Meet the Partners: Drapers' Academy

Drapers’ Academy are one of the Harold Hill Festival main sponsors. Recently, they kindly sponsored the Harold Hill Festival bookmarks which Harry the Squirrel has been distributing at local schools.

Drapers’ Academy brought improved school facilities to Harold Hill and the school have seen improved academic results in recent times.

Last year the Queen visited Drapers’ Academy and we were so proud to see Her Majesty in Harold Hill. And great that she was keen to visit too The main change that Drapers’ Academy has brought to the area though is a sense of increased optimism about what students from Harold Hill can achieve. And we certainly hope that will be maintained and increased in the years to come.

To find out more about Drapers’ Academy see http://www.drapersacademy.com/

If you want to find out more our Partners have a look at the previous posts in the series on St Georges Church and Community Centre and London Borough of Havering

Meet the Partners: London Borough of Havering

One of the most important partners for the Harold Hill Festival is the London Borough of Havering. A number of their services help make the festival possible. These include:

Parks - by allowing us to use Central Park, Harold Hill.

Homes and Housing - storage of equipment, logistical support and staff support on the day

Regeneration - promotion on website and newsletter, provision of funding and staff time from the Harold Hill Ambitions programme to support the festival

Community Engagement - support for the committee, networking advice and support with marketing

Events and Communications - advice on event organisation, health and safety, licencing as well as promotion support

myplace - help with recording event and due to put on activities at this year's event

There will in additional be a range of other council staff who support the Harold Hill Festival. We are grateful for the support we receive as a committee from them and look forward to working with the council in future.

To find out more about the council see London Borough of Havering

Meet the Partners: St Georges Church

St Georges Church's Community Centre hosts most of the committee meetings of the Harold Hill Festival and is also the postal address for our correspondence.

As well as religious activities the Centre hosts St John's Ambulance, Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, a Fellowship lunch for the over 50s, the Neave Club for disabled people, a pre-school and much, much, more.

To find out full details on the Church and Community Centre see http://stgeorgesharoldhill.org.uk/

St Georges Church are also on Facebook and the vicar has a Twitter account @revramblings

If you are interested in our Meet the Partners posts then check out previous ones on:

Volunteer Centre Havering
Friends of Dagnam Park
myplace
Harold Hill Ambitions

Why does the Harold Hill Festival have a blog?

The Harold Hill Festival has a blog because the Festival Committee think it is important for them to keep local people informed about what is happening with the Harold Hill Festival and get involved.

Meet the Partners: Volunteer Centre Havering

Volunteer Centre Havering (run by HAVCO) is a Harold Hill Festival partner. Their role is to help the festival recruit volunteers, help manage them on the day and work with us to ensure proper guidance is in place.

So what does the Volunteer Centre Havering do?

Meet the Partners: Friends of Dagnam Park

Friends of Dagnam Park support the Harold Hill Festival through being part of the committee organising the event, volunteering on the day, taking photographs of the event and this year will be exhibiting images of Harold Hill through the years.

Good news from Harold Hill Festival partner Drapers Academy

The Romford Recorder reports that:

'Drapers’ Academy saw the borough’s biggest increase in good GCSE grades last year, and was among the country’s 20 fastest improving schools, figures released today show.'

For the full article see http://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/gcse_league_tables_tears_for_some_but_drapers_academy_harold_hill_is_uk_s_18th_fastest_improver_1_1806067

Congratulations to the school who is a Harold Hill Festival Partner and the pupils on their hard work.

Be a part of it!

The Harold Hill Festival are always open to new people joining the Festival Committee. In

addition we always welcome people who want to do a stall or activity along to our monthly

meetings. The dates, times and venue for our meetings is below. We do ask that you email

us first if you can so that we know numbers and can set up the meeting area appropriately.

Our email address is haroldhillfestival@gmail.com

Dates of Next meetings :

Tuesday’s  6.30pm to 8.30pm St Georges Community Centre ( Partners meetings are same

location but from 4 to 6pm)

5^th Feb 2013 – Committee

5^th Mar 2013 – Committee

9^th Apr 2013 - Committee and Partners

7^th May 2013 – Committee  (TBC)

4^th June 2013 – Committee

18^th June 2013 - Committee and Partners

2^th July 2013 – Committee

6^th July 2013 -  Saturday Festival day at Central Park

Meet the Partners - myplace

The myplace youth team are one of the Festival Partners so we look at their centre as the first of a series of blogposts featuring the organisations working with us.

