While selling our new book at the Farmer's Market

I promised to help Camilla, the chair of Stroud Preservation Trust, on our stall at the Stroud Farmer's Market this morning. This week we received the first delivery of the book which the Trust has published called 'Stroud – a town changed by community action'. Camilla has nominally written it with Dominique, from the interviews conducted with thirty people who have been involved with ten community projects during the last thirty years.

The idea for the book came about last year when the Preservation Trust started to prepare the exhibition to celebrate its thirty year history. Camilla realised that the reasons for the formation of our trust had also brought together a network of people who had similarly set up their own local activities and community groups to achieve a wide range of beneficial outcomes. Camilla raised some money and then coordinated the editorial team to record the interviews, and now it has been edited into a 170 page book!

I was given the task of taking portraits of all the interviewees, as well as being interviewed myself, and I am very pleased to see my pictures with the relevant people's biographies as an appendix of the book. Some of my other pictures have been included as well, where they contribute to the stories.

So today we sold about forty copies at £10 each which I think is a success. We printed 300 copies and if we sell them the costs will be recouped and we will have enough to do a second print run. I think the book will inspire others to feel they could possibly start their own group to achieve necessary changes which no-one else can address at a local level.

As the market began to quieten just before it closed Camilla, walked the three yards from out small stall to buy some Brinkworth Blue cheese, made on a small farm about twenty miles away. I took a couple of pictures which she says I can blip!


You can learn more about the Trust here, on our website, and there is a link to more information about the book. You can also buy it from there too!!!