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Thundersley Congregational Church

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Little Libraries and Pantries

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For the past 12 years the church has organised a community arts festival for the local community, helping to put the church in the public space, we wanted to find a way that we could make this year long rather than just a week long event.

We discovered a growing trend in setting up little libraries in public spaces, places that people could take or leave a book, these were often little works of art themselves and so we reached out to the project leader in 2015 and set up 4 libraries, since then we have installed a total of 9 some in public spaces and the others in the grounds of local primary schools.

Each one decorated by a local artist, and each one highly used as a book swap scheme.

It has helped us have an all year round ‘presence’ in the community and deepened our links with the local schools. 

The pantries followed a few years later with a similar idea that people could donate or take food as they needed or able.

As a church we knew there was the need in our area for those in short supply, but we wouldn’t be supported in setting up a food bank by the local council, this was our way of meeting a need in the way we could.

Three pantries have been installed, with Westhill enabling us to set up a fourth.

Since starting these we have formed a link with two local supermarkets who donate food to us twice a week to top them up, we have found they are always well used.

It has also enabled us to connect with some people in need, that as a church we might not have been able to previously due to not being aware or seeing the need.
 

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For more information please take a look at: 

Our Church Website 
The Noise Arts Festival Facebook 
The Pantries Facebook 
The Libraries Facebook 
 

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