There were two special guests at Inside Out’s weekly morning for adults with learning difficulties held at Marlborough Conservative Club. Colin ‘Geordie’ Sutherland, from Hungerford, had brought along a barn owl called Rocky and a kestrel called, of course, Kes.
There was real excitement in the room as Geordie brought out first Rocky and then Kes. Both are trained not wild birds. Rocky is eleven months old and flew across the room when he was told to – well, most times. And Kes, who was found in Great Bedwyn, had escaped from captivity and needed looking after.
The two birds were certainly welcomed by the fourteen members and their carers at Tuesday’s (February 5) session. Most of them took the chance to let the birds sit or alight on their gloved hands.
Inside Out has been in the news recently. It won a grant from the Marlborough Area Board to take its group on educational day trips – including a visit to the Minstead Training Project and Furzey Gardens in the New Forest.
Last summer Chris Beardshaw took a Furzey Garden design which had been planted by a team with learning difficulties to the Chelsea Show – and won one of the coveted gold medals.
Inside Out is just eighteen months old. It is run by two members of the local Mencap committee – Suzanne Bailey and Judy Richardson. It aims to help fill ‘the massive gap’ left when the town’s Wyvern Centre closed.
Suzanne Bailey worked for twenty years at Swindon College’s outreach branch, the Wyvern Education Unit – first at Pewsey Hospital and then in Marlborough: “We helped people reach their full potential – and they did.”
At first the new Inside Out group worked with a few clients in the Richmond Trust garden off the London Road. They soon had too many people wanting to join and so moved inside – and the Conservative Club offered them free use of their room.
It is an informal club offering an outing from home or care home and pastimes and educational help. Members are assisted with craft work. Though not much work was done with Rocky and Kes there to watch.
On Saturday, March 23, their craft work will be on sale at a pre-Easter stall outside the Conservative Club. As Suzanne Bailey told Marlborough News Online: “They are raising money for their own club – giving them a sense of purpose.”
So make a note of the date. For when publicly funded provision goes, small scale alternatives need all the help the public can give.
Band get £7,000 grant to blow their own trumpet
