Last saturday we had the official launch of our website alexandraparkneighbours.org.uk in our local library. It was a lovely occasion, well attended, beautiful food and drinks and a most enjoyable afternoon, an occasion to get to know our neighbours! It struck the perfect note, I felt - a brief welcome from Jan Williams chair of SAPL who gave us a short story of the origins of the idea of a website for our neighbourhood, followed by a lovely talk by local member Juliet Solomon on the role the website can do in helping us to create a community in our small area of london. I remember in particular the point Juliet made that we have so much going on 'within walking distance' from our homes that we can share. We need to get to know each other.
Of course a lot of hard work has gone on to bring the website to fruition and several names were mentioned, in particular Annabel Gregory whose idea it was in the first place. Annabel managed the whole process so professionally and so gently. Thank you Annabel for getting a wonderful resource off the ground. She has found a team of highly motivated people who have taken on different roles of monitoring the website and most importantly keeping it uptodate. It is already impressive in such a short time. Of course we can all make our contributions, once we have joined. I hope you will join in. If you know of any activities of an artistic nature please share this with the rest of us through this forum.
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Great to see so many neighbours at our Launch a week ago (a bit of a delayed response, I know …) ! Several of us had interesting conversations with Brian S., who is about 80 and has a fund of knowledge about this area in the past – when the library site was allotments, and the Scout Park had brick and tile kilns and a pottery (seems to me that the clay around here is much more suitable for making pots than trying to grow things …). He has kindly agreed to being interviewed about his recollections for an article on the site, which will be a brilliant addition.
Several people noted that neighbourhood groups often come into being to deal with a particular issue, and that it is good to have a community website that was started to encourage neighbourliness in general rather than in pursuit of a campaign. The latter sometimes keep their combative stance – though our website perhaps goes to the other extreme! Juliet Solomon, in her inspiring talk, had a poignant instance of a neighbourhood group which was set up after that notorious Cranley Gardens murder case in the ‘80s (she lived next door!).
Our membership is increasing fast since the launch – it took 2½ months from our ‘soft’ launch on 22nd December to reach 100 members, and have nearly reached half as many again in the past fortnight. Welcome to recently-joined members from the Winton Avenue area email group, Muswell Hill and Friends facebook group, and Bowes and Bounds Connected facebook group (and community website).
Well said Brian. It was fun and well worth being there. There are some pictures on the Gallery page too.
Nice pics - sorry to miss the event.