Dear Friends of the River Thames Boat Project,
Welcome to another issue of the Newsletter. Although the summer is over there’s been plenty going on in the last few months perhaps high-lighted by the October day when Discoverer was out cruising and education days were being held both on Venturer at Teddington Lock and at Hermitage Moorings in Wapping. Looking ahead to 2019, challenges will be to ensure more days when both boats are fully utilised and to step up the level of fund-raising as well as celebrating our 30 year anniversary.
With the festive season in sight have you thought about gifting a Friends membership to a friend or relative or how about running the Hampton Court half-marathon or following Nigel's example and joining a charity bike-ride?
Your comments and stories are as welcome as ever.
With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.
Kate Oatham, Editor
kate@rtbpfriends.org
From the Wheelhouse
After yet another challenging quarter nursing Discoverer back into good health and inducting the first volunteer skippers, Peter is taking a well-earned holiday.
Boat Project Fundraising and Event News
The Charity has had a busy time with fundraising and other events since the last newsletter. Across September, October and November, we have managed water stations at two running events, cheering on runners for the Richmond Marathon and the Kingston Half Marathon, attended an Open Day at Twickenham Rowing Club, held our annual Bangers and Fireworks evening, attended a Waitrose Community Matters 10th Birthday event, had our annual volunteer forum on Thames Venturer and managed the charity stall at Surbiton Farmers Market promoting the work that we do, selling merchandise, recruiting volunteers and generally connecting with the local community. All this activity has added £1,945 to the fundraising pot bringing our total for the year to date to just under £3,500. Thank you to all our volunteers who have helped at these events and to the organisers for supporting our charity.
Into 2019, there is a date in the diary for 17th February to man a water station at the Hampton Court Half Marathon. We need volunteers of course, but we can also get free entry for a number of runners so if you or friends and family would like to enter and raise funds for the Boat Project that would be fantastic! There’s time to get in training before February(!) so please let Kate in the office know ASAP if you are interested.
Kate Dodds, Marketing and Fundraising Manager
Education & Learning News
The autumn term has again been busy, with a good crop of education bookings, and our crack team of volunteer teachers and support crew hard at work. We are proud to report that we have smashed all previous records in terms of volume of education bookings, with nearly 70 bookings in 2018-19 to date.
We have rolled out the Drastic Plastic module, which has been inserted into the School on the River content, to great appreciation by schools. To date, we have delivered 20 sessions with primary children, and one school sent us a sheaf of letters thanking the volunteers for the day, which they’d found very positive and useful. The teacher prefaced by saying:
"I am writing to say thank you for our fantastic trip to the Thames Boat Project last week. Every child in my class (and all the adults too!) had a great time. I felt that the children learnt a lot from their visit and gained valuable scientific and thinking skills. Since our visit, the children have been really inspired by the work we did, looking at their plastic usage, and have even written to the council to ask them to ban bottled water. Thank you for highlighting the issues the environment faces in a child-friendly and informative way”.
(Year 5 teacher, Our Lady of the Rosary School, Staines)
One effect of our enthusiastic delivery is that the resources, in which we’ve attempted to use as little plastic as possible, are falling to pieces and this has created problems for teaching volunteers. Thankfully, long-standing volunteer Pete Gallon stepped up to the mark and created a set of wooden tags with leather ties to represent towns and cities along the river Thames. In the education session, the children re-create the Thames, with its habitations, out of a rope, and then pass rogue pieces of plastic debris along it, until they all accumulate on the world map at the end.
The wooden tags have been tested out and are great. They are water-resistant, easy to handle for younger children, and underline the point that we want to communicate to children - that plastic does not have to be ubiquitous, we don’t need to be dependent on it in all areas of our lives and items made of other materials can make our life-experience richer and more satisfying and have lower impact on the environment.
