Is our Café for you?

Are you wondering whether our Root & Branch Community Café pop-ups are for you? If you like excellent food, delectable cakes and a warm, friendly atmosphere, then the answer is YES!

When is a warm space not a warm space? When it’s SO much more! We have funding to offer free food for the next six weeks, and our tea and coffee is always free anyway. This is so that anyone can come and spend time with us without spending any money, if they wish. We’re not a commercial café, we’re happy if you want to come and hang out with us all day! No rush, no pressure to donate and absolutely NO judgement. People come to visit us for all sorts of reasons, and we welcome each and every one of you!

How it works…we have a pot on the counter for donations because people do like to give something, however large or small. These donations help us to get by in the times that we don’t have grant funding to keep going. Pop in whatever you like, and yes, you can take change out! We have a card machine as well if you need to use it, but you tell us how much you’d like to put on it. This ‘pay what you decide’ model helps us to support everyone. Some people pay more, some people pay less or nothing at all. EVERYONE is welcome.

We are so grateful for the funding we receive from Department for Culture, Media and Sport and The National Lottery Community Fund to be able to offer free food. It means that we can support people who might be struggling in the face of rising costs of living, and what’s more, we’re so proud of Cheryl’s amazing food that we want everyone to be able to enjoy it, regardless of circumstances. It’s soul food, comfort and love in a bowl or on a plate. We understand the difference this can make to someone having a rough day, and it’s a beautiful thing!

But we also recognise that financial hardship is not the whole story. We believe that isolation and loneliness are as much a form of deprivation as poverty, and it’s one that we are particularly vulnerable to in our rural location with its older population. It’s why Weardale Together was founded, and our aim is to bring people together to promote wellbeing, tackle isolation and foster connection throughout our community. We run free craft sessions, because we believe in the benefits of creativity, and we want everyone to be able to experience them, whether it’s a spot of origami, silk painting, macramé, knitting, crochet, rag rugs, even a bit of Repair Shop action with our kintsugi workshops!

We’re a Community Interest Company, which means we are a not-for-profit organisation. We reinvest any money we make back into our community projects, like our youth group, and the cafés. We support our amazing community spaces by hiring them for events and workshops. We also pay staff, creating jobs as well as volunteering opportunities, and yes, we pay ourselves! We believe that work in the community should be valued as much as any other career, and we are committed to the Living Wage Foundation’s recommended rates of pay for our staff. And we are so grateful to the volunteers who come along to support us and help us create a welcoming atmosphere. Not to mention helping us with the mountains of washing up!

We do all this because we believe in our amazing, kind, brilliant community, and believe that we are stronger together. We love our work and the people we share it with, so come along and say hello and find out what it’s all about!

When & where...

Frosterley Village Hall, DL13 2QW - Tuesday 1pm - 3pm

Ireshopeburn Village Hall, DL13 1ER - Wednesday 11am - 2pm

St Thomas' Church Hall, DL13 2UE - Thursday & Friday 9am-3pm