Welcome to episode 5 of the Ilkley lockdown podcast. I'm Ian Smith. In each episode, I'll be talking to a different person from in or around Ilkley, asking them about how the COVID 19 crisis has changed the world for them and finding out how they're dealing with the challenges it has brought. In this episode, I talk to Amanda Donnells Bewley, whose day job is as a consultant, helping charities to get their message out and raise funds. Since COVID 19, she's been doing something rather different.

She speaks to me from the most unusual office environment that I've encountered so far while making this podcast and shares what she's been up to. Here's my conversation with Amanda. So, Amanda, thank you very much for joining me.

Well, it's lovely to, meet you virtually and to be on your podcast, so thanks for inviting me.

Oh, it's a great pleasure. So, I normally start off for the benefit of people listening with 2 very basic questions. Who are you and what do you do?

Okay. My name's Amanda Danells Bewley and what I do, oh gosh lots of things. In my day job I, run my own business. I work within the voluntary sector doing marketing, PR, income generation. That's a posh word for, fundraising.

And I've been doing that for about four and a half years, and I've been working in the voluntary sector for about 20 years.

So since COVID 19 came along and we've had social distancing and the lockdown and and all the the changes that that's brought, How is your life different now compared to how it was before?

To be honest, I tend to work from home anyway. So it's not been that different work wise Uh-huh. Except there are now 3 other adults in the house at all times. And, we recorded this in what I now call my office, which is actually, my VW camper van, which is my oasis. So I've just relocated out outside.

I suppose I'm not going to co working spaces in Bradford which I would do quite a bit maybe once or twice a week and going out and doing meetings. But the other thing is I'm doing lots of volunteering as well which is a you know I hadn't really been doing much of that. So I had just been appointed a director at the Clark Foley Centre about 2 weeks before lockdown. And so being sort of seconded or asked to join the, Ilkley Corona response team was my first part of being on these on the board at Clark Foley. And so that's led to doing, you know, doing quite a lot and setting up the Scrubs project, which I'm sure we'll go on to talk about.

Oh, I'm sure sure we will. So, what does the Ilkley coronavirus response team actually do?

Okay. So that is a group. I think there's about 20 to 30 people on it now, but it brings together statutory bodies, voluntary sector, councilors, district councilors, local MP, local mayor, all together to have a collaborative team approach to supporting our community in a time of crisis. So we meet once a week virtually and we set up different projects and we look at where there are gaps within the community where people need to be supported. We set up, a central hotline number that people can either volunteer their time or they can, say I'm concerned about a neighbor or a friend, they're not getting their shopping, so we can arrange for them to get some food or pick up their prescriptions etcetera.

So it's a totally collaborative group, to support the community. And part of that, quite early on, the medical lead was like okay well the GPs are really struggling to get scrubs. And because I have I also have a bunting business and I've done, yeah I've done community sewing projects and I've been doing that for quite a long time, I was like okay well this is something that I can help with. So just that's how the Scripps project was was set up from this big collaborative group that we do.

That's clearly a really, really interesting kind of thing. Can you sort of tell the story of that?

So the Scripps project came out of the ill, clearly, coronavirus response group meetings and it very much is led by our medical lead which is doctor Cameron Raymond and she tells us what is needed and where. So the meeting happened on a Thursday and by the following Sunday, so 3 days later, already had 20 people who had signed up. And because I've done community sewing for the great get together, I knew that that there was a group of volunteers already almost primed with their sewing machine that I could call upon but also I also knew that people like Mary at Cabad and Penny at Good Neighbours that are on the group would then help recruit more volunteers which is exactly what happened. Now we have over a 130 people on our database.

That's incredible.

And we have delivered 332 sets of scrubs within 4 weeks.

That's amazing.

It's absolutely incredible. I think the other amazing thing to come out of this group is the sense of community and supporting each other and the importance it plays for those people who are self isolating, who are shielding their they're keeping safe. But a lot of them are women. We do have men who are sewing, but a lot of them are women who are living by themselves. It's very isolating.

Yes. Maybe their family isn't close. Maybe they're not being they've not been able to zoom call them or anything like that. And and actually that's been amazing because now we have these little plus what we call cluster groups and they're all supporting each other. They're checking in with each other, they're like, you know, 'is there anything you need?' 'just are you okay today?' So this whole group that was set up to to make scrubs has actually now gone on to be supporting each other and giving them a sense of something that they can be doing.

When you start sewing it's like it's like anything, like model making or art or sewing, you get really involved with it, and you stop thinking about the outside world. So it's really good for so that sort of mental well-being as well of just losing yourself in a project.

Yeah. That feeling of flow is is wonderful, isn't it? Time just flies away. And such a great outcome. I kind of expected, yes, there'll be a lot of scrubs coming out.

My goodness. How how's that been? But, that sense of community, and that bringing of people together is a wonderful, wonderful sort of side effect, isn't it?

It it is absolutely incredible. I mean, I love meeting people. So for me, personally, that's been super. Because I I could tell you, I could stay I could stand outside of my steps all day and just chat to people. And what you'll find is, I very much or we very much encourage to make coming to pick the fabric and stuff up or to drop the scrubs off make it part of your daily exercise.

So just as I've been sort of chatting to you I've noticed 2 people come in on their bikes and come and get the stuff and then off they go again. But yeah quite often people come around the same time in the morning so we live in a little cul de sac and everybody's socially isolating in the cul de sac but still chatting to each other, and then they pick their things up and off they go. So it's that sense of community has been lovely actually.

