Since it first opened its doors last Spring, Borrow It has now made over one hundred loans to almost fifty individuals. From carpet cleaners to hedge trimmers, sleeping bags to ice-cream makers, Borrow It has lent numerous items to local residents and community groups.

Borrow It: A Library of Things is open to all residents local to Bath. It is run by Time Bank Plus and funded by a grant from Bath & West Community Energy. There is no charge for borrowing items, though small donations are welcome.

Viv Talbot, Manager at Time Bank Plus explains that, “In order to borrow items, people simply need to pop along to the office with some ID and register their details. They are then free to borrow anything they need for up to a week, or longer by arrangement.”

The concept & model for Borrow It came from the inspiring SHARE project, a similar initiative which is based in Frome. SHARE also kindly donated the first few items to the Borrow It collection. Since then, local people have donated over 120 items to the scheme. The project has a growing number of registered members as more people find out about it.

“We have had really positive feedback from the local community, and members really appreciate having access to items that they might only use once or twice a year. The carpet cleaners have been really popular this winter, and we are expecting to receive more requests for lawn mowers and hedge trimmers as the weather warms up”, anticipates Project Coordinator, Rowan Wynne-Jones.

Borrow It member, Richard benefitted from the scheme when his lawn mower stopped working, and he was also able to help his neighbour. “The mower has been really useful. My neighbour’s mower broke the same week, so I was able to cut their grass at the same time,” he explained.

100th Borrow It loan: Debbie borrowing gardening tools.

If you are interested in becoming a member of Borrow It, contact the Time Bank Office, on 01225 442813, by emailing: timebankplus@googlemail.com, or drop into the office at, 86 High Street, Twerton, Bath, BA2 1DE. The opening hours are: Monday, Tuesday 10am – 4pm, and Wednesday 10am-7pm.

Visit : Borrow It Catalogue to view the latest catalogue of items available to borrow, as well as the project’s ‘wish-list’ of items.

We hosted a weekly creative crafts session.

Whether you'd like to have a go at willow weaving, mosaic making, crochet & knitting, fermented foods & chutneys, card making, sewing, soap making, flower arranging, cake decorating, felting or making your own cosmetics,  we'll try and make it happen.

Email us for more info at timebankplus@googlemail.com or call us on 01225 442183.

Growing Together is a community project that will provide free training and support to families and individuals who would like to grow their own food at home or in a shared allotment. An experienced tutor will help train people in the necessary skills to successfully grow and harvest their own fresh and delicious produce.  The project will also run a Buddy Scheme to connect local people together, thus enabling them to give and receive mutual ongoing support with growing, harvesting and sharing produce.

We are holding a launch event on Saturday 27th Feb at 2:30pm on our allotment at Bath City Farm.  We are inviting anyone who would like to find out more about the project to join us for "Food, Fun and Campfire Cooking".

From early March, we will meet every Tuesday at the Bath City Farm allotments from 1:30-3:30pm.    It is open to anyone at any skill level, and will be a welcoming environment.  A gardening mentor will also be available to meet people at their own gardens at other times by appointment, to offer help, guidance and encouragement.

Last week, on a cold winter Sunday, 14 amazing volunteers spent the day transforming a small area of neglected wasteground in Twerton into a fruitful community garden. We cleared brambles and nettles, cut the grass, dug out flower beds, collected about 8 bin bags of rubbish and planted soft fruit bushes and other plants, all of which had been donated to us.

At lunchtime, we warmed up at the Time Bank office with hot soup and tasty vegetable stew prepared by some of the volunteers.

We made and painted a wooden sign - and Hanna Close Community Garden came into existence. This is a space for the local community, where anyone passing by or living in the local area can get involved or help themselves to the odd raspberry, apple or globe artichoke.

Bath Guerrilla Gardeners were actively involved with this project and have created several other beautiful community growing spaces throughout the city.

Our 10th Anniversary Celebration this August was attended by well over sixty Time Bank volunteers and supporters. The weather was warm and dry so many people opted to sit outside in the lovely Rose Cottage garden and perhaps have a go at scarf juggling, diabolo or other fun circus skills activities led by Claire.

