Dancing in the streets too
By Shane Solanki. Picture Briony Campbell
The folk at VivaCity love a party, and who can blame us? We recently covered Streets Alive and the party held in a structure made from umbrellas, the Bucky Bar. This time we celebrate The Big Lunch a UK-wide campaign to get as many people having street parties on a single day as possible, with the intention of getting neighbours to hang out with each other and rediscover a sense of community spirit.
This year, we got together with our neighbours, and had a party. We hand-delivered flyers to each of the two hundred homes on our council estate, introducing ourselves and explaining the ethos behind the Big Lunch.
We constructed a children’s den and made home-made bunting, from African fabrics at our local market. We had a bike surgery, a juice bar, a parkour workshop, and a competition for the best dish (we’d asked all of neighbours to bring dishes representing their heritage). There was Nigerian jolof rice, Bengali pakora and Brazilian pão de queijo to eat.
A local musician and busker kept us entertained for hours with his double bass, getting us all to sing along to classic tunes in the sunshine. The children (of all ages and stages of hair loss) played inside the magical den. A girl who cartwheeled perfectly invoked an impromptu forward roll competition. Lots of kids helped us dig and water a patch of communal ground, in which we planted herbs, which we intend to keep expanding as a community herb garden.
We cooked, eat, drank, laughed and played until the sun went down.
The Big Lunch is a remarkable initiative, which works. None of us want to grow up alone, separate from our neighbours, and afraid of the places we live in - and none of us have to. By breaking bread with our neighbours, by sharing our stories, our food, our cultures and our lives, we can build a sense of community; a sense of pride in our local neighbourhood; a sense of belonging.
Now, we’re all starting to smile at each other and call each other by our names. We’re knocking on doors, sharing news, cups of tea, cans of beer, and even risottos, curries and pies. We’re sitting out on our front porches and greeting the people who walk by, as their attention is caught by the sunflowers which line our front gardens (which our neighbours didn’t ask permission to plant, and yet which the council now smile at too). Even the guy in the CCTV van which sits outside our estate has started to say hello.
Life for all of us is changing. Neighbours who used to say, “it’s not what it used to be round here,” are now saying, “it’s like the old days, when we all knew each other!” Newer neighbours, who have just moved in, are starting to get comfortable and get stuck into the process of building community, not being afraid to bring their diverse cultures and experiences to the table.
Life can be sweet. All it needs is each of us to take the initiative. The Big Lunch will be even bigger in 2011, so find out how you can start making the place you live into a brighter, warmer, more beautiful community. If you live outside the UK, why not start your own initiative using The Big Lunch formula. It’s fun to break bread with your neighbours, and it might just make this world a nicer place to live in.
