As you may know the Repair Cafe at Lambs Lane Primary School started a free ‘build your own birdbox’ project for children back in February 2024.
The plan was to use donated wood offcuts to create birdbox kits using RSPB templates.
We have an enthusiastic team of volunteer wood cutters to cut the wood. Children between the ages of 7 to 12 build their own birdboxes with hammers and nails and can take the boxes home. We wanted to engage young people with the repair ethos and help our bird population at the same time
This has been a successful project, we have run 20 workshops, 3 shows and we are getting close to creating 500 birdboxes in 2024.
The project involved a lot of movement of planks of wood and birdbox kits which were very heavy and travelling between several locations and using a number of garages to store the wood and kits.
We are excited to announce we have been offered the use of the Old Barn at Pudding Lane Nursery, Arborfield. We can have wood delivered to site, have wood cutting sessions to create the kits and run our workshops from a single location. This will obviously take a lot of heavy lifting out of our efforts and streamline the project.
In addition to building birdboxes we are planning to extend our range to bug hotels, bat boxes, hedgehog boxes and owl boxes.
We are taking a few weeks preparing our new center and from February we are will be running our birdbox workshops from the Eco Skills Learning Center at Pudding Lane Nursery Arborfield.
We have had a lot of interest in our workshops. They workshops are free but we will accept a small donation to cover heating and insurance costs.
Please contact billie@spencerswoodrepaircafe.co.uk
07718 679827 if you can help with any of the following.
A second-hand projector
Tables for the classroom
Heaters
Wood. 15mm thick 150 mm wide.
Sponsorship/grants to support the project.
40 mm length 3mm head galvanised nails or 50mm screws.
Small hand- held drills
Volunteer to help cut wood or run the workshops.
