The Eye Fund A charity to support people losing their vision.
What a wonderful effort from the staff and clients of Specsavers in St. Helens.
After raffles, collections, and a fun day in the store in aid of The Eye Fund, they presented Carol and Paul with a cheque for £1210.67. Well done everybody
Your contributions will go a long way to helping people like Simon. Thank you so much.
Anybody reading this who thinks they can help in however small a way please contact us.
Specsavers are holding a charity night on 7th May at Bar 44 in St. Helens. Tickets are only £5.00 each and are available from Specsavers, 2-4 Bridge Street, St. Helens.
There is to be an auction on the night, items to include:
There will also be a “FUN DAY” in the St. Helens Specsavers store 2-4 Bridge Street, on 14th May 9am to 5pm.
All proceeds from both events will go to The Eye Fund charity.
Coming up:
Sincere thanks to everybody concerned. Your help is truly appreciated.
Carol & Paul Sherry
The Eye Fund “Fractured Vision” exhibition was a huge success.
Pieces of art work were shown by the Fine Arts BA Course at Wirral Metropolitan College. Members of Ashville Lodge, home of The Wirral Society of the Blind and Partially Sighted, Simon’s sister, Helen, and Jacob’s friend, Tim. The whole reason for the exhibition was Simon. 12 of his newly chosen designs were also shown.
At the champagne opening, performed by Mike McCartney, the Eye Fund Patron, Carol and Paul presented a cheque for £9000 to Dr. Deborah Broadbent and Jayne Bradley from St Paul’s Eye Hospital, Liverpool, to start a brand new counselling service.
A computer with Dolphin software, which can be used by blind and partially sighted people was also presented to Sharon Bentley funded by The Eye Fund. Sharon is losing her sight and this computer will enable her to carry on with her studies.
The LFC signed shield was won by John Sedgewick, who immediately gave it to Neil from the Wirral Society of the Blind and Partially Sighted (he is an avid Liverpool fanatic).
The Sherry family were present in force and the evening closed with a toast to Simon by Phil.
The week long exhibition raised £1000. Lots more help for people like Simon!!!
This is what it’s all about.
Carol & Paul Sherry
Look who passed the £50k-raised marker this weekend! 🙂
With your continued support, we hope to reach £100k in 2011.
Fractured Vision is an exhibition from registered charity The Eye Fund, featuring a newly released range of graphic designs from Simon Sherry, whose premature passing at just 39 years of age gave rise to this effective and supportive charity.
Simon’s designs are complemented by an incredible range of work from degree students at Wirral Met College, their lecturers (some of whom are professional artists in their own right), as well as volunteers and patrons of Ashville Lodge amongst others.
From 22nd to 28th November 2010 between 10:00am to 4:00pm. The official opening is at 4-6pm on Monday November 22nd, by invitation only. Admission after that point will be free.
To be held at The Gallery, Birkenhead Park, Wirral, CH41 4HY.
Fractured Vision will be opened by Mike McCartney, Patron of The Eye Fund and ambassador for the Wirral.
The primary reason for the exhibition is to raise awareness of The Eye Fund and the work that they do. Money raised by the charity pays for counselling and practical help to people who are losing their vision and for whom there can be no further treatment. Currently support is available for patients of Arrowe Park Eye Clinic, including those frequenting Ashville Lodge on the Wirral, and St. Paul’s Eye Hospital in Liverpool.
The exhibition will celebrate the incredible £50,000 raised in just three years by this dedicated group!
Presentations will be made of £9000 to St. Paul’s Eye Hospital and of a specially prepared voice activated computer for a local lady with visual impairment.
Contact Paul or Carol Sherry for further information on [email protected] or 0151 670 1679.
Simon Sherry died at the age of 39 from symptoms surrounding Retinal Cone Dystrophy, a condition in which his vision was becoming more and more fractured, hence the exhibition title: “Fractured Vision”. As a graphic designer, Simon expressed his increasing frustrations through his abstract designs, many of which use the eye as a starting point. It is these designs that Trustees of The Eye Fund are using to turn their loss into something extremely productive.
