December saw a handful of events take place within our communities seeing residents and partners coming together to festive events to get into the Christmas spirit. Our communities had 56 residents total attend a Christmas tree decorating, Christmas coffee mornings and residents Christmas Celebration.
The first event was the Oates Close Community centre Christmas Tree decoration event. Heart of the Community supported RMBC with this event to decorate a Christmas tree that has been planted outside of the Oates close community centre. The tree will grow bigger and bigger each year and will hopefully become a great feature of the estate for future Christmas events to come. Residents came together to write their own messages on baubles and decorated them with glitter and pens. We then decorated the tree with all the baubles that had messages on for the community at the end of the event. Hot chocolates with cream and marshmallows, mince pies and other hot drinks were available for everyone taking part which went down a treat. We asked the children what they absolutely loved decorating the baubles, colouring them in and using the glue and glitter to make the colourful.
Our second event takes us over to Warreners Drive for the Friends of Dalton, East Herringthorpe and Thrybergh Green spaces community event on the 20th of December 1pm – 3pm. The residents came together to make it a great Christmas celebration. Michael Bublé was blasting on the CD player, a big buffet was set out for everyone to enjoy. The group had organised a plethora of raffle prizes to be used in the raffle to raise money for the group. The event saw 30 people from the community attend such as residents’ friends and families. Most of the active group supported the event and helped tidy up, make drinks and set up the event. It was an event that really did sum up what a great year it has been for the group of residents at warreners drive which is supported by Nicola Jackson from the Dalton, East Herringthorpe and Thrybergh greenspaces group. Everyone pitched in to donate prizes for the raffle, many Christmas cards were exchanged, and residents are going into Christmas having had a great day.
And finally The Dalton Community Group hosted a special Christmas coffee morning on the 16th of December at the Dalton Parish Hall. The event was well attended, with 16 attendees including Santa Clause! The event had attracted 6 new attendees and was supported by Local electorates Cllr Michael Bennet-Sylvester and Joanne Baker-Rogers and services such as RMBC Housing and Rush House. Hot breakfast sandwiches and a buffet were on offer at the event and free drinks as usual. 3 residents were able to speak with Cllr Bennet-Sylvester to speak about issues which are currently being resolved from attending and the newer attendees said they will be attending in future.
December has been a very busy period for Heart of the Community and the community groups and partners involved, but what a good month it has been. We supported 3 great events got everyone into the Christmas spirit and a chance to meet others at a time of year that can be an isolating period. A big thankyou and Merry Christmas to all the volunteers and partners involved.