Some of the eagle eyed amoungst you may have noticed that our old premises is looking rather empty and that is because we have very quietly moved into our new premises!
It was fitting that the "New Ark" came into it's full glory in the middle of some pretty biblical floods, but after 7 months of hard work we're finally settled and absolutely loving our new home.
There are so many peope thank for getting us here. So many businesses, donors, volunteers, clients and members of the public who have given up their time or hard earned cash to help us to get to where we are today, in a dramatically improved home where we can offer a vastly improved service to those that we serve in our community.
This is Steve, he is a full time painter and decorater at Shrewsbury School - who gave up 4 days of his Christmas holiday to help us get started on the downstairs decoration.
Once he was back at work he came in at least one evening a week and every Saturday for the next 2 months until the job was done, managing his small but perfectly formed "dream team" of volunteers with great patience!
Here are some of the Students from SCAT who helped to transform the top two floors of our new building as part of their painting and decorating course, they really got us on the way!
These members of the Edgmond Scout troop spent months creating and stocking an incredible "Explorer" craft area, which our clients and volunteers are already enjoying!
Their Boson, Yvonne, has also sourced an amazing amount of donations for us, including our wonderful new washers and dryers - there is nothing that woman can't do!
And here are just a few of the clients, volunteers, friends and family who have turned up in their spare time to paint, clean, polish, drill, hammer and hoover us into our incredible new home.
And of course none of this would have been possible without our amazing staff team who have worked tirelessly to support our clients amoungst all the chaos and our incredible manager Wendy, who's kept the wheels turning, managing a complete refurb and premises move in the middle of a pandemic... She really deserves a holiday!
We're still sorting out some minor snagging issues, but we're getting there as you can see by these photos of the downstairs. We now have a bright, calm space to welcome lonely or vulnerable members of our community, in the heart of Shrewsbury!
We have so many local businesses to thank for all their help and support it's impossible to name them all, but it's hard not to mention the incredible job SYHomes did of cleaning up our frontage. We want the Ark to be an assett to our local community and their work has really made our new premises appealing to those seeking our help.
We really can't believe we have this wonderful new space as our home and are desperate to show it off!
Anyone who would like to come and have a look around please do get in touch either by email at ark@shrewsburyark.co.uk or on 01743 363 305.
With bigger premises comes more work, so if you've been thinking about looking into volunteering now is the time, we'd love to hear from you (You can't miss us, artist Matt Sewell's beautiful white dove is watching over us!)
