A History of SHARE
SHARE:Frome is a social initiative by Edventure:Frome in association with Frome Town Council and The Cheese & Grain.
The first of its kind, the idea for SHARE:Frome was born in early 2015, as a partnership between Frome Town Council, social enterprise Edventure, Sustainable Frome and the Cheese and Grain, the local music and events venue.
The motive behind the idea was to reduce the carbon footprint of the town, by enabling borrowing instead of buying new, reducing material production and landfill waste. This in turn would save members money and space in their homes, as well as providing a community space for people to donate, volunteer, connect and build skills.
The set-up of the shop was undertaken by a group of eight young people in just two months, as part of specialist training in community entrepreneurship, run by Edventure. Much help was given by the local community in the form of advice, expertise, time, donations, opinions and enthusiasm!
Since then SHARE:Frome has been growing and developing in the Frome community thanks to a team of hard-working volunteers and various managers. Initially the shop was managed by locals Helen and Aliss.
In 2017, a new team of six Edventure students undertook the challenge of taking SHARE:Frome to the next level. With a revamp of the shop’s layout, appearance and storage space, as well as the introduction of a new volunteer scheme and social referral programme, the students turned SHARE:Frome into an even more impactful community enterprise.
Frome resident, Sam took on Helen’s role in 2018. Aliss stepped back at the end of 2019 with Clare coming on board in July 2020. In between those dates the world changed. We went in to lock-down in March 2020 and remained closed for four months before reopening with a new click and collect model to see us through the pandemic era.
We are now embarking on an ambitious project in setting up a charity to act as a national body to help facilitate the birth of Libraries of Things up and down the country. We’ll have a nationwide network of federated Libraries of Things, all running independently whilst benefitting from being connected to the national body through use of templated systems, start-up help, branding, insurance, access to funding etc.
Head over to our ‘membership‘ page to learn more about how the membership and borrowing process works. If you want to get involved in our project then take a look at our contribute section, or come into the shop for a chat!
Want to know more details? Read our FAQs.
