Friendly Task Day and Talks

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English: Strood Library On junction of (32) Br...

Strood Library, junction of Bryant Road and Glanville Road. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Friends of Broomhill have two very different but nonetheless important events coming up in September.

Their Task Day is set for Sunday, September 2nd from 11am – 1pm, with this year’s task being – litter clearing.

Meeting in the King Arthur’s Drive car park entrance, all are welcome to this social event designed to help the park keep its Green Flag status. Bring a drink and wear old clothes – tools are supplied if you have none.

On Thursday, September 27th, secretary of the group, Odette Buchanan, will be giving a talk at Strood Library in Bryant Road. Strood, the Land of Used To Be includes a lucky ticket draw, light refreshments and a raffle. Tickets are £5 (£3 for members) with a 7pm for 7.30pm start.

For more information on both events, contact Odette on 01634 718231 or email Odette_buchanan@yahoo.co.uk. You can also find out more about the Friends of Broomhill on their own website here.

Odette is also secretary of the Friends of Medway Archives and will be giving a talk for them on Tuesday, September 11th.

The Heritage of the Vines talk will take place at Frindsbury Parish Hall, Church Green, Frindsbury.  Tickets are again £5 (£3 for members) including light refreshments and a raffle, with this also a 7pm for 7.30pm start. Further details can be found at the F.O.M.A website or from Odette  as stated above.

Beacon Idol 2012 Auditions

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How would you like to be the new Alexander O’Neal? Now’s your chance, as Beacon Idol is back for a third series!

On Wednesday, September 19th at 8pm, you can begin your journey to stardom … at least in Medway. The entry criteria is as follows: Age 16 years and over; Singers only; non professional (you don’t make money from singing).

Entry to auditions is free, with a £1 admission fee payable when the competition reaches the live rounds.

There is a whopping £400 cash prize up for grabs but please note – this is NOT a karaoke competition, there are no lyrics available for you. (Normal karaoke will continue until the auditions begin).

If you wish compete, apply at the pub or online at www.beaconcourttavern.co.uk. The competition will continue up to and including Wednesday, December 20th. If you don’t wish to compete, go along and support those who do, and pass the details on to anyone who might fancy their chances.

Mayoral Dinner and Dance for CPC charity

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The Mayor and Mayoress of Medway, Cllr. Vaughan Hewett and Mrs Hewett, will be attending a dinner and dance in aid of CPC Kent, the Cerebral Palsy Care charity.

Taking place on Saturday, September 8th at the St. George Hotel in Chatham, tickets are priced just £30 for a three course meal with coffee.  Live music will be courtesy of Jason Allen Sway.

Arrival time is 6.15pm for 7pm, with carriages at 12.15am.

Please contact Natalie on 01634 220330 for further information.

CPC Kent is a non profit organisation supplying  conductive education for children up to five years old who suffer from cerebral palsy and other, similar, disorders. They would love your support for this event and/or in the London to Brighton Bike ride the following week, Sunday, September 16th. All you need to do is pledge £100 for CPC in order to join their team and you can register on line here.

Full Frontal Picnic on Bank Holiday Monday

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Full Frontal, the residents group in Rochester brightening up the neighbourhood with plants and flowers, are holding a picnic at the Parish Centre Church Hall (next to the health centre) in The Delce, from 2pm on Monday.

It’s a change of location due to the unpredictability of the English bank holiday weather, as the Church Hall also has a garden. So take along your family and friends, picnic, toys, games and musical instruments to enjoy a lovely community day, as well as find out more about becoming involved in the Full Frontal organisation.

Icon Theatre welcome submissions to capture Upnor history

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taken from aboard the on the .

Upnor Castle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Icon Theatre company are holding a community history event at Upnor Castle in September and are asking for contributions from the Upnor community.

If you have any photographs or memorabilia you would like to share, they’d love to hear from you as soon as possible in order to put the exhibition together.

The event will launch on Saturday, September 29th from 1.15pm to approximately 4pm and will include a tour of the castle, project information and presentations, representations from local organisations and refreshments. You’ll need to obtain a leaflet directly from Icon, which will enable you to access the castle for the afternoon.

