First Give Event
Written by Jackie Chapman, WCA Secretrary

Wimbledon Community Association was very honoured to be asked to participate on the judging panel of a school project in one of our member venues, Wimbledon College just before Christmas. I attended to write up this report and our Chair, David Hall, was also delighted to attend as one of the judging panel. The project was being run by First Give, an organisation that works in partnership with secondary schools to help young people to give their time, tenacity and talents to improve their local communities.

The students’ task was to work in small groups to support charities chosen by the students. They had been working on the project for a number of weeks, developing a relationship with their charities and working on different ways to raise awareness of its work in their local community. All classes in Year 9 had participated, and seven presenting groups made it to the final to represent their class on Monday 17 December, at which they were to present the results of their findings to their Year 9 classmates, teachers and the panel of judges. The prize for the winning team was a £1,000 First Give Grant to be donated to their charity.

What was particularly striking was the range of charities selected, encompassing support for a mix of age ranges and social issues; Faith in Action dealing with homelessness; Born Too Soon fundraising for Kingston Hospital’s neo natal unit; Wimbledon Foodbank; Jigsaw 4U supporting children who face difficult times, for example, following bereavement; Stem4 targeting early identification of commonly occurring mental health issues in teenagers and AFC Wimbledon Foundation, promoting the power of sport, in particular football, to engage the whole community and change lives. In the latter case, the students highlighted the work done by AFC Wimbledon Foundation to reach out to people with dementia.

Teams were marked on their knowledge of their chosen charity, their creativity and delivery plus the social action and impact of their project. Throughout the presentations, there were excellent examples of creativity with poetry, video, computer graphics, social media interaction and role play. Some teams also managed to engage very imaginatively with their audience. They all successfully showcased the aims and work of their chosen charity, and particularly demonstrated great insight into how much each achieves with voluntary input and limited resources. All could convey the impact £1,000 would have.

The winners were one of two groups supporting Faith in Action, and were the group who best brought most of these features together.

Well done to all involved – the students and their teachers, and First Give, the organisers. Voluntary service is vital for all sorts of reasons, and this project will hopefully lay down the foundation of community spirit in this generation. Plus along the way, they’ve learned some key life skills – teamwork; research and public speaking.

Artworx Art Event - A Success Story
Written by Kumi Muttu

Nailed it! The day began like no other...dry, bright and sunny! South Park Gardens was full of families with children, and their energy filled us with the same as we began our endless task of setting up for this event we had been promoting for weeks. Slowly but surely we started making progress and our venue walls filled up with beautiful original, contemporary artworks by Emily Finch, Kumi Muttu and Marta Pesce.

The tables in the room also displayed beautiful artworks by the artists. There was a table for canapés, deliciously warm spiced fruit punch, and mulled wine (non-alcoholic!) sourced from local caterer Jil Hall. Then there was a table for kids activities where we challenged each child to copy a cartoon image and rewarded them with sweets for best effort.

Mozart played gently in the background filling the room with creative energy, a spiced cinnamon candle was lit in the corner and decorative ornaments were in place. With our guest list in hand, we were ready to mingle at 1pm as promised! Our first guest arrived and the room picked up pace quickly as we welcomed new arrivals with delicious food and drink.  From here, conversations about our mutual love for art amongst other things easily flowed filling the room with atmosphere. Before we knew it, the all important sales started rolling in and appreciation of our creativity started to shine. Within the first hour of the event opening, all participating artists had made a sale which boosted our enthusiasm and confidence by a mile! Families with children had a nice time too, as they let their children have a go at the challenge which resulted in happy little faces once they achieved their goal (and won the prize of sweets!)

We had chosen a perfect location for an event such as this; the room had a nice vibe set in a beautiful award winning garden in Wimbledon. Almost everyone who attended bought one or two artwork(s) and all of the participating artists made sales. We had a blast hosting this event and I want to say a special thanks to my dear friends Sirish Gurung and Heba Jamaa, and my sisters Lohini Rajagopal and Oala Muttu who came to support and help us at the event. Then there is my brother in-law Sujit Tracy-Sujit Muttucumaraswamy who took all the event photos. It was truly amazing having your support as your help was invaluable and made Artworx, The Art Event successful.

We have one final task of choosing the winner of the Sunflower painting and we will notify the winner via email soon. With the winner's permission, we will then post the winner details on our Facebook page.

Charity Note: We have raised £50 for our chosen charity Children with Cancer [including some change from the collection tin] and look forward to supporting them with our future events.

A BIG thank you to all the attendees of the Artworx, The Art Event. your support is what made this event a huge success!

Throughout the month of December, we took to social media to share 31 merry memories of great things that have happened across Merton during 2018. If you follow us on social media or subscribe to this newsletter, you will already be aware of #MerryMerton and can now read our summary of some of Merton’s Best Bits of 2018 below.

With so much festive activity happening in the lead up to Christmas, it seemed rather fitting to launch our Merry Merton campaign with the beautifully lit Love Wimbledon Christmas Tree located outside Wimbledon Station. Despite the beauty of the tree itself, this wonderful festive addition to Wimbledon also featured a signpost which offered directions to various local theatre shows and community spaces including the Wimbledon Winter Wonderland which took place on the first weekend of December.

By the second weekend of December, festive celebrations had extended further than the Broadway and travelled up into Wimbledon Village where an action-packed family day entitled Christmas in the Village took place. The day itself included an appearance from Santa, a performance from the Wimbledon Choral Society, and the switching on of the Christmas lights by the War Memorial.

With so much happening in Wimbledon Village, our attention was then drawn to Wimbledon Common which hosted several memorable events during 2018. The two events that we focused on during #MerryMerton both occurred in October; one was Wimbledon Guild’s Waggy Walk which saw the Common welcome almost 200 dog walkers, friends and families, and their dogs. By coming together for this event, everyone involved raised £5000 to support people affected by social isolation and loneliness, which featured as one of Merton Giving’s Giving Stories last year.

The second event was Wimbledon Bookfest 2018 which created 10 Magical Days on the Common. With its large volunteer input and a small team of core workers, the festival was a great success and sealed its place as one of Wimbledon’s highlights of the year! To find out more about this great festival, you can read a synopsis of one of the festival’s sold out events of 2018 on our Wimblecomm blog and see what this year’s festival entailed in the September edition of our Community Bytes newsletter.

As a local charity in Merton, we love to see people come together for the greater good of the community as they did above, and greatly appreciate the work of volunteers who take their time and efforts to give back to others. In line with this, we celebrated Local Charities Day on 14th December 2018, and used #MerryMerton to celebrate charitable events that occurred across the Merton borough throughout the year. Although we didn’t manage to cover everything, head over to our blog to continue reading this summary and see if your venue or a venue near you was featured.