Love Lowndes – an end of year update

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Love Lowndes – the story so far!

Wow! Well, what a year it’s been!

As we head towards the end of the year it felt the right time to reflect on all the great things we’ve achieved so far with Love Lowndes.

We’re well on our way to our target:

So far we’ve raised just over £44,500!

Here’s a little roundup of our activities and the amazing progress we’ve made towards our target of building a brand new, accessible destination playground in Lowndes Park, Chesham.

January 2023

The year kicked off with us officially forming as a group. We were born out of a Chesham Town Council open meeting about the state of Lowndes Park. A few of us decided we needed a special group just to focus on the play equipment as it seemed, to us, to be the number one priority.

February 2023

Endless planning and research! We knew we had a mammoth task ahead of us so wanted to have a strategic approach. We decided the summer and autumn would be all about events and engaging with the people of Chesham. Behind the scenes we’d be researching large grant funds and coordinating our corporate sponsorship offer. Timing us everything! We discovered that many grant funds have strict rules about how quickly you need to build after they give you the donation. So, we decided to hold off applications until we’d raised some money ourselves.

March/ April 2023

We pursued the idea of a Lowndes Park Masterplan. We knew it would be crazy to raise the money for a new playground and just plonk it somewhere in our already muddled park. The team at the Friends of Lowndes Park successfully lobbied the Council and helped find the funds for a professional Masterplan to be created.

That way, any playground we create would sit harmoniously within a park that has a strategic vision for the next 100 years.

We commissioned local photographers to capture the park in all it’s glory and to document the problems. This would help with our marketing, fundraising and grant applications. Huge thanks to Middleton Man and Matt Writtle.

May 2023

We decided on our name and commissioned logos from the amazing Claire Vickers. We set up our Crowdfunder and arranged all our social media profiles.

We made contact with Chesham’s Mayor for 2023-2024 Wilford Augustus. He agreed to make us one of his main charitable organisations for all his fundraising effort whilst Mayor.

June 2023

Love Lowndes was officially launched at the Schools of Chesham Carnival. With the help of Claire Vickers who created our logo, Hello Designs who made our flyer, and SignX graphics who printed and donated the two large vinyls and the pop-up banner. It was wonderful to finally meet the people of Chesham and hear stories of how desperate they are for a new playground.

July 2023

We took a stand at the Hats Off festival. It was great to connect with the people of Chesham again.

August and September 2023

Clocktober Fest – huge thanks to Trekkers Bar for making us their charity partners. It was great to see so many people engaging with our message and donations flooding in.

October 2023

Our autumn season of events were a huge success. Our afternoon kids’ comedy show with the Noise Next Door raised the roof (and a lot of cash!) and the evening Stand-Up for Love Lowndes show was a near sell-out. On a single day we raised just over £5,000! Huge thanks again to Mark Rann, Toby Friedner, Alex Horne and all the acts for making it happen.

The Pumpkin Parade was a magical moment in the park – with calls for it to become an annual community event! It was swiftly followed by an adorable afternoon back the Elgiva for a screening of Spookley the Square Pumpkin. Both events had a huge turnout.

We were thrilled that My Marvellous Monster created a bespoke piece of art for our Pumpkin Parade and auctioned it for us and so grateful to The Rocket Oven who gave all their profits from the food they sold at the Pumpkin Parade to Love Lowndes. Thank you also to local amateur photographers Alex Martin and Darren Cooper for capturing the event so perfectly on film.

Check out the Bucks Free Press article about it.

November 2023

Our film is now live! You can see it at the top of the page and on YouTube. Massive thanks to Candice Channing-Williams and her friends and family for coordinating the shoot and Andy Turvey for editing. And thanks of course to all the people who spoke to us and gave their thoughts – even if you didn’t make the cut, your help was invaluable. This film will help promote us and explain the huge case for action we have to our grant bodies we’re applying to.

November also saw the release of the Lowndes Park Masterplan document. We now know the new playground will be placed within a coherent plan for the whole park.

So, now what?

Well, we’re taking a brief Christmas break from big events to focus on family and work – we’re all volunteers after all!

But work is still going on behind the scenes on Grant Applications, Corporate Sponsorship and fundraising plans for 2024.

And we’re thrilled to be working with the majority of the infant and primary schools across Chesham on a Mufti Day in January. The children will be encouraged to come to school dressed in colourful clothes and donate money to our cause. Special thanks to Mr Alexandre, Headteacher at Chartridge Combined School for coordinating all the schools for us.

For now, And you can still help by donating to our Crowdfunder, or buying the Chesham Calendar from JPS Stationers, and using Easy Fundraising to donate for FREE whilst your doing all your Christmas shopping.

And Wilford Augustus, Chesham’s Mayor, has made us one of his main charities and has run many events so far with more to come.

So far we’ve raised just over £44,500. We have a long way to go, but we’re confident we’ll get there.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who’s helped us on the journey so far. Whether that be donation, attending an event, helping us, donating their time or skills or simply spreading the word – we couldn’t do it without you.

Watch this space!