Icon are based at The Brook Theatre in Chatham and are an award winning, Kent based national touring company, famed for producing innovative and exciting theatre. You can contact them on 01634 813 179 or email Nicola Waddington: nicola@icontheatre.org.uk

To find out more, visit their website here.

Medway and Swale to benefit from Arts Council grant

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Arts Council England have announced that a community consortium from Medway and Swale has been successful in applying for a commissioned grant from its Creative People and Places programme – designed to empower communities to take the lead in shaping local arts provision.

Arts Council of England logo

Arts Council of England logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The CreativePeople and Places programme focuses on parts of the country where people’s involvement in the arts is significantly below the national average. The Swale and Medway consortium are one of seven successful applications across England, receiving £1,476,000 from a pot of just under £16 million over three years.

The programme takes a new approach by supporting communities and grass roots organisations to play a leading part in inspiring others to get involved with the arts and, employ innovative ideas for reaching new audiences.

The Swale and Medway consortium comprises: Swale Council for Voluntary Service and Volunteer Centre; Medway Council for Voluntary Service; Artlands North Kent; LV21; Kent Architecture Centre; Creek Creative Studios; FrancisKnight – project managers for Leysdown Rose-tinted; and Rochester based FellowCreative. The consortium will showcase and test new arts activities, support local people to develop their own creative ideas, help strengthen existing arts provision and celebrate what’s great about the arts.

Three local authorities (Medway, Swale and Kent) will work with the consortium to develop the project, which will be working with locally based arts and cultural partners to do this, including: Royal Opera House Bridge Organisation, South East Dance, and Kent County Council Libraries and Archives.

Carl Jeffrey, founder of FellowCreative, says: “We are thrilled to have the support of Arts Council England. This substantial investment will make a real difference to the communities of Swale and Medway. The long-term aim of our Creative People and Places vision is to enable a spirit of creative experimentation and the art of doing, together. Initiated by an ever-developing network of small-scale, grass roots individuals and organisations, we hope that Swale and Medway become widely recognised as places where all forms of creativity can thrive; where communities directly benefit from the power of the arts to make positive changes in people’s lives; where new routes for engagement are opened up through testing out pioneering and experimental approaches.”

Sally Abbott, Regional Director, South East, Arts Council England, says: “We have a long history of working with artists and arts organisations in North Kent and we know that there is a real desire among people locally to get more involved in the arts and culture. We’re looking forward to seeing what ideas the community come up with to encourage more people to feel the benefit that taking part in the arts and culture can bring.”

Alan Davey, Chief Executive, Arts Council England said: “I’m excited by the possibilities of this programme and by the vision of the successful applicants. All the projects have the potential to make a visible and lasting impact on the places where the work will happen and, very importantly, they all share the ambition to unite increased access with excellent art. We’re looking forward to working with them to help them develop their ideas for creating and sharing great art for everyone – which is crucial to the vitality and long-term sustainability of the arts.”

The projects will be delivered by consortia and partners which include arts organisations, museums, libraries, local authorities and commercial organisations working in collaboration with the local community, grass roots organisations and the amateur sector.

The successful applicants will now receive a small percentage of their award in order to develop their plans. Receipt of the full award is dependent on the Arts Council approving each consortium’s full business plan. Round two of the programme will open to applications in September 2012.

The Creative People and Places programme is one of a number of initiatives designed to help the Arts Council achieve its goal of more people experiencing and being inspired by the arts – as set out in Achieving great art for everyone, the Arts Council’s ten year strategic plan.

To contact the consortium or to register your interest in the Swale and Medway project, please go to: http://CreativePeoplePlace.info, or email contact@CreativePeoplePlace.info

By women, for women: Introducing Rebecca Robertson of Evolution for Women.

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**Sponsored Post**

Rebecca Robertson is on a mission. With a background in financial services spanning thirteen years, her mission is to empower women, in an increasingly difficult economic climate, to take control of their finances. One of her main goals is to increase the amount of women advisers available to other women, thereby reducing the ‘hard sell’ image generally associated with financial advice.

Evolution for Women offers free consultations and advice, dedicated to putting the family first – including evening and weekend opening hours and appointments to fit in between the school run. A philosophy that clients are for life is the driving force behind the company and Rebecca is passionate about delivering a detailed and personal service. From the initial appointment to any follow up enquiries, she takes a great deal of pride in being contactable and responding in a timely fashion.