Zaria Greenhill, Education Coordinator
30 Years Celebrations Next Year!
Next year in 2019 we will be celebrating 30 years of the River Thames Boat Project! This is an amazing achievement and we will be marking it with special events and activities throughout the year starting from April which is the month that the charity was registered back in 1989. September will also be a big focus for a fundraising sponsored walk Bridge to Bridge event - more details to follow shortly. Many of you will have memories and stories to tell from these 30 years and any ideas and contributions you can add to make it a very special year will be gratefully received.
Kate Dodds, Marketing and Fundraising Manager
Bangers and Fireworks
Recipe for a Perfect Fireworks Evening
Take one cosy Dutch barge, fill with friendly folk, and serve up Teddington’s best sausages, buttery jacket potatoes, baked beans and coleslaw, and wash down with preferred tipple.
Wrap up well before going on deck to marvel for a glorious quarter of an hour at the superb Lensbury firework display the other side of the river, whether old-fashioned Catherine wheels and shooting stars, or feathery shimmers and heart-thumping starbursts, all against a clear sky.
Return below for excellent crumble and matchless bread and butter pudding, plus custard and cream, of course. See you next year…
Sarah Herrick, Office Volunteer
Photos - John Frye
Next Generation Volunteer
For some time I had been intending to volunteer for the Boat Project and never quite got around to it. Instead over the years, I enjoyed hearing stories of crewing from my mother, Anna Stokoe and godfather Giles Dimock from the shore. However I hope it may have made her smile to have seen me steer the Thames Discoverer on Friday 28th September through a couple of locks without a scrape as we travelled from Kingston to Chertsey and back with a most gracious group from HANDS. My first outing was made memorable in Giles' cheering company, the sun shone upon us and news of the birth of my niece reached us from Australia just before Shepperton. For those of you who knew my mother, I reckon she would have enjoyed that too. Thank you to everyone who made a donation to the Project in her memory. I am delighted to hear that the £1600 raised will be used to support the work of the Boat Project.
Pollyanne Stokoe, Crew Volunteer
Annual General Meeting
An AGM is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it is an important moment in the year of any well-run organisation – a chance to look backwards and forwards, and to reflect, consolidate and put gripes and hopes on the table.
Keith Knox took to the floor for the first time, no longer as Acting Chair, but Chair. No mincing of words: ‘This has been a turbulent year’, what with Louise Sibley’s stepping down as Chair, Miranda Jaggers’s departure, the triumphant arrival of Discoverer but then her subsequent two-month laying off at the height of the summer to cure transmission problems, Fothergill’s little bombshell to vacate the premises, and big developments at the dock.
David Bell, Jonathan Chapman and Peter Low were all swiftly and appreciatively re-elected as Trustees.
Then, in turn, Stephen West, Peter Oldham, Zaria Greenhill, Kate Dodds and Pippa Butterfield each took to the floor, succinctly covering the main issues. ‘This is a prudently run charity’, and plenty of optimism is due when both boats are fully utilised. We have strong reserves, necessary for the move, as well as running repairs to the boats, IT upgrades and work on the dock, not forgetting a necessary refit of Venturer.
Not only have we had our first day of both boats being in operation at the same time, which has meant that Discoverer has been on her first trips with volunteer skippers, but also our first Triple Day in October, with School on the River taking place at both Hermitage Moorings in Wapping and at Teddington Lock, as well as a cruise on Discoverer. We have had a record 70 school bookings for the financial year, the Drastic Plastic initiative especially appreciated by teachers, and with good feedback from the family learning days for home-schooled children.
‘No let-up on fund-raising!’’ came as no surprise. In 2019 we will be celebrating 30 years of RTBP, a great opportunity to tell or remind people about us, with lots of press coverage. The ambition is to find £12,000, on top of regular donations and grant applications. There will be a party in the spring! And mugs, of course – and how about pin badges to be snapped up by our eager and ever-expanding client base, and Christmas cards? (Keep the ideas coming.)
