November Blues

Well done to all members of the blue team who were the winning team for November. Tokens are awarded for when a Printer does something beyond what is expected or something out of the ordinary.

Children in Need

On Friday some of us came to work in our pyjamas to raise money for Children in Need.We looked like our alarm clocks had not gone off and we had rolled straight out of bed and into work!

We raised £47.87.

Celebrate Social Enterprise Day 17th November

Celebrate Social Enterprise Day 17^th November

(all year long!!)

There are many Social Training Enterprises in Cambridgeshire providing quality supported work experience and training placements for people with disabilities in a real work environment.

At the Print Centre we have a broad range of customers who buy our services and products. I would like to say thank you for your continued support and for all the ‘informal’ marketing you do for us - with your help  our customer base continues to grow.

Please tell a friend about the other similar organisations in Cambridgeshire to celebrate Social Enterprise Day.

There is a STEnG (Social Training Enterprise Group) website

www.steng.org.uk.

Also, Gill Riley, the Development Officer can be contacted on 07903192102.

Stuffing for Christmas

At the end of last week we had "all hands to the pumps" to complete an order with a tight deadline for a Cambridge based charity. We creased, folded and rolled 1,550 greetings cards then put the individual cards with envelopes into in plastic display wallets.

This morning Adelè has been going through our new price list with a group of Printers. we had a quiz to see who knew how much different types of printing cost and everyone enjoyed trying to find individual items in the price list.

Burwell's Best Kept Secret

 Tina's Window - Once again we are using Tina’s shop window to promote and display our products and services and to tell people about one of Burwell’s best kept secrets – US!

Recent fundraising – thank you Chris, Geoff, Julie and Keith for shaking buckets at the last Fordham Car Boot  Sale of 2011 and raising nearly £120.

 

Thinking of Jim

Jim Wilcox June 1949 to April 2010

On Saturday we had a get together of family, friends and work colleagues of Jim Wilcox, one of our Support Workers who sadly died last year.  We wanted to have something in the Print Centre to remind us of him so we commissioned Rowan Humberstone, another Social Training Enterprise, to produce this beautiful plaque – now on the wall in our entranceway. The plaque weaves together the fact that he was a family man, that he offered a helping hand when he could, his love and vast knowledge of music, his (competitive) passion for fishing and the fact that he worked with us at the Print Centre and that he was previously a fireman. 

2 sides to the Open day

On Wednesday the 14th of September we had our Open day at the Print Centre. The day was a mixture of fun things and serious business! On the fun side we had a great BBQ and a raffle which raised £56 for the Printers' account. Then we had the serious business of presentations of the Printers' certificates for all their hard work. David Martin, one of our Trustees, then let everybody know what had happened throughout the year and presented our Annual Report.

Booty from the Booters

 The car boot sale held in Fordham invites charities to come and collect at the entrance of the sale.
Last Sunday a group of volunteers and staff from Burwell Print got up at the crack of dawn to collect at the car boot sale. People were very generous and we collected the grand total of £565.74. We wore our Burwell Print t-shirts to promote what we do and several people stopped to chat to us about printing. Definitely worth missing a Sunday lie-in!

Thinking outside of the Tapas Box!

A longstanding customer of the Print Centre asked us if we could produce some display boxes for his Tapas Mussels that he was launching in the UK. While it isn't a job we have ever done before, we like to always have a "can do" attitude and after a little bit of planning and design we set about producing 100 display boxes.

The customer is extremely happy with the end result and we feel we have learnt something new along the way.

Chris O'Neill

Burwell Carnival 2011

We entered a float in this years carnival, this years theme was wonders of the universe. The float was decorated with a picture of earth painted on each side, we all wore hats with stars on and t-shirts with planets on them, and Steven dressed up as a spaceman.


We all enjoyed the ride around the village waving at the people who lined the route.

We were really pleased when we were awarded the trophy for the best adult float in the parade.

After the parade ended we helped out on a stall selling raffle tickets.

Work experience students welcomed at Burwell Print

This year we are once again welcoming and supporting students from local schools to gain some work experience with us.

For the next couple of weeks we have Ben from Soham Village College and Matt from the Kings School, Ely.

Training Printers to use the Unibind Machine

Today we printed 12 copies of a tractor user manual. The customer then telephoned us to ask if we could bind each copy together without putting holes in them. This sounded like an ideal job for the unibind machine. Janet and Peter had not used the machine before so Mel showed them how to operate it. The end result looked great. The customer was very pleased, he said "They look splendid".  

We have a new Ringbinder

Our old ringbinder was getting difficult to use and as we were having more customers wanting ringbinding we have bought a new machine. Although the new one looks very similar it is far easier to use, as the cutting mechanism is electric which makes it more Printer friendly. Today Chris and Elliott are ringbinding 85 prospectuses for Burwell Village College.

Waitrose Cheque Presentation

Yesterday Janet, Alex, Vaughan and Mel went to Cambridge. The visit had two purposes.

Firstly, as a result of Sarah Bevan nominating Burwell Print we were one of the organisations that Waitrose in Fitzroy Street collected for. We met with the store manager who presented us with a cheque for £125.00. A big thank you Waitrose and their customers.

We then went to Rowan's private view of their Photography Exhibition. Several of  Rowan's students have been doing a photography course and the exhibition was the result of weeks of learning and experimenting with photography. We printed the photographs at the Print Centre so it was great to see them on the wall in the Rowan gallery. Janet thought the exhibition was "very good and great to look around Rowan's studios".

Get set for summer!

Jen and John looking at our window display at Tina's shop in Burwell, and the theme this month is 'Get set for summer'.  Many thanks to Steven, Sarah and Vaughan for putting this together.

We have all been working very hard today to complete a fast turnaround job - 38 hoodies for students from City of Ely Community College who are going to New York at the weekend. Here Usman is quality checking, folding and packing the hoodies ready for collection.

Another job well done at very short notice!

Elaine Ellis at the Strategic Health Authority contacted us on Monday of this week to ask if we could print more than 12,000 sheets and then collate into 200 delegate packs for a conference on Thursday of this week! We checked to make sure this was achievable and thankfully we were able to fit this job into our work schedule on Wednesday! We’re not always able to do this BUT it’s always worth asking.