With women living longer than ever before, managing the purse strings and juggling family with highly paid jobs or managerial roles, their need for advice traditionally given to men has grown. Where previously the focus may have been on male finances, independent female clients, whether married, single or divorced, are seeking a more empathetic financial partnership.  This is where Rebecca can help: Good parent portfolio reviews; Money Maximiser meetings; bespoke insurance policies; guardianship for children; long term family assets protection and Family Income Benefit are all areas of expertise to give families a secure financial footing.

From the humble beginnings of a temporary cashier in the Alliance and Leicester Building Society, the quick learning Rebecca was soon flying high within the company. Other roles in respected institutions such as The Bradford & Bingley Building Society, The Mortgage Times Group and Charcoal Brokers followed, including being head hunted twice.

Having been made redundant when 14 weeks pregnant, the seedlings of Evolution for Women began to sprout in Rebecca’s mind and she finally created the company in February 2011. Refining her operating model ever since, the days of building someone else’s empire are finally over. The Evo Academy is under construction, giving an opportunity to other women, with or without previous financial services experience, to gain qualifications and step onto a rewarding career path, thus expanding the Evolution for Women ethos.

Rebecca’s passion and commitment to providing an effective and personable service is clear. She says: “My business has become my 7th baby after my little girl, dogs, cats and husband. All of which I love and think the world of. I have a very clear path for Evolution for Women and believe we will be the hand bag of financial services for women.”

After a decade working for the pinstripe brigade with their “do now, do quickly” attitude, Rebecca has decided to do things differently: She’s going to put the service back into the financial services industry and a feminine touch to finance!

New bloggers’ platform ‘Bloggabase’ promises less spam

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The founders of the UK’s first product review service for bloggers is inviting bloggers from all backgrounds, with readerships of any size, to sign up – free of charge.

Bloggabase enables them to be contacted to review relevant products, services, events and experiences for their blogs, across all sectors, connecting bloggers with PR, SEO and other marketing  individuals and companies with products, services, events and experiences they wish to promote. Bloggers will, uniquely, have the power to report poorly targeted marketing, which will result in the offenders receiving a short ban from the service.

With the new database service, bloggers are given the opportunity to request information and get free review offers, by making it clear to all what they will write about, what they won’t write about and whether they’re happy to be contacted or not. Each blogger will have a bloggabase.com profile, giving marketers the opportunity to see the blog’s unique visitors, SEO value, recent entries and areas of interest.

As soon as 2,000 bloggers have signed up, the service will launch to allow a limited number of marketers to sign up.

To sign up, bloggers are being asked to visit http://www.bloggabase.com, where they will be asked to select the subject/s they blog about, as well as a number of keywords related to their blog, to ensure they are not contacted by
people with irrelevant products, services, events and/or experiences.

Importantly, a unique ‘report a user’ feature will enable bloggers to quickly and easily identify and report individuals that have contacted them inappropriately with products, services or experiences that are irrelevant to their area/s of interest. If more than three separate bloggers identify one marketer as targeting them irrelevantly, that person’s account will be frozen and they will be unable to access the blog database for a period of time, giving the bloggabase.com team the chance to contact them to get to the bottom of the issue.

The service can be followed on Twitter @bloggabase

bloggabase.com has been set up by public relations professionals Andy Barr and Rich Leigh, who are both bloggers who have been on the receiving end of poorly targeted marketing. Rich says: “This is a war on poor blogger outreach campaigns, with an emphasis on ensuring people with products and experiences to promote are only targeting
bloggers that are happy to be contacted. The thing most marketers forget is that many bloggers do it for the love of
blogging about their passion. My hope is that with bloggabase.com, the carpet bombing PR tactics marketers have so far employed when contacting bloggers will be replaced with something that benefits both parties – and more importantly, is consensual and targeted.”

Andy added: “Having talked to hundreds of bloggers in the process of building the service, we’ve found that many bloggers would welcome the opportunity to test products and services – but only if they are appropriately and
relevantly contacted. As a blogger myself, you can’t deny that having been sat there with a blank page but all the intentions of delivering quality blog content, you sometimes wish you had a great, relevant product, service or experience to blog about. We hope our request service, where bloggers can contact marketers in certain sectors, will also help with this.”

