Big Lunch and your photos

Hillaballoo was a great success. The sun shone. Nobody fell in the pond (well, some did but only up to their knees).

It continues today with the Big Lunch, a national day of eating together. We haven’t laid on a lunch as we had already allocated our Localities Fund to Hillaballoo. But do bring a picnic lunch. If not, the lovely new cafe in the park is serving wraps, bagels, cakes and fruit.

You can play with clay again and write an environmental pledge on the green sculpture.

Bring instruments and play things.

Why not, offer some food to somebody you don’t know.

We’ll be in the centre of the lower park around the playgrounds, the cafe and the pond.

If you have photos from Hillaballoo and the Big Lunch please share them on http://www.flickr.com/telegraphhillse14

The programme and poster

Please help publicise Hillaballoo by printing and displaying the poster that you can download from this link:

http://www.box.net/shared/7qt5rhc5s8

Here’s the latest programme:

The sun is making a special all-day appearance, according to BBC weather

A new cafe is opening in the park

Farmer’s Market 10-3

Fresh organic produce including game, fish, cheese, olives, juices, veg, bread & cakes & meat.

Remember to buy enough for a picnic on the following day, for the Big Lunch

Children’s Market 11-1

Children & kids organisations sell & swap home made & recycled things. We know that some talented young artists and innovators are taking part, as well as some children’s charities. We’ll be asking for £1 per stall on the day, all profits can be kept. Bring your own equipment.

Horniman Museum 11-3

The Museum will be in the Park, doing four activities about plants and care for our environment. It includes:

A hands-on mini museum, all about food & plants

A garden knowledge station staffed by a Horniman expert & some Telegraph Hill gardeners (If you offer gardening services feel free to use this to promote your offer)

Fun activity – planting food seeds in recycled pots

A growing art installation of environmental pledges

Heaven and Hill 11-3

Help make two giant clay mountains with artists Brian McKenzie & Richard – create a fantasy heavenly hill and something a bit like a real Telegraph Hill

Safer Neighbourhoods team

Bouncy castle and facepainting in Lower Park & information bus at the top of the park – giving advice to dog owners and other information.

Sport & exercise

A 10 lap run round the park for all ages, with a brief talk about the joys of running outdoors by running artist Veronique Chance. Start 10.30 at the Erlanger Road entrance.

5 a side football tournament for kids of all ages 1.30 – 3 (sign up from 11 with Ion Teale)

Music 12-2

Get a picnic and relax to music by The Little Devils, Paul the Poet and Steve the Pirate, compered by Tarzan (more Ape than Man).

Things for little kids

Early Bloomers & Oak Hill Nurseries will offer play activities.

The 1 O Clock club for under 5s in the park will be open until 1 pm

As well as the bouncy castle & museum activities.

Other stuff 11-3

Telegraph Hill Society – a walk with Malcolm Bacchus focusing on the environmental history of the area 2.30

Photography walk with urban photographer, Peter Kyte. Bring your camera to record it & share your photos in a display and on our local Flickr group http://www.flickr.com/groups/telegraphhillse14/    Walk starts 11.30 from the cafe. Peter will be by the cafe from 10.30 if you want to talk photography and he will take photos on the history walk at 2.30

Telegraph Hill Society stand

Community Centre vision – an installation and chance to give your views about the future of the Community Centre & old Cafe Orange

The Shop on the Hill, Brockley – advice and goods to help you shop in a more green and affordable way

Councillors Chris Flood & Ian Page are in the Community Centre holding their regular surgeries 10-11

Labour Party book stall

More offers for the programme

A few more offers and suggestions of activities:

Spectacular pudding art, organised by Ian

A duration run of 10 laps around the Park, led by Veronique Chance, an artist who runs

A children’s market – children sell and swap their toys and home-made things

A plant knowledge exchange – what grows well round here, who can help with your garden etc

A group-made clay animation, or similar art work, by Brian McKenzie

Something organised by Friends of Edmund Waller (FEW) – to be confirmed.

Horniman Museum at Hillaballoo

We had two proposals in for the main activity at Hillaballoo. One was from the Horniman Museum to run four activities to do with plants and food. The other was a new art collective called Amalgum to create a community newspaper for the occasion. We liked Amalgum’s proposal but felt that the Horniman offered a better fit with the brief and we also wanted to build the relationship seeded with their provision of the African garden for the Equiano memorial.

The activities they offered include planting food seeds in recycled containers, a hands-on mini-museum about food,  ‘meet the gardening expert’ and an art installation of pledges to take more care of our environment. So, we’ve told them we would be very pleased to commission them and are looking forward to it.
We’re also hoping the local police will do an activity about environmental health (anti-dog fouling etc) and possibly provide a bouncy castle. More things are brewing. More ideas welcome too.

The Big Lunch July 19th

Hillaballoo is on July 18th. The next day is a national event called The Big Lunch. See more here http://www.thebiglunch.com/

This is just a day when we can get together in our communities and have lunch, for example in a street or a park.It’s nice to know that people all over the country are doing it too.

One idea is that Hillaballoo can encourage us to buy/make food or make new friends in preparation for a picnic in the Park the next day. It doesn’t have to be difficult to organise, just bring your own food and fun.

Contributions wanted: Theme of growth

We’re still looking for proposals from agencies or groups of people able to deliver a creative participatory activity for adults and children as the centrepiece of the event. Please get in touch on bridget.mckenzie@flowassociates.com or 07890 540178 as soon as you can if you have ideas. The budget is £800 and voluntary help can boost what you can achieve.