That feeling of community is something that Ilkley has always had.

Yeah. And and I think there's, there's a sense of especially with Becky who I've sort of done this project with is, like, okay, how can we extend this post coronavirus? How can we continue these relationships? What's going to be the legacy of this group? Because getting 120, 130 volunteers on board so quickly is quite an achievement and I think it's just how do we continue that after lockdown finishes?

So yeah that's something that we're sort of chatting about and we've got, in fact we've got a zoom call with with our service again so we tried the zoom call So if you consider like over 100 people, we got 58 people on our zoom zoom call and that was just phenomenal. I mean that was incredible. So we've got another one this week and we'll be asking if we put a what it is they'd like to do afterwards or sort of continue. So at the moment we're making bunting for VE Day, which I'm sure by the time this goes out it's probably VE Day will have passed but that's again that's another community thing that we're asking our sewers to make bunting for people to put up in their streets or the care homes or like their communities to celebrate heroes past and present. You know, I I love bunting.

I'm Yeah. I'm I'm trying to, conquer the world one bunting length at a time.

Fabulous. Actually, one one of my questions I'm going out of order in a kind of bold move now. But you talked about wondering how how to preserve some of the the goodness that that's being created after the end of the lockdown when the world is more back to whatever normal will be. Have you got any particular aspects of of this that you would like to see continue afterwards?

I love the be kind to each other. Be kind. You know? I think working in the voluntary sector what I really love is that everybody has a story and everybody has a background and I think especially with social media we're very quick to judge other people without knowing their journey And so I think my biggest thing is is to be kind to people, to have patience, and try and understand what their journey has been and then how you can do things together.

Yeah. So so important. So what do you think is the biggest thing you've kind of learned from this experience?

The biggest thing that I've learned, how to how to use Zoom for a star. And on our call today using Skype, I have long tried to use Skype and not been able to. So, yeah, getting to grips with that. One thing I've learned, I hate the phrase it's okay not to be okay, but that thing about being kind and maybe be kind to ourselves. I'm definitely the sort of person that keeps trying you know, I'm a mom of 4 with 2 stepchildren.

I'm always trying to keep things together for them, just keep it together. And I have had a wobble and rather embarrassingly whilst on a zoom call. I I just ended up in tears and do you know what? That's okay because it's just been a totally sort of weird time for people.

Absolutely.

And maybe, yeah, to be kind to ourselves as well. Give ourselves a bit of sort of a bit of breathing space really. I think the working from home, all of that sort of thing you know I've done that for years. Being with my family we went, my husband and our youngest daughter, we traveled for 2 months in our camper van around Europe. We used to being in a tiny confined space so that wasn't really so much of a challenge for us, really.

We all knew what our flash points are, but maybe just being a bit kinder to ourselves when we're having a bad day. Yeah. I think that was my biggest thing. I learned that in Zoom calling, obviously. Yes.

Yes. It's all very high-tech, isn't it? So my final question is maybe a bit more fun. A lot of people, I think, have things that they really miss about life in the unimaginable before coronavirus passed. And I guess that when the lockdowns are relaxed and people are more able to go out, they probably got something they particularly want to do.

What's yours?

Okay. Well, hug my kids, I think, is the biggest thing. We've got 2 of our children living with us, and one also lives in Oakleigh. And we would see them like, he's been coming on a daily basis to see us, but they can't get anywhere near him. So I've kind of that one day really did really get to me because they couldn't even come, like, we to have these big pizza nights, and they couldn't even come for that.

It's also been my daughter's 30th birthday last week. And normally, she'd be here. They would be here for Easter. So, you know, we a massive big family that gets together constantly. So I think I've really missed that sort of physicalness of being around my my children.

That's hit me a few times and I'm sure that it's the same for everybody. There are people in our lives that we want to be with and that we can't be with and I think that's been a massive sort of adjustment for people. So yeah, I think that's my biggest been my biggest challenge and the biggest thing that I'm looking forward to when when coronavirus normal sort of disappears and we go back to whatever our normal was before. I have really missed going to, the nurseries, the old bridge nurseries, and and putting plants in my garden. So they're across the road, that's gonna be, like, really one thing.

But going to the beach, I really want to go to the beach. I love being at the seaside. And I just, you know, I just want to get out in the big wide world. I haven't driven for ages.

No. No.

Just like, my husband does all the shopping. And, yeah, I I just want to go to the seaside. I think that's gonna be our first trip when we can travel.

That'd be something to really look forward to.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Amanda, all I can do is thank you so much for for talking to me. It's been really, really interesting. And, actually, while I'm thanking you, I'd just like to say how awesome I think the sewers of, scrubs are. I just think what a fantastic thing to do. You're all brilliant.

Well, thank you for inviting me on. I think, I love being able to get the recognition for a a group of wonderful men and women, women and men. They've all just worked so hard and been so committed to serving their community, and, it's a pleasure to be able to do that with them.

Brilliant. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thanks again to the Scrubs sewers for all their hard work and to Amanda for that very interesting and engaging conversation. Look in the notes for the episode to find links to more information about some of what we discussed. In our next episode, I'll be talking to a high-tech manager of software engineers whose colleagues are mainly based in London. She's been working remotely from them for a while, and now the rest of them are remote too. She tells us what they've all learned and what they'll be continuing with after the lock down ends.

The best way not to miss out on this in future episodes is to download the Apple or Google Podcasts app on your phone, search for Ilkki lockdown, and hit the subscribe button. Thanks for listening, and bye for now.