For more information, please visit bloggabase.com or contact Andy Barr or Rich Leigh by emailing andy@bloggabase.com or rich@bloggabase.com

What would you do with your lottery winnings?

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I love the KissFM breakfast show – although I only listen in the car on the school run – but Ricky, Melvin and Charlie always come up with a great discussion idea. Last week, the week that 18 millionaires would be made on the lottery show, they asked the question: What would you do with your million?

My top 3:

A car, the greenest money can buy. Just because, for once in my life, I’d like to have one that works properly: I’ve yet to own a car that doesn’t have little niggles, such as the headrest being stuck, or the seat belt being stuck, or the cd not playing properly, or the right rear passenger door not opening. One I can just have picked up if it goes wrong and repaired immediately, instead of the usual umming and ahhing about booking it into a garage or doing it myself. When I say by myself, I mean, hunting around for spare parts and hoping the eldest, who did two weeks work experience at Fords, can do it for me.  And if Ferrari can make a green version of the 550 Maranello, I’d be extremely grateful to them.

Ferrari 550 Maranello

Ferrari 550 Maranello (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A new house. A big one, yes, with the gym, pool, dance studio/club, 5 a side footie pitch, cycle paths, pitch and putt and so on … Most importantly, a dedicated writers room, theatre and a film studio – complete with a production crew of my own. I’m not sure how much I’d actually have left out of just one million here … maybe forget the gym and the footie pitch …

Employ household staff: In particular – a chef! No out-of-the-freezer meals for me any more. A proper home cooked meal, by someone who can do good old standard English fayre like a roast dinner but also a delicate Oriental dish, and a sweet and spicy Indian too! Add in housekeeper and chauffeur and I’m a happy little bunny. (And I help the employment figures too!)  This is my idea of heaven and probably the first thing I’d do, even while still living in a semi …

CYBHER – The first UK all inclusive event for women who blog

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On Saturday 12th May 2012, central London will be alive with 300 British women bloggers!

Cybher is the first all-inclusive female blogger event of its kind in the UK. This one-day event will bring together the most influential bloggers and speakers from all corners of the blogosphere to network, inspire, share and learn.

Cybher is the brainchild of Siân To who after 15 years PR experience went social when she started blogging in 2009. In January 2010 she founded CyberMummy and in August that year she embarked on a life changing journey as an ambassador for Save the Children, that took her from the slums of Bangladesh to the UN summit in New York and tea at Downing Street.

This vast experience of how to use social media, and how to use it for social good is the foundation of Cybher.

Siân To, said: “We are so proud that Cybher can offer such a variety of workshops and activities for our bloggers to enjoy. Cybher has attracted woman from all blogging genres from beauty and fashion to parenting, travel,politics and more. Not only do these social savvy woman want to learn and develop the core content of their blogs, they also want to connect with brands that reflect their own key values as women.”

Cybher is poised to become the shared platform for bloggers from all walks of life. If you’re a woman and you blog then Cybher is the SOLD OUT event to be seen at.

Speakers include;
Zoe Margolis (Girl with a one track mind), Mario Cacciottolo (Someone Once Told Me), Poppy Disney What I wore Today), Liz Scarff (Blogladesh, World Vision), Daryl Willcox (DWPub Media), Mark Solomon (Tales from a black cab),
Cate Sevilla (BitchBuzz) and our youngest speaker, the 10 year old Biba (bibasphotos.com).

The Facts. The Stats. The Attendees.

–    70% of all bloggers use their blog to share their expertise and experience with others.

–    36% of all bloggers have been quoted in the traditional media for something they posted on a blog.

–    82% of bloggers surveyed are using Twitter.

–    Those who use Twitter say they do so to promote their blog (77%) and bring interesting links/content to light (59%).

–    96% of bloggers have an independent blog. This means they choose who they work with. It could be you.

–    The blogosphere is influencing itself – the number one influencer for bloggers is the blogs that they read.

–    Almost one third of bloggers have worked for the traditional media. They know how to write and how to engage their audience.

–    Compared with other media, blogs continue to lead in terms of trust and generation of consumer recommendations and purchases.

Source: Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2011