Inside, we were entertained by two members of the U3A Swing Band; some people couldn't resist singing along to the well known jazz standards and popular music from the sixties.

Everyone enjoyed the delicious home-baked cream teas, prepared and served by our volunteers.

We were delighted that Sarah Bird, who set up the Time Bank 10 years ago and has now become CEO of Timebanking UK, was able to attend.

All photos courtesy of Time Bank member and amazing photographer, Tony McNichol

This was a development from last year’s micro exhibition in Foxhill Point. A portion of a small grant from B&NES Arts Development Team was used to finance this year’s large scale exhibition (along with a contribution from the CURO grant for the festival).
It was held in the Exhibition Room of Bath Central Library. This was a partnership initiative with Arty Buddies and B&NES Library Service and was an opportunity to showcase art works produced in Foxhill in the centre of the city.
Arty Buddies is an organisation that runs art groups established in Bath &NES communities and is supported by Time Bank Plus. The Foxhill group meets on Tuesday mornings at the small community building ‘Foxhill Point’ which is the former laundry for Dunster House (a block of flats in the centre of the Foxhill estate).

• The art exhibition itself was held for seven days from Monday 1st June to Sunday 7th June
• The art exhibition opening event was held between 5pm and 6.15pm on Monday 1st June. The exhibition was opened by Cherry Beath, the Mayor of Bath.
The most senior contributor to the exhibition was Margery Crocker who is in her hundredth year and had never drawn before joining the art group at Foxhill.

The exhibition opening went with a buzz and was enjoyed by all. During the week the exhibition had a steady flow of visitors with some lovely comments in the visitor’s book. The most frequently appearing word was ‘inspiring’.
A small selection of comments are shown below:
‘Very inspiring exhibition’
‘Inspiring and wonderful. Hopefully community art will flourish again’
‘Amazing and inspiring’
‘Wonderful and such a friendly group. Well done!’
‘Excellent exhibition. Really effective and affecting. Thanks for sharing your art.’
‘Beautiful work – colourful and inspiring.’
‘Excellent, some of the paintings were very moving.’
‘Most vibrant, adventurous, colourful and inspiring’
‘Brilliant exhibition. Well done everyone.’
‘Love the colours – what a high standard!’
‘Fantastic work! Beautifully presented too.’
‘Wow, so much work and detail makes this a very special set of pictures to view. Thank you.’
We also amassed quite a collection of visitor’s contributions both sketches and ‘word images’.
Tis exhibition will be going 'on tour' so watch out for it if you missed it during the Foxhill Festival.

We had a great couple of herbal afternoon sessions this month. Both times we met at the Time bank office and did some herb identification and had a lovely cup of herb tea.  Then went for a refreshing walk into Pennyquick park to do some more identification at the edges of the park. Its fantastic to see how many herbs and berries are still out this time of year if you take the time to have a good look.

Hopefully we may run some more of these sessions in the future if there is continued interest. Please let us know if you would like to come along.

We had a really great day on Saturday 13th in Pennyquick park and a fantastic turnout from the community and from all the organisations that attended.

Bath City Farm came down with chickens to show the children, and Adrian Secker brought along a couple of the police horses which were a huge hit.

We also had a few Vikings doing sword fighting and they helped to draw the raffle that Time bank had put on. The bouncy castle was very full with young people most of the day and Rachael's Community Shop made some fantastic multicultural food to give out to everyone who came down, as well as running a jumble sale.

There was Art & Craft with Sophie who made some great masks with the young people, Michelle ran some window sill gardening. Unique Voices did some great drama based activities with all the children interested, while Be creative had a stand giving out information on their carnival project for next year.

And of course Claire ran the circus skills which were very popular as always and Time bank had free tea and coffee on the go.

All in all it was a great day, many many thanks to everyone who helped to make it happen - especially all of our volunteers.

This is the last Redland event in this project and it has been the best yet. We hope to access more funding for future projects in and around the Twerton area and will still be running lots of great groups and 1-1 exchanges from Time bank, come in to the office at 86 Twerton High street and have a chat to find out more.