Bonjour ! Over the next few days, members of the organising team will be going door to door talking to residents and giving them a hard copy letter with all of these details but in case you mislay them, here they are to refer to.
Click to access Communication%20to%20Residents%20June%202013.pdf
Any questions? Let the team know.
Well, it has been a little while since the blog was updated and even though no one replied to my tweet the other day to volunteer to maintain this source of news and info about Queens Road Banbury activities, I thought it should be resurrected.
We had a successful, if very cold and damp, “Queens Road Jubilee Big Lunch” as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations back in June. Everyone exhibited the very best of British grit to stay outside when the elements were suggesting we did otherwise.
I will get around to doing a proper blog post about the 4th annual street party before we launch the ideas for the 5th Anniversary Queens Road Big Lunch (already entitled Le Big Lunch QR 2013). It will be on Sunday 14th July 2013 which is Bastille Day and hence will be a French theme.
BUT, in the meantime, a number of get-togethers have been taking place, a BBQ back in August for anyone interested in organising events, a monthly social since September and as part of all that interaction a marvellous idea was born, that of the Queens Road Front Garden Winter Market.
A cross between a Christmas Market, a craft sale, a food fair and a boot sale, the Front Garden Winter Market is just that; Queens Road residents will host a stand in the front garden of their house and will be selling a plethora of items, from home baked food to arts and crafts, toys, bric-a-brac, hot drinks and standard boot sale items. The poster attached gives an idea of just what will be on offer.
We are advertising this both inside and outside of Queens Road in order to generate interest from a wide range of people and at the time of writing we estimate 30-40 stands will be out on the day.
Unlike for the street party, we are not closing the street and hence we will all have to take great care to keep to the pavements and to stay safe. We will be putting up signs at both ends of the street to encourage traffic calming but everyone will have to remember this is a street sale and take care.
However we really want to encourage folks to come, have a wander around our lovely street, browse and buy !
If you have any questions then Liz at No1 and Tina at No 14 are the main organisers so please see them.
There is no obligation for stall holders to donate any money to the street party or to any specific charity but any donations made will be greatly received into the coffers for follow-on events and the charity we support in 2013.
Two final points – firstly, if you are planning to attend please come on foot as there is no available parking. We are just the other side of People’s Park from Horsefair, near to Woodgreen Leisure Centre & the open air pool.
Secondly, for Queens Road residents, we will be doing our collection for the Banbury Food Bank on the day so please look out for the flyer coming through your letterbox very soon.
Hope to see you on the day
Hi everyone, hope you are having a good weekend.
As many of you will know, we held the first community meeting of the year at the Church House last night.
We had a relatively small number of attendees but everyone was enthusiastic, vocal and committed to making decisions related to the Queens Road community.
We had a few key areas to discuss, of course the Big Lunch Street Party but also the idea of a community website, other social activities & social action as a community and gathering views and feedback on what we have done so far.
The key points were as follows:
1. Everyone was supportive of the Big Lunch Street Party and it was agreed that we will increase the maximum number of attendees to 400 (realistically 350 but with some flexibility) and will budget accordingly. This will enable residents to invite a limited number of additional guests – more details to follow.
We are going to hold an organising meeting to get into more details in the next couple of weeks but we have one very important question we need your input on:
The national date for the Big Lunch in 2011 has been pulled forward to Sunday 5th June BUT it is the last day of the half term holiday and this poses a problem for some residents who have already booked holidays with their families, so we have suggested that we could move our Big Lunch to Sunday 12th June.
PLEASE EMAIL ME BACK TO ADVISE IF YOU WISH US TO ABSOLUTELY STICK WITH 5TH JUNE OR IF YOU WOULD BE HAPPY TO PUSH THE QUEENS ROAD BIG LUNCH BACK TO 12TH JUNE.
2. Community website – after a lively discussion lead by Nicholas from No. 84 it was agreed by those present that the building of a community website for Queens Road was a positive development for our community and it would be a way to facilitate and enhance the personal interactions we have between friends and neighbours.
