On July 19, that’s two weeks on Sunday, at least three quarters of a million
of us will sit down to eat, drink, chat and maybe even carouse with the
people who are closest to us geographically, yet whom increasingly we barely
know: our neighbours.
The organisation behind the first big wave of British street parties since the
2002 Golden Jubilee is called the Big Lunch. More than 6,500 green dots
mottle the map of Britain on its website, each marking a street that has
declared its intention to string up the bunting, shut down the traffic and
party.
The plan was cooked up in 2007, when Paul Twivy, a radical adman who has long
worked on Comic Relief, travelled to the Eden Project in Cornwall to meet
its founder, Tim Smit. “Tim had the idea of the Big Lunch — a simple,
inclusive way to encourage, seduce and cajole people to sit down with their
neighbours, with a meal as the centrepiece,” he says. “I had an idea, too,
which was local Eden: how could you bring the spirit of Eden to a community;
to everybody . . . we realised our ideas were one and the same.”
Two years on, Smit and Twivy are readying themselves for the final push. Our
interview is sandwiched between meetings with representatives from the
European Neighbours’ Day initiative and EDF, one of the Big Lunch’s
corporate sponsors. That backing has helped them to lobby councils to make
setting up the street parties as easy as possible (there are tedious issues
such as public liability insurance and road closure charges to be
negotiated) and to pay for the website, as well as a relentlessly upbeat
38-page booklet for party organisers, entitled Easy Ways To Serve the Big
Lunch: A Guide to Human Warming.
What, then, is “human warming”? “It’s middle-class, clever marketing bastard’s
wordplay,” rumbles Smits through a haze of Hamlet smoke. And in
non-marketing-speak?
“If changing your light bulb, driving less, flying less or insulating your
house was going to change the world, then we may as well all go down the pub
now. But it’s not [going to], is it? And we know it’s not. We are
particularly incapable of collective adaptability at the moment because we
don’t have the organisations. So to me, the Big Lunch is important to start
people thinking that, actually, the way we can get out of the problems we
may face is through a new understanding of what community might mean.”
Given that it was part-inspired by the Eden Project, Smit’s enormous Cornish
biospheres that have been visited by more than ten million people since
2000, it is not surprising that the Big Lunch has an environmental emphasis.
Lunchers are urged to grow their own food and rustle up the bunting from
recycled materials. Fundamentally, though, it is just an excuse for a street
party. As that clever marketing type wrote in the booklet: “The shared
enjoyment of food, laughter, play, music and conversation brings us together
and reminds us of a simple truth — together we are strong . . . it may be
tricky and feel uncomfortable to start with. It takes courage to stop being
a stranger. But think of the prize — to be able to walk down the street and
into the neighbourhood and realise how people who act together can create a
sense of community.”
An organisation called Streets Alive has been promoting the reclamation of
streets as social spaces for several years. Its founder, Chris Gittens,
says: “The thing about a street party is that it’s personal. You meet
people, you have conversations. As light, frivolous or low-key as they may
appear to be, they are very powerful. Just knowing their neighbours means
that people feel more comfortable, that they relate more to where they live.”
Gittens cites various reasons why so few 21st-century Britons know their
neighbours. We are mobile and opt to travel to see distant friends rather
than socialising, by necessity, with those whom we live alongside. By
striding out of the door and straight to our cars, we reduce the likelihood
of bumping into our neighbours in the street.
“We need slightly more organised ways of meeting our neighbