Could YOU be a small shed sponsor?

Common Farm Flowers is a cut flower and floristry business: Georgie Newbery and her artist husband Fabrizio Boccha grow, cut and tie all the flowers they use and they have been invited to be 'Green Shoots' at the National Gardening Show which will be held at the Bath & West showground in early September.

"They've given us the opportunity to build a show garden in which, naturally, we are going to need to build a very small shed, the space we have is 6x4m," explains Georgie, "and Fabrizio has already started building the shed but we would still like some sponsorship, either in the form of money to pay for the materials or in materials. I should warn potential sponsors that our shed will have a ramshackle charm - we are not into modernist perfection at Common Farm Flowers and are are keen recyclers. Any shed built by Fabrizio will have a re-cycled feel."

Any potential sponsors should e-mail her at georgie@common-farm.com - they will be flagged up liberally in literature they distribute at the show and on their Twitter and Facebook feeds as well as on their website.
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Garden sheds take over Stratford today

Thirteen specially commissioned cultural sheds are on show in Stratford today. SHEDspace is a new one day festival running from 12pm to 6pm today with shed installations throughout the town centre, each presenting an activity which ranges from film to fashion, digital art to theatre, circus and dance.The majority of the Sheds have been created by local artists although there are one or two specially invited guests including cellist and digital artist Peter Gregson choreographer Rosie Whitney Fish and Zimbabwean-born artist Thurle Wright. The Festival is presented by Stratford Rising, a consortium of organisations based in Stratford who are working together to raise the profile and sing the praises of culture in Stratford.

Mark Prescott ShedSPACE curator said: "Sheds seem to be a very British concept. So many people use them as places of reflection or an opportunity to pursue a hobby, interest or obsession. The activities presented in the festival expand or play with that central idea. In addition the Sheds have been positioned in such a way as to draw audiences on a journey around Stratford itself."

Here's what you can enjoy

• Fashion and dance
Visitors to Stratford Shopping Centre will be able to take part in a swap shop and fashion project, watching as two stylists go head-to-head in a fashion challenge. Choreographer Rosie Whitney Fish who has worked with London Fashion Week, Vidal Sasson and Wella, will be creating the ultimate dance swish together with a series of pop-up performances of fashion inspired dance.

• Theatre and performance art
Theatre Venture’s Miniscule Olympics starts with a slo-mo marathon and proceeds with a series of quirky Olympic-inspired activities. Stratford Circus have created their very own circus shed complete with tightrope and acrobatics. Anthems at the prize winning ceremony are provided by the New London Orchestra. Gasp have turned their shed into a beautiful Victorian Toy Theatre and are presenting two shows Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves and Theatre Royal begin the process of throwing their stage open to the public in 2012 with an Open Stage Shed

• Art and Design
Artist Thurle Wright creates a participative opportunity to create a public art project using her Shed as skeleton for audiences to build and write stories using cardboad boxes. There is scope for more than a 1,000 boxes to be painted and decorated and from a unique public sculpture created during the day.

• Digital
Visitors to Stratford’s Old Town Hall Square will also be able to give their warts and all views on the Olympics to journalists and bloggers from A New Direction (explanation of A New Direction), who will be recording the responses as part of a live blog stream from the festival. Cellist and Digital Media Artist Peter Gregson is inviting audiences to collaborate with him in an attempt to capture a soundscape of the festival.

• Miscellaneous
Stratford Picture House have turned their shed into a ‘cinema karaoke’ while also offering a live musical accompaniment to Buster Keaton’s The General. Hungry audiences can eat their way across 5 continents courtesy of Northern Imagination who have been inspired by the rising London trend in street food. Discover Children’s Centre have designed a beautiful shed full of escaping stories where children have to help Joe the Story Keeper to create new stories so that the shed does not empty.
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Can sheds save the NHS?

Paymaster general and Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude believes that new hospital buildings could well include more shedlike atmospheres as the UK government looks to save money while still providing high quality buildings, according to Building Design.

The magazine reports that Maude said hospital buildings could be built “as sheds around people and equipment that can be reconfigured very quickly in 10 or 20 years’ time when needs change. We need to build in flexibility. We need to have a shell that’s capable of being reconfigured. At the moment, we’re building in obsolescence.”

Of course those that following Shedworking know that this process is already underway and that garden office buildings are increasingly being used by hospitals around the country. One example, pictured above, is by in.it.studios, a garden room extension for St Oswalds Hospice in Newcastle which is a Rehabilitation Room: it's 5.9m x 7.6m, cedar clad and as in.it.studios say, "the timber construction distinguishes itself from the brick built hospice with a contemporary aesthetic yet retains an appearance sympathetic to its environment".
Thanks to Lloyd Alter for the alert

Le cabanon, nouvel espace de vie

Qui a dit qu'un cabanon ne servait qu'au rangement? Aux États-Unis et en Europe, le phénomène du shed chic et des «cabanons à vivre» ne cesse de faire des adeptes.

Read more at Cyberpress.ca.
Photo fournie par Modern Cabana.
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Fridays posts are sponsored by Swift Foundations. We design bespoke, eco friendly, foundation solutions. Our Plinths are LABC system approved and manufactured to British Standard BS8110 by a ISO 9000 company. www.swiftfoundations.co.uk for details.

Rooftop shedworking

According to The Independent, "space-savvy homeowners are changing the face of the urban extension" by building on top of houses rather than merely extending them sideways. Here's a snippet:

"Building up is a way to create new rooms, especially bedrooms, (the most sought-after addition, according to the survey by RICS), and few can deny that there's something uplifting and even transcendent about the rooftop view; an eyrie from where the world can be safely observed."

Pictured above is an example of a London roof from Apropos Conservatories.
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Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed

Your paintings: sheds

Your Paintings is a website which is putting up the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, details about them, and where to see them in the flesh in museums and other public places around the country. It is also fully searchable and brings up some interesting selections for the term "shed" (click the link to see them all). The project aims to catalogue all 200,000 paintings by the end of 2012. Above is The Brickmaker's Shed by Arthur Claude Cooke, c.1909, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 67cm.
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Wednesday posts are sponsored by The Stable Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here.

Shed on stilts

Spotted by Lloyd Alter on Modern Mechanix (where the text is more readable), "the chamber makes an ideal place for reading or studying".
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Tuesday posts are sponsored by The Home Office Company, manufacturers of unique garden rooms since 1998. Now in 10 exciting new colours. Click here for more details.