Seasons Greetings To Everyone on Elmfield Road.

Hoping everyone has a happy, peaceful, fun-filled xmas and that everything they’re hoping for happens in the new year. It’s a new decade folks – the twenty-tens!

Snow on Elmfield Road 2009

Street Party 2009 Video

The street thanks the following people:-

• Clifford, Peter, Stan and their team for building (and maintaining) the marquee;
• Alison, Pete and Katherine for the banners and bunting;
• Bridget for the face painting;
• Jeff for keeping the kids entertained;
• Margaret + family for the sing-along;
• Everyone involved in the Karaoke, especially the MC and the singers;
• Everyone who brought out the delicious food to share on the day;
• Stan + wife and Charmaine for the dangerous punch;
• Everyone who contributed to, and danced to, their guilty pleasures;
• Paul and Rachel for collecting raffle prizes and helping set out the banners/bunting;
• Everyone who bought raffle tickets – we raised £225.00 to help pay for the next party;
• Everyone who came out and danced, mingled, gossiped, shared food and drink and partied

Have I missed anyone?

Street Party News June 28 2009.

ELMFIELD ROAD STREET PARTY
SATURDAY JULY 18TH 2009

EVENTS WILL INCLUDE:-

12 NOON    Road officially closed to traffic until midnight! Music and dancing all day.

3PM ONWARDS: FOOD AND DRINK; BASKETBALL CHALLENGE; FACE PAINTING; PARTY GAMES.

5PM    TEA DANCE.
The chance for residents and their friends to show off their syncopated swing dance moves to the music of Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Barnet, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and many more.

6PM    SING-ALONG AROUND THE PIANO.
Margaret will be playing a selection of old music hall classics on the piano for everyone to join in.

7PM    KARAOKE!
Have a look through the song list on the day or check out the website to choose the songs you want to sing. Write your name and song(s) choices on the list by the stage under the marquee on the day.

9PM    RAFFLE.
People have donated prizes that include bottles of wine, shopping vouchers, tomato plants and champagne. David will be out selling raffle tickets and collecting more prize donations soon, or you can drop of your prize donations with Paul at number 9.

9.30 PM ELMFIELD’S “GUILTY PLEASURES” DISCO.
We’ll be playing those tunes we’re too cool to admit we all secretly love, including “Mr Blue Sky”, “Crazy Horses”, “Mamma Mia”, “Rio”, “Let Your Love Flow”, “Jolene” and “I Feel Love”. If you haven’t told us your guilty pleasures yet, please pop them through the letterbox at number 39 (along with your name if you’re not too embarrassed!) or use the comments section of the website.

BIG THANKS TO EVERYONE DONATING RAFFLE PRIZES, BUYING RAFFLE TICKETS, BRINGING OUT FOOD AND DRINKS TO SHARE ON THE DAY.

If you can help set things up and put up street decorations on the day, meet on the green at 12 noon.

If the weather’s good why not bring out your garden chairs (and tables if you have them) onto the green to create a communal space to meet your neighbours, chat and eat?

The VERY LAST AND FINAL planning meeting will be held in the Coppermill on Monday July 13th July at 8PM.  EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO COME ALONG

Age of Stupid showing in Walthamstow.

Transition Films is showing The Age of Stupid at the Asian Centre on Orford Road in Walthamstow Village on Friday 22 May.

Time to start thinking about the 2009 party.

Hi all and happy new year.

The raffle for the 2008 street party raised loads of money to help pay for the event with £190.00 left over for 2009.

One lesson we learned last year is that you can’t start planning a street party early enough. What do people think about starting to meet up to plan this years party in early February?

Street Party 1935.

Lesley dropped off some photos thought to have been taken around May 6th 1935 during a street party for George V’s Silver Jubilee. Elsie’s grandmother is looking out of the upstairs window of number 31. 

(If you know someone without internet access who’d like to see this, ask David for a DVD copy).

Street party minutes 14th August 2008.

Elmfield Road Street Party.
August 31st 2008 3pm – 10pm.

Notes from planning meeting held 14th August.

Road Closure / First Aid.
The council has informed the emergency services of the road closure and have sent paperwork for David to complete. Cliff agreed to organise the road closure signs.

