Today we were at Mary Stevens Park for their open day. The event was open to the public from 10.00 till 16.00 hours. It is a charity event organised by Mary Stevens Hospice as a fundraiser for their organisation.
The Black Country Woodturners put on a charity table of turned items that were donated by the members, for the purpose of helping the hospice in fundraising. At the same time, we are able to put our own turnings onto the tables of which 20% of the takings are also donated back to the charity.
After the chaos of setting up the tenting area with three units, we had eight tables with a good mixture of various items for sale during the day.
The charity table was totally full and needed an additional table to display the items donated by the members.
The club had a good turnout of members who all had a good selection of turned items for sale. We also had a lathe running and was manned by Steve who kept up a stream of spinning tops for the kids free of charge, this kept him out of mischief for the day. It must be said that he was tired at the end of the day, but it was for a good cause.
During the morning there was a steady stream of people going through the selling area with the charity stall doing very well and clearing a number of items. During the day we also had a good many people taking our club cards with a number being interested in starting to turn, it’s a case of watching this space for this, we were also asked about the club and how the items were formed and developed. The weather was very kind to us during the day, with it being sunny which also helped with the turnout of people who attended the event.
Along with the turned items we also had a couple of wives joining us, Ian’s wife Kim & Steves’s wife Georgina, who had their own craft stalls of hand-crafted items along with us.
A big thank you must go out to all who turned up for the event and helped throughout the day with setting up, selling, and breaking down again. This help was very much appreciated with us being able to clear the site quickly.
We raised a total of £244.72 from the charity table, and from the club members the sale items we raised £90.00 at 20% commission, this makes a total of £334.72 that was handed over to The Mary Stevens Hospice.
Report by Barrie Fisher and edited by Steve Hackett