The Chantry, together with many local groups, will be inviting children (and grownups) to sow sunflower seeds at an event on Saturday 23rd April. The Chantry Centre garden and Café will be open between 10.00am and noon.

Holding Together in GL11 are a group of locals who became active last year to support our community by helping Cam and Dursley become trauma informed towns. At the heart of their activity is promoting the importance of connected relationships through compassionate action.

The sunflower seed is their adopted symbol, reflecting their aim of growing the seeds of compassionate action. At the planting event on 23rd April we will be inviting the public to sow sunflower seeds or buy sunflower plants.

The plan will be for the majority of these to be taken home to grow, but we will hold onto some to grow on so that later on we can plant them out at various spots around Cam and Dursley.

As well as being a collective symbol for community activity which brings us together and spreads a message of unity, the sunflower is the national symbol of Ukraine we hope that we will also demonstrate a local show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

Holding Together aim to have enough organisations involved so that they can create a walking trail around GL11, and at each sunflower venue they will have a plaque with a QR code that will take people to information about trauma should they wish to find out more about further aims.

If you are interested to know more about the Holding Together in GL11 group, please visit their website www.holdingtogethergl11.org or join them on Facebook www.facebook.com/HTinGL11

They will also be hosting a screening event of the film 'Resilience' at the Chantry Centre on 15th May, Sunday evening, open to anyone in the community who wants to come and learn something about trauma, and we'd be delighted if you could join us for that.

In addition to this, another community event that will be taking place at the Chantry Centre is the annual Cam and Dursley Flower & Produce Show on Saturday 27 August, which will have 2 specific sunflower classes this year - a photograph of a sunflower display grown by yourself (open to all ages) and an under 17s tallest sunflower competition.  To find out more take a look at the 2022 Schedule which will be available from The Dursley Pet Shop and Inches or via www.chantrycentre.org very soon.