The road will be closed to through traffic for the duration of the event. It’d help if people could move their cars from the centre of the street on the day. Please don’t ‘double park’, as we have to provide access for emergency services.

There will be (at least) two qualified nurses available on the day. We couldn’t convince the guys to wear uniforms. If you can’t find first aid help, ask at the sound system or barbecues.

Funding.
A big ‘Thank You’ to Margaret for her donation to cover the cost of Public Liability Insurance.

Several residents have already used their own money to cover the costs of setting up the event.  There will be a raffle and collection on the day to help reimburse reasonable costs incurred by residents.

If you buy something to be used for the party (apart from food or alcohol), keep the receipt and hopefully you’ll be reimbursed if there’s enough money collected.

Events.
There will be children’s games, including face painting, table tennis, (safe!) football, 3 legged race, egg and spoon race and more!

For adults, a lucky dip might be organised if enough items are donated. There will also be a raffle.

We should be able to put together a half-decent sound system for music and for announcements. Anyone can provide mix CDs on the day, but make sure we can all dance to them and they won’t cause offence.
Ideas for putting together a mix CD of musicians with local connections were explored, but after attempting to mix up poison girls, crass and adrian sherwood/OnUSound with ian dury, patrick fitzgerald, lethal bizzle, rubella ballet and the bonzo dog doo dah band – amongst others –  well, maybe people who are interested should just ask for a copy of the CD instead.
Ideas for the community-painted banner for the party are taking shape. Hopefully, kids and adults will all be able to take part in painting this banner earlier in the day so when it’s finished it will be hung from the railings for the day.

We’ll all set off Khoom Fay Lanterns at the end of the event. These are safer than fireworks (but still need to be handled by responsible / sober adults) and shouldn’t upset pets or marsh animals. If we’re lucky we might even cause a London-wide UFO alert as they all hover over Walthamstow.

We’re still hoping to have a small photo exhibition (basically, a bit of hardboard pinned to the fence with pictures stuck to it). If people can dig out any old photos of the street or surrounding area David (at number 39) can arrange for them to be copied and enlarged. Also, people who’ve taken interesting new photos of the local area could provide copies of their favourites, so people without access to flickr can admire them.

Food and Shelter.
Linda and Theresa hope to be able to provide two barrel barbecues for the day. Everyone is invited to contribute food to be cooked on these. One will be used for meat and fish, the other for vegetarian food.

A third barbecue will also be set up if necessary, for people who need to be sure they only eat animals that are allowed/permissible according to religion and that have been reared and killed in a way that is allowed/permissible.

We’re still hoping people will cook up a huge bowl of food and bring it out for everyone to eat on the day

We’ll provide paper plates and plastic cutlery, as well as bin bags people can use to dispose of and recycle their rubbish on the day.

There’s a rumour some people might be putting together a potentially lethal punch…

Some kind of shelter will be built and people are agreeing to lend gazebos on the day.
So, come rain or shine we are all going to have a party!
Final Planning Meeting Tuesday 27th August at 7.30pm in the beer garden of the Coppermill Pub. Please come!

Street party planning meeting August 10th 2008.

Well folks, it only a couple of weeks or so until the party. Hope you’ve all decided what you’re going to wear and have been working on your most spectacular dance moves to impress everyone with on the day. Just a few notes from the last planning meeting:-

 We’ve booked the weather to be beautiful and sunny for the day, but just in case our order got lost in the post Cliff and Stan hope to be able to design some kind of shelter using bits of wood, some old rope, tarpaulins and sheer willpower. Good luck with that, guys.  If anyone has gazebo’s they could set up on the grass for the day let us know.

 If you can, please cook a bit of food for the whole street to sample. There’ll be tables where it can all be set out. Also, there’ll be two barbecues (one for meat, chicken fish etc and one for veggie food), so if you prefer you could provide some food to be barbecued. You could even give any charcoal or coal you might have lying around over from the summer to be used on the barbecues.

 The raffle prizes are coming in thick and fast. As well as three bottles of champage we now have two Odeon South Woodford cinema tickets, kindly donated by Charmagne.

 Hopefully, any artistic kids and non-kids will paint a huge street party banner on the day, which will be hung from the railings for all to admire. Anyone who can donate sheets, paints, brushes, other banner-making materials and/or artists (kids and non-kids) please let us know.

