Tony Allen: New food, craft and music festival being planned for Bovey

Tony Allen is a Bovey Tracey Town Councillor & Leader of the Bovey NHW Forum

Walking through the crowded Bovey Tracey town centre in fine weather on the last Saturday in November, it was plain to see everyone was enjoying themselves at the Christmas Fayre, brilliantly organised as ever by Bovey Tracey Primary School PTA. The school choir and orchestra, the New Century Singers and the Grimspound Morris dancers in the town square with stalls selling confectionaries and Christmas gifts along Fore Street from the Town Hall down to Pixie Corner, with birds of prey and pony rides, created an excellent atmosphere prior to the Mayor’s young assistant switching on the Christmas lights. People we don’t often see in the town were delighted to bring their children and grand children along, and the local shops hopefully benefitted from the extra trade that created. So do we like events like this? Yes of course we do!

I wrote in this column two editions ago about the Town Council, the Bovey Business Association and the Information Centre Trust getting together to generate ideas about how to reinvigorate and increase footfall in the town from both residents and visitors alike. Well, I’m pleased to say that a group of creative individuals from the town, already deeply involved in establishing and running enterprises helping to put Bovey Tracey on the map, have put their heads together and come up with an excellent initiative for a Bovey town centre event which builds on the success of Bovey’s annual Contemporary Craft Festival.

This is to be known as the Nourish Festival. The originators of this are Erica Steer (Director, the Devon Guild of Craftsmen), Sarah James (Director, the Bovey Tracey Contemporary Craft Festival) and Ian Wellens (Director, the Cheese Shed), who have set up a not-for-profit company (Nourish Festival Limited) specifically for organising the festival. To use their words, the Nourish Festival “will feed the body, mind and the senses by celebrating the best in local and regional food, craft and classical music”.

The provisional plan is to have local and regional food producers showcasing their products along Fore Street, with cookery demonstrations, baking competitions, bread making and cookery classes, plus a free entry mini contemporary craft fair in the Town Hall of up to twenty of the region’s best in the fields of ceramics, jewellery, glassware, furniture and wood craft. There will also be classical music events at the Parish church PPT and in the Baptist church, including a concert (Devon Baroque) on the Friday evening 6th September, and the nationally acclaimed Brodsky Quartet as the musical highlight of the Festival, performing at PPT on the Saturday evening.

You will be hearing a lot more about all of this in the coming weeks and months, but it promises to be a great event for the town, and hopefully an annual one. So put a marker in your 2014 diaries now for the first weekend of September.

BOVEY TRACEY YOUNG CITIZEN’S AWARD 2014.........

It’s time once more to invite nominations for this special award recognising the achievements of our young people in the town. Application forms can be collected from our three Post Offices (Bovey, Brimley & Heathfield), Bovey library and the Town Council office at the Town Hall (or printed off from the council website www.boveytracey.gov.uk) The closing date for nominations is 1st March 2014. If you know of a suitable individual or small group you think worthy of this award, please submit your nomination while it’s fresh in your mind.

MILL MARSH PARK UPDATE.........

New saplings have now been planted in place of the vandalised trees, the cycle path through the park (part of the Wray Valley trail) has been given its final resurfacing, the boulders washed away from the river bank in the winter storms have all been replaced, and the children’s playground has been updated. But it doesn’t stop there. During 2014 you will see some new developments taking place in the park, after public consultation with residents.

A skate park is to be built close to the football club hedge behind the Scout hut in the summer period if all goes well. This skate park is the result of much lobbying of the Town Council by youngsters in the town over recent years, and with the involvement of these young people, it has been agreed that the skate park should happen. Advice has been taken from other places in Devon where skate parks have been introduced (Teignmouth is perhaps the one best known locally), and the youngsters have helped make it happen by involvement in the planning, the selection of its layout, and generating their own revenue for the project. This gives them a genuine feeling of ownership, and they can’t wait to get it up and running.

It’s probably useful here to explain that the main funding for this is not from council tax revenue, but from Section 106 money for enhancing recreational facilities coming out of funds from new housing developments in the town. CCTV will also be installed at that end of the park, which will help keep an eye out for problems there and in the surrounding open spaces. The positioning of the skate park itself was decided on the advice of a police expert.

And here’s something for all age groups: outdoor gym equipment. This is an initiative from the Town Council, based on successful installations elsewhere around the country, and a public consultation in November which gained overwhelming support from those attending. This will also be funded by Section 106 monies from local developments in the town. The idea is to enable people to keep fit outdoors. Five different items of gym equipment will provide a suitable combination of cardiovascular and muscle toning exercises according to professionally qualified fitness experts. All will have information boards detailing how to use them (they all meet current health & safety requirements). More information on the equipment and location will be provided by the Town council nearer the time of installation.

BY POPULAR DEMAND, A FEW MORE JOKES..........

The local police are hunting a “knitting needle nutter” who has stabbed six people in the rear in the last 48 hours. They believe the attacker could be following some kind of pattern.

A man saw a parked RAC van outside his house. The driver was sobbing uncontrollably and looked very miserable. He thought the driver was heading for a breakdown.

A neighbour knocked on a man’s door at 2:30 am this morning, He thought “can you believe that, at 2:30am?! Luckily though, I was still up playing my bagpipes”.

Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarfs are not Happy.

Tony Allen is a Bovey Tracey Town Councillor & Leader of the Bovey NHW Forum. This column is written in a personal capacity and not on behalf of any particular group or organisation.