We are also keen to invite other contributions. This could be stalls, arts activities, trails, anything you can think of provided it’s safe, quiet, doesn’t harm the environment and that you can organise it under your own steam. Ideally, these contributions would support the theme of ‘growth’. This could be about nature, plants and food. Or it could be about growth of the community through friendship and collaboration. See the other pages on the site to get more of an idea what Hillaballoo is about and get in touch.

Call for proposals

Hillaballoo is an annual event funded by Lewisham Council for £1,000. Running since 2007, it aims:

- to celebrate the creative community of Telegraph Hill

- to celebrate the environment and beauty of its parks and views, and the heritage of this Conservation Area

- to encourage inclusive participation in the creative life of the community, drawing together a range of groups such as the Community Centre, the Young Friends of the Park/Park Users Group, local schools and nurseries and the Telegraph Hill Society

- to celebrate the start of the summer holidays, highlighting the park as the centre of community life outside of school time.

In previous years, Hillaballoo has been like a fete focused on the top park, with a portable Camera Obscura as the centrepiece. There are usually activities in the lower park too, and it is timed to coincide with the monthly Farmers Market located there. We have also organised indoor events, such as a Crafts Fair and music show in the Community Centre. This has proved to be a rather disparate spread of locations. Each year, the weather has been very poor and events in the top park were particularly weather beaten. We have reviewed the format and decided to simplify it, and so would like to commission a creative community facilitator(s) to organise an activity to the following brief:

To organise an innovative participatory activity that is open to all visitors to the parks, including adults and children.

The activity should be planned and developed in consultation with local children and adults, for example, through a creative workshop.

The main activity will take place on Saturday July 18^th 2009, the first day of the school holidays.

The activity should encourage active exploration and visual appreciation of the natural environment and cultural heritage of the Hill, especially the parks.

The activity may explore themes such as:

- The legacy of children’s play: George Livesey’s role in funding Telegraph Hill’s parks, related to the recent closure of the Livesey Museum for Children

- Communications: The optical telegraph station and visual messaging across to other hills in the chain

- Plants and food: Make use of the presence of the Farmer’s Market, relating to plants in the park and peoples’ own gardens and kitchens.

There should be some celebratory finale, for example, a dusk light parade, a revealing of a final work or sharing of food.

There should be some legacy, for example, in the form of things that participants can exchange, take away or continue to create after the event, and photographs should be shared on the Flickr group ‘Telegraph Hill Visions’.

We also plan to hold a drop-in indoor music & poetry event on this date, so your proposal may wish to take account of that.

The budget for the activity is £800 and proposals should show how best value will be obtained for this amount, for example by involving volunteers or using recycled/donated materials.

The proposal will need to take account of risk, in keeping with Lewisham Council’s health & safety policy.

Proposals should be submitted by April 10^th and informal interviews held at the end of April (TBC). Proposals will be assessed by members of the Park Users Group and Telegraph Hill Society.

Please send proposals by email to bridget.mckenzie@flowassociates.com

Hillaballoo 2009

Lewisham Council have granted funding again for Telegraph Hill to run a community event this summer in the Parks and/or in the Community Centre. We may as well call it Hillaballoo again! But, following poor weather two years running we’re thinking of doing it differently. We’re not going to have stalls and the Camera Obscura in the top park. Instead we would like to spend the money to commission a participatory creative project, working with children and adults together, which will result in activities that all Park visitors can enjoy on Saturday 18th July. There may also be a music & poetry performance event in the Community Centre. We are open to proposals for a participatory creative project which encourages community cohesion and an appreciation of our environment. The exact budget is to be decided but it will be between £700-£800. Voluntary support can add to what can be achieved with that budget. You can share ideas by posting comments here, or email bridget.mckenzie@flowassociates.com

Latest programme update

This is the programme so far:

Lower park:

Farmers Market, from 10

Pond dipping (for children) 11-12 and 1-2

Mini-beasts trail 12-1

Bird champions – Make your own bird feeder

Puppet-making

Open Gym, the great outdoor workout, a taster session starting at 11.30 – meet near Kitto Rd entrance

Basketball practice, coaches present 11-3

Have a look at the new Caribbean garden and Equiano memorial sculpture

Community Centre:

Arts & Crafts fair, Narthex, all day

Installation of work by artist Ellie Chaney about the optical telegraph, Lounge, all day

Songs of South London, Cafe Orange from 2 (ish)

This is the line up:
Nathan Persad
Ceri James
Little Devils
Jude Cowan Montague
Apopsi
Brockley Ukulele Group
Quaggy River Boys
Neil Transpontine
Purple Stripes, Blue Jeans & The Occasional Converse

Brief Encounter film night, Narthex, 7.30 – dress for circa 1945

Top Park:

Star billing is the view – bring a picnic and enjoy

The Amazing Camera Obscura

Creative play with Oak Hill Nursery

Telegraph Hill Society, plus local history walk with Malcolm Bacchus

Friends of the Livesey Museum for Children

Creative/educational stall in aid of Jessie’s Fund

Book stalls from the Telegraph Hill Labour Party and Amnesty International

Storytelling, facepainting, drawing and making activities.

Spot things

I’ve made this word trail to go on the Hillaballoo programme, using a great tool called Wordle. It’s some things you can spot from the Hill and around the parks. Here’s a link so you don’t have to wait to play with it.

http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/54555/Hillaballoo_spot_things