 There’s already some events planned for the day, but if you’ve got any ideas for things kids (and adults) can join in with please let us know.

 The road should be closed for the day and, if necessary, insurance will be bought. There’s a bit of debate about whether it’s necessary for insurance but that will all be sorted out by then.

 We’ve got the sky lanterns and tried one out the other night “just to make sure they work”. It looked pretty impressive floating off over the reservoirs. We can all set the rest of them off together at the end of the night.

THE NEXT PLANNING MEETING IS THURSDAY 14 AUGUST 7.30PM AT THE COPPERMILL PUB. Please come along if you have time, even if you haven’t been to any other meetings.

Minutes of meeting held on Wednesday 6th August

Elmfield Road Street Party.
Minutes of meeting held on Wednesday 6th August
Attended: Cliff, David, Ian, Julie. Guest: Councillor O’Rourke.

Road Closure and Parking.
David has spoken to the Borough Council for advice on closing the road. He understands this will be possible if Public Liability Insurance is arranged. He was given details of an insurance company that provides cover for street party events, who provided a quotation for cover up to £1,000,000 for £50.00. A further quotation of £80.00 was provided for cover of up to £5,000, 000. David has tried to contact people on Chester Road to find out who they use for insurance on their street party without success. It was agreed to use the company who provided David with the quotations. The basic cover should be sufficient, given the nature of the event.

It was agreed that people would be asked to move their cars to the ends of the street by the morning of the event to keep the street clear for the party.

Cooking and Barbecue Equipment.
In previous meetings, people agreed it would be good to have two barbecues (one for meat and one for non-meat), so people who want to contribute barbecue-type food can cook it. Efforts have been made by various people to try to borrow this equipment, without success. It now looks like this equipment will need to be hired. It was agreed that anybody who has the time would get details of local, reasonably priced barbecue hire sources and report back at the next meeting.

Furniture.
It has previously been agreed that tables will be needed for the event. Cliff has now successfully negotiated free loan of tables that should be suitable (these are each 3.9m long). After some discussion, it was agreed that Cliff should ask for four tables: two for food/drinks, one for “bring and buy” or similar activities, one for arts and crafts/children’s activities.

Cliff explained he is still chasing up the possibility of borrowing small marquee/gazebo-type shelters.

Events on the day.
The children-orientated events discussed at previous meetings should go ahead and people agreed children should be able to play an active part in deciding on events they want. It was agreed to emphasise this point in the newsletter.

People are gathering information about local history so this can be shared with all residents on the day. It was agreed that people would ask residents who have knowledge about recent (or not so recent) history of the area to share this on the day, maybe by giving a speech or holding a discussion session. It was also agreed to ask any residents who might have old photos of the street to allow copies to be taken, so these can be enlarged and exhibited on the day.

Ian has ordered Khoom Fay Sky Lanterns to be used as a (pet friendly) alternative to fireworks at the end of the day.  See www.mlepyro.co.uk/firelantern/ for more info

No further information was available about the Gaelic music event discussed at previous meetings.

Hire companies who can provide small PA systems suitable for small street parties were discussed, but no decision was made about hiring a suitable PA system that can be used for music and speech events on the day.
Funding.
The need to consider how any costs incurred in providing the event for residents might be covered has been raised at previous meetings.

Councillor O’Rourke provided some useful advice to the group on funding-related issues. He agreed to provide information on possible funding sources to David and to endorse the event if this might help the funding application.

Possible sponsorship was briefly discussed. The group agreed that, realistically, they will have to cover any costs incurred in setting up the event in the hope that these will be reimbursed later, e.g. from grants or other sources. A raffle was agreed at previous meetings to help cover some costs. Councillor O’Rourke, Julie and Ian all agreed to donate bottles of Champagne for raffle prizes.

Next Meeting.
People felt it was very important that residents who haven’t been able to attend meetings about the event should have the chance to come along to the next meeting, given that the event is now only a few weeks away. Holding the meeting on Sunday afternoon might help.

It was agreed that the next meeting should be held on Sunday 10th August 2008 at 6pm in the garden of the Coppermill Pub.