Responding to a call for help from a designer I greatly admire, I dashed up the A1(M) to Peterborough last week. Chris Beardshaw had been invited by the DIY SOS Big Build Team ‘Children in Need Special’, to design a landscaped garden and playground surrounding a newly built community center that will primarily house the Little Miracles Charity, a parent led support group for families with children that have additional needs, disabilities and life limiting conditions.

The project commenced on Tue 17th Sept 2013 and by the time I arrived a week later the entire main building had been completed externally and the landscaping was in full swing although with completion due in three days, there was a significant amount of work still to do. So all checked in and hard hat adorned, I entered the site to get stuck in.

The number of volunteers on site was impressive, it had already been part landscaped, with various tradesmen shifting top soil to create raised walkways, installing play park equipment, building wooden and stone structures, completing resin bonded pathways around planting areas, laying a small all-weather court and all this in addition to the numerous other painters, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and roofers all flitting in, out and around the main building. It felt like I, along with a few other newbie volunteers had entered a bee’s nest, chaos of the much organised variety.

You would imagine a ‘too many cooks’ scenario, but with the simple instruction of ‘just find someone who looks like they need help and a help them’ we got on. I swiftly found a group in the very early construction stages of a teenagers garden retreat room, and was very quickly accepted as part of the team.

It was a shame that my small volunteering stint could not have coincided with Chris Beardshaw’s final planting work, as I would have been far more effective, maybe next time!

Together we began constructing the wooden floor and wall sections, whilst we waited for the scaffolding on the main building to be removed allowing us access to level out the proposed ground area for the room. A quick trip up the road to collect some kindly donated steels for suspending the floor and our end of day goal of raising the garden building to roof height was successfully accomplished with hard graft and know how!

The project provides continual drinks, snacks and three proper meals to sustain the workforce and to those of you who dare to think that the familiar DIY SOS team are little more than camera fodder and further celebrity seekers, I can assure you that they don’t stop working and are a continual presence on site. Mark Millar as build manager appears to be in 4 different places at once and the rest of the team, in addition to their respective roles, provide positive and motivational encouragement throughout the day. It’s obvious that a substantial amount of time, organising, planning and deliberation goes into each of these projects.

Perhaps I worked in an office environment for too long, but this was a truly rewarding experience for me, fantastic to see how a group of strangers can so easily collaborate for the greater good. There wasn't even a hint of egos on show at the site, everyone was ready to help, decisions were made quickly, every menial task that needed to be done was completed swiftly without argument or discussion of responsibility and the few mistakes made were quickly corrected without apportioning blame, very refreshing.

It’s amazing how much you can get done in such a short space of time and if local authorities or higher public offices are not studying this carefully as a truly efficient process of encouraging the ‘big society’ they 'talk' so much about then a trick has definitely been missed.

Watch out for this project to be televised later in the year, the nine day (!) site transformation will be almost unbelievable; I can’t wait to see the final reveal especially the planting.

Oh, and I lost count of how many times I heard ‘It’s for the wife’ as a volunteer returned from collecting an autograph or photo opportunity, ‘yeah right, I’m sure she’ll love a picture of you with Nick, Billy, Julian, Mark or Chris on her mantelpiece.’ No offence guys!

Community spirit still alive and well