The new myplace centre is a development that Harold Hill can be proud of. The building focusses on providing an environment that promotes inclusion and help young people achieve a brighter future as being a great community and culture facility in Harold Hill.

Partners Meeting progress update

Last night the Festival Committee held the quarterly partners meeting. We had a good turnout including representatives from the Council's Parks Service, the myplace Youth team, Drapers Academy and our provider for our inflatables.

The meeting managed to make progress on how we can ensure the park is in the best condition possible, how we can best link in what happens in the myplace centre to the event, how we can more closely with Drapers Academy who sponsor the stage at the event and ensuring the inflatables are well managed on the day.

The event bookings are starting to be made now with the toilets now booked, enquiries coming in for stall bookings and local talent asking about performing on the stage. We're also really pleased to see a number of enquiries from people asking to volunteer on the day.

From now onwards we'll be starting to increase our marketing with posters going up, Harry the Squirrel (our mascot) visiting schools and we'll begin to make more announcements about what will happen on the day.

If you want to get involved in the Harold Hill Festival you can now let us know on haroldhillfestival@gmail.com

Can you link to our blog or website?

The Harold Hill Festival are looking at increasing the profile of our website and blog. If you are a local person or organisation and have your own website or blog I wondered if you can promote our website and blog through your website, blog, Twitter or Facebook page.

We can look at reciprocating any promotion you do as appropriate.

Our blog address as you will notice is www.haroldhillfestival.blogspot.com

Our website address is www.haroldhillfestival.moonfruit.com

Any queries about this please email us at haroldhillfestival@gmail.com

Dates set for Partners Meetings

The dates have now been set for our Festival Partner meetings with local organisations that want to take part in or support the Harold Hill Festival in some way. At these meetings we will provide an update of what is planned, where things are at and how you can get involved. The kind of organisations that are involved already include public sector partners, local community groups who want to put on an activity and local businesses who can offer services or sponsorship.

Anyone who can contribute in any way is more than welcome to come along as the Festival Committee see the Festival as an event that celebrates all the many good things about Harold Hill.

The dates for partners meetings are:

8^th Jan 2013
9^th Apr 2013
18^th June 2013

All are Tuesdays 4.00pm - 6.00pm at St Georges Church Centre. The venue is subject to change so if you plan to attend then please email haroldhillfestival@gmail.com in advance so we can confirm it with you.

myplace Christmas Market - Sat 8 Dec

As the Harold Hill Festival we love fun, family events and we love Christmas. Please see below the poster for the Christmas Market event held by myplace on Saturday from 11am till 1.30pm. Please note that myplace are one of the 2013 Festival partners.

Festive Events

It's the time of year for Festive events and everyone wants to know what's on, when and where. We share your excitement and want to let you know what's on. The best place to find a comprehensive list of what's on is at the London Borough of Havering website at http://www.havering.gov.uk/Pages/LatestEvents.aspx

As the Harold Hill Festival we always like to promote family or community events in the Harold Hill area. If you are holding a local event in Harold Hill to which the public is invited then please leave a comment below or email us at haroldhillfestival@gmail.com and we will feature it on this blog.

Planning for 2013 Festival

As the Harold Hill Festival Committee we are planning hard for the 2013 Festival now.

The event will be Saturday 6 July 12-5 at Central Park.

We are learning from your feedback from this year's festival. We are getting ahead of the game in getting as much booked in as early as possible and it is fantastic that requests for stalls are coming through already.

We are looking at what attractions and activities we have on site given our learning from the event in July.

We've created a new website too which looks fabulous and introduced a suite of social media tools including this blog.

And we are working on getting in place the partners, the funding and the volunteers to make 2013 one of the best festivals so far.

Our committee are now building momentum so now is the time to get involved. To find out more visit our new website at http://www.haroldhillfestival.moonfruit.com/ or email us at haroldhillfestival@gmail.com

Want to be a part of it?

On Thursday 4 October at 6.30pm the Harold Hill Festival Committee are hosting a meeting for organisations who currently support or who are interested in supporting the festival. If you would like to find out more or want details of the meeting then please email haroldhillfestival@gmail.com

We'd welcome input from all local organisations including community groups, voluntary organisations, statutory agencies, businesses, schools, community centres and anyone else. The event is for the people by the people so please get involved.

Remember you can keep up with all the latest news on the blog at www.haroldhillfestival.blogspot.com