We were shown a photo of the Tamesis HQ, our new office home on the Teddington side of the river, of which we will take up a ‘compact and bijou’ part in January. It’s a good fit: Tamesis has similar values to us in making the Thames accessible, and we’ll be much closer to the boats. The legalities are almost sewn up at the dock, we await a final confirmation from Aeon and RBK.
Pippa’s glamorous catwalk colleagues showed off the RTBP sweatshirt, fleece and jacket to encourage crew members to wear their kit on board. Can there be pale blue for summer too?
Questions from the floor covered Premium Bonds or other accessible investments; do we make the most of Gift Aid?; the timescale of the Kingston Council works on the new accessible walkway in Canbury Gardens; a review of our whistle-blowing policy; what’s the difference between a director and a trustee? (as a company we need to have directors, as a charity we need trustees); safety aspects on board Discoverer (steps, grab rails, anchor-handling, visibility of the crew from the skipper’s viewpoint); new rostering to be up and running for the next season; yes, there is an accident book on both boats, with the first aid kit; and please can the website be updated with the various roles of the Directors/Trustees? All points noted and for consideration/action where necessary.
Throughout the evening there were thanks and more thanks, general and particular, to the fantastic staff, and to the wonderful volunteers who raise loads of money and ‘keep the boats afloat’. ‘We look forward to a calmer season,’ said Keith.
................and then there was Cake.
Sarah Herrick, Office Volunteer
Nigel's Cycling Challenge
A big thank you to all who sponsored me on my bike ride. I managed to raise £1300 through your wonderful donations. I was originally going to do the Velosouth Charity Bike Ride on 23rd September around the South Downs, but this was cancelled due to safety concerns related to high winds. I finally did my bike ride on 16th October, riding from my home to Buckingham Palace then to Windsor and then back again, a total of 102 miles which I completed in just under 8 hours. A big thank you to Peter Oldham who did the ride with me and supported me throughout the planning and training. It was the first time I have ridden this far and I am proud of my achievement. I am looking to do another cycling challenge in 2020.
Here is a short video of my route with some photos:
https://www.relive.cc/view/1908527665
Nigel Williams, Volunteer
A new home for RTBP
We announced at the AGM that we are planning to move to our new office in the early New Year. After many years in Richmond with the very generous Fothergills company, we will be taking up residence very close to the river in Teddington at Tamesis Sailing Club. The office has a wonderful view of the river, there is easy car parking, there is wheelchair access to a meeting room and we will be much closer to our boats. Once we have final dates confirmed for the move we will let everyone know.
Kate Dodds, Marketing and Fundraising Manager
Hermitage Moorings
Hermitage Community Moorings (HCM) is a co-operative which built, owns, and operates a mooring on the Thames in Wapping, next to the Memorial Gardens that overlook the river at what used to be known as Hermitage Wharf.
The mooring provides berths for up to 23 vessels: enabling a mixture of long term residential live-aboard use and short term visitor boat use. HCM provides well-managed river access for local people, including educational and recreational facilities.
This year RTBP delivered a total of 8 days education to local primary schools in East London at these moorings. Children do a version of Eco-Venturers appropriate to the moorings, as Venturer is not present. Hermitage River Projects, the charitable arm of the moorings, supports us with some funding towards the costs of 10 school bookings a year, which we are confident of achieving in 2019.
Zaria Greenhill, Education Coordinator
The Urban Mermaid
Starting on 1st November 2018, Lindsey Cole swam 120 miles from the source of the River Thames to Teddington Lock, collecting plastic to highlight how we are choking mermaids and creatures in our waters. Lindsey’s support boat was manned by artist Barbara de Moubray who pulled a giant mermaid sculpture made of plastic bottles. They asked passers-by to litter pick along the river and put their findings inside the mermaid so that by the time they reached London the sculpture represented a small percentage of the plastic currently polluting the River Thames.
Boat Project friends and volunteers turned up at Teddington Lock to celebrate her arrival and John Frye captured the event.
For more information visit https://www.urbanmermaid.org/