The website would be somewhere we could store and search the Skills Register information, host a Forum for discussions between residents, give information about forthcoming events, provide local history / information on Queens Road and the area. It would be secure and User ID password protected to make key information available only to registered users. It would be simple and hopefully as low cost as possible.
Whilst we accept that we may need some professional help to produce this and some sponsorship to finance this, we agreed to set up a small team to take this idea away to try to develop it further using skills we already have in Queens Road. Antony Goodman and Nick Wood have agreed to work on this. Please could you email me if you have any relevant skills and would be prepared to help develop / build this site.
3. Other social activities / social action – again, a lively discussion was had about us all helping each other more as an organised community (and particularly those in specific need at specific times) – and most felt the website might help us quickly organise ourselves to, for instance, clear snow off pavements or to organise the alleyway clean ups etc. We also agreed that we should do more social activities.
– A Christmas Party was seen not to be necessary as there are already so many events around Christmas but a party of some sort in January might be welcome to cheer everyone up.
– All thought that an Easter Picnic with Easter Egg Hunt in the park would be a great event for adults and children alike
– We felt that we should try to use / support Woodgreen Leisure Centre / Swimming Pool more as it is a hard fought for resource and so we had the idea of hiring out the pool area for a Pool Party / Picnic / BBQ and also we have had discussions with WLC management about holding a joint car boot sale with them to raise funds
– A quiz night was again discussed and agreed as a good event for us to hold again
4. Other items discussed during the evening were the putting up of a notice board somewhere in the street for those people to access information “offline”; the previous ideas for a book club and a babysitting circle suggested on the washing line of wants were concurred by attendees and we also welcomed Andrew, a new resident who has moved into No73 with his fiancée Tamsin – please welcome them if you see them !!
Hope this information is useful to you, hopefully when the website is up and running we will be able to host this type of update on that !
If you have any other ideas regardless if you were at the meeting or not, please feel free to email them to me.
Thanks !
Tim
No.82
The Queens Road, Banbury, Big Lunch Street Party Organising Team
Email: BigLunchQueensRd@aol.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/BigLunchQnsRd
Blog: http://www.biglunchqueensroad.wordpress.com
Facebook Group: Queens Road Big Lunch Party
Well, it is that time of year again when I start to get a wobble on. This Friday is the first meeting of the year for The Queens Road Big Lunch Street Party and as per last year I am a bit uncertain as to whether I am going to be stood in an empty room talking to myself.
Last year I was very close to stepping away from the organisation of the QR Big Lunch and to chalk it up as a one year wonder as during the winter I struggled to generate much interest and I’d also had a couple of bad experiences with a group of young boys hurling abuse at me for being bigger than the average, kids from a community I was prepared to put myself out for and it kind of questioned my faith in what I was doing.
I challenged my friends and neighbours to prove me wrong and to restore my faith in human nature by turning up, being enthusiastic and participating in the organisation and running of the 2010 Big Lunch which they did in spades – they were the most fantastic bunch of people and we had an amazing time in the process of organising the street party – lots of regular meetings and hard work but what a sense of community spirit – drinks and nibbles, laughs and gossip – even a BBQ one night – we had a right good time and that was before the Street Party even happened!!
That was something else and everyone of the approx 250 people seemed to have a great day – all ages, adults and children, all backgrounds and nationalities – it truly was what the Big Lunch call the human warming effect.
And in the immediate aftermath everyone says “let’s do it all again next year” and then for a few months things go cold – literally and figuratively as the winter months roll by and we all focus on our day to day lives, Christmas and New Year and then little by little thoughts turn to the Spring and the Summer and normally July and the Queens Road Big Lunch. However, this year the Big Lunch has been pulled forward to 5th June and so preparations need to start in February.
Hence the community meeting this Friday 11th at 7pm at the Church House – this time though it is not just about the street party; sure a big part of the agenda is about that but a big part is also to get input about what all this might lead to – we have ideas about a website, about other social action / social activities and need to get direction from you, the good people of Queens Road as to how we move forward – do we stick with the annual jamboree in the street, if that is enough, or do we make something more of the heat of human warming generated in Queens Rd.
When 7pm comes on Friday and I’m in that room I hope to get my answer…..
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