Derailed —but for a good cause.
This is my fifth (should have been my sixth) monthly post from the One Side Project challenge — A trunk of 16mm. You can follow the other chapters here.
I am late with this article…..so so late, but it’s because of a good cause, I promise. You see I am a Co-director of a not-for-profit called Bake Share Care and on July 15th we run an annual event called Baking our Blues Away.
What’s that you ask? Well… cue elevator pitch
Bake Share Care is a not for profit organisation using the power of food to make a positive impact.
We are a bunch of 6 individuals that passionately want to make a difference. We have identified our collective love of food as our conduit to change.
Each year Bake Share Care run and annual event on July 15th called Baking Our Blues Away where we encourage everyone to bake something for someone doing it tough and to strike up a conversation. Baking Our Blues Away primarily focuses on highlighting depression and anxiety, however certainly not exclusively to support those illnesses. At Baking our Blues Away we acknowledge that everyone experiences a bad day/week/year from time to time and it is important to support our community members doing it tough, regardless of the reason.
Baking our Blues Away happens in the heart of the Australian winter, as it is known that this is a tough time of year for many people, both an isolating and lonely time. Our partner beyondblue sees a spike in the use of their services throughout this season. We saw this as a great opportunity to use the simple act of giving to encourage conversation and connection through food and to bring a little winter warmth to both the recipient and the baker.
I encourage you to head to our website for more details on how you can get involved.
So that’s us in a nutshell and somehow I totally forgot how time demanding this can be over the months of May, June and July, totally derailing my side project.
This year we celebrated 5 years of running the event and as a team we wanted to challenge ourselves in our campaign creative and offering for our supporters. And as the team’s resident designer and developer a lot of that output fell to me.
This year we:
- Created a range of videos shared across our social media channels.
2016 posters and postcards. - Weekly EDMs with recipes from celebrities and stories of support from our community.
- A wide range of photo shoots, recipe testing and blogging.
- A donation portal and supporting content.
- Our first ever Ambassador Michael Klausen from Brasserie Bread come on board and did amazing things for the organisation.
- Plus so much more
And with all this hard work, we got some great results. We now have a strong, ever growing and active community of bakers and home cooks who are driven in raising awareness on mental health. A community that reaches out and bakes for a friend in need or holds a fundraising event raising money for beyondblue. As a team of friends, it’s amazing to see how our simple idea from 5 years ago has grown. We are a team that is incredibly proud of what we achieved this year and is excited for what’s coming in the next.
So as we wrap up our campaign for 2016, I can now jump back on to my passion project, a trunk of 16mm.
Apologies to Samantha Zhang for missing the deadline, I owe you a cake :)
Feel free to give this article a recommend 💚 if you like it and follow my story on the One Side Project Challenge publication. I will be giving project updates on the 17th of each month.
Luke Pye is a digital producer and web designer — trunkof16mm.com
