feed. The second quilting video in the Bell House Films series is now up online and this one showcases Project Linus and the quilts our volunteers have made with Elmwood School for premature babies at King’s College Hospital. You can see the film, which includes interviews with many people involved in, and benefitting from, the project here.
And finally, the garden has been a hive of socially-distanced activity. Our willing volunteers have been planting, growing and developing the space throughout lockdown. There are now two areas of long grass or meadow, which are supporting a range of insects and birds, and work has also begun in earnest on a bog garden. The gardeners have also been planting vegetable seeds and seedlings –there’s been spinach to harvest already, and courgettes, radishes, beans, peas and cucumbers are all on their way. We hope to be able to grow enough to be able to share our fresh produce with local foodbanks, as well as enjoying it ourselves.
Taken by our volunteer Sara Lloyd, this photo titled ‘Socially distancing gardeners’ has been selected by Historic England as one of 50 images from the public to go into their archive on our experiences of lockdown.