About All Ours
“All Ours” is a grass roots voluntary organisation set up earlier this year. We have been running weekly social evening sessions since March 2006 at Hillview Community Centre, Ransom road, St. Anns 6.30pm – 9pm.
Our Aims
One of our aims is to promote healthy eating and we do this by providing a modest healthy 2-course meal for £1.50. All Ours is aimed adults who are feeling isolated and excluded, in particular those who are experiencing mental ill health. Because many day centre facilities for adults close at 5pm we felt it was important to be open “out of hours” and to have activities that take place in a safe and welcoming environment.
Providing a meal is a good social tool and gives a focus to the sessions. Many of our regulars are willing to help and enjoy the preparation and helping with serving and even doing the washing up!! Everyone eating a meal together provides the perfect atmosphere for meeting people, conversation and debate. We serve vegetarian food and usually have a vegan option. We believe that this makes the meal accessible to anyone with specific moral or religious dietary requirements. The food is cooked on the premises and we use locally grown organic produce wherever possible. We are being supported by the Ecoworks Fresh project, Arkwright Meadows Community Gardens and Roots Natural Foods.
Please note that currently we are not providing meals at our social events. See our 'News' page for details of our monthly meetings.
Our Funding
So far we have received grants from Nottinghamshire Community Foundation and Metropolitan Housing Trust and we are currently applying to other funders in order to sustain our project over the next year. The funding from NCF enabled us to employ a cook and support work and we have been fortunate to secure the services of have Adrian Horsley from Ecoworks’ Harvest Cafe who cooks a deliciously different and exciting meal each week as well as doubling as a support worker during the weekly evening sessions.
The funding has also enabled us to offer free transport to assist people getting to and from the venue safely as many people struggle to get out and use public transport. This will be more important as the darker evenings and cold winter weather begins. We can currently arrange a taxi pick up from the City Centre, St. Anns and Sneinton.
We have been really pleased with the progress of this project and we provide a relaxed friendly environment where people can come along meet others, seek information and feel supported. We offer a selection of games such as scrabble, chess and table tennis and we have had excellent feedback from our regulars who keep coming along each week. We have been told that an evening out at All Ours is like being with a family.