The Eye Fund began their fundraising mission with the production of a 2008 calendar featuring twelve of Simon’s most startling images. They were very fortunate to secure the support of Sir Paul McCartney, who wrote:
“This calendar celebrates the life of my second cousin Simon. He was an extremely talented guy as this calendar proves and his talents extend beyond art to music, where he was an accomplished bassist and keyboardist. He is sorely missed by all of us who knew and loved him but I for one will never forget his smiling face and all of us in the family will cherish his memory forever.”
Sales from this calendar alone helped to realise £2,500 and formed a very solid foundation for the charity’s future work.
Trustees of The Eye Fund are determined that they carefully monitor exactly how their donations are spent and so will only work with organisations that permit their donations to be specifically ring fenced for this purpose. This way, they, and you, can be sure that your donation is wisely spent. Whilst their primary purpose is to fund counselling, they are always open to requests from individuals who may require a specific tool or gadget to help make their day–to–day life as trouble free as possible. Trustees available at the exhibition will be glad to talk more about examples that they have recently purchased.
Please do contact Carol or Paul in advance if you require any further information, or of course speak with any of the Trustees present at the launch of Fractured Vision.
We’re excited to be able to tell you that we have another exhibition coming up: Fractured Vision.
Once again, we’re using Birkenhead Park as our location. The exhibition will be opened by The Eye Fund Patron, Mike McCartney, and will run from 22-28 November 2010.
We are delighted that the artists from Wirral Met. College have agreed to help The Eye Fund and thrill everyone with their exhibits. They have our most grateful thanks.
If you would like to help us promote this event, you can download the Fractured Vision Exhibition poster as a PDF
We were recently given a donation of £500 by Speak the Web. They ran a series of small, intimate, low cost web design & development events in the style of a gig, providing inspiring talks by both experienced and new speakers for a low cost which were easy to access.
This donation means a lot to The Eye Fund, as Simon would be thrilled to know a bunch of nerds had raised some money in his honour.
We contacted some of the guys involved to ask why they chose The Eye Fund:
When I was asked to talk at the Liverpool session of Speak The Web, little did I realise how much the event would come to mean to me.
Part of the remit for the organisers — Dan Donald and Rich Clark — was to cover costs for the event, then put anything made above this towards charities. There’s a charity that I feel is important, as it was set up by my friend Phil Sherry and his family, after his brother Simon was losing his sight due to Retinal Cone Dystrophy.
I knew Simon, and spent many a good evening discussing music, art or mathematics with him, over a cold beer of course.
As a designer and developer, I realise how important our sight is. My job of front end development relies so heavily on being able to see precisely in colour and have an eye for detail, something which we take for granted.
When Dan and Rich asked for charity suggestions, so many things added up and it wasn’t difficult to make my opinion known. I’m from Liverpool, I was speaking at a conference in Liverpool, Phil and his family are Scouse, Phil and I are both front end devs…
I suggested the the charity to Dan and Rich, and weeks later, was over–whelmed to hear that the Eye Fund had been chosen as one of the three charities that would receive a donation.
To take part in the event was amazing, but to see how well it was received and how organising something as polarised as a web conference can benefit local charities is pretty humbling. A big thanks to all involved.
Jake Smith, End of Level Boss.
The events we put on were primarily about putting on a decent, different format or web conference, which is something that normally bypasses the North. We wanted to show that we can make things like this happen for ourselves. The more we thought about what we wanted these to be, the more we realised that while they should be a great nights for all involved, perhaps we could try and get as much out of the experience as we could. With Rich working full–time in an agency and me being freelance, we weren’t doing this as a commercial concern, so decided these 4 nights would be an experiment and therefore, not–for–profit. With that in mind, if we actually covered costs, why not give something to local charities?
We asked speakers, attendees and friends for suggestions for charities we should donate to and had some great suggestions but it always means more if there’s a personal connection. We’ve got to know Jake (Smith, one of our speakers) pretty well and the fact that he had a connection with the Eye Fund made it a great choice. Hopefully the money we’ve raised will help make a difference!
Dan Donald, Here in the Hive & Speak the Web organiser.
Once again, guys: thank you, so much.
Some interesting character thought it would be a nice idea to hack a charity site, so we’ve had some downtime to repair the damage they caused.
We’ve moved to a new server, updated our security, and almost got everything back in place. It hasn’t been fun.
After a frustrating few days, our wonderful webmaster has managed to fix the issue with our PayPal links. Thankfully making a donation or purchase through the website is now fully operational again.
Thank you for your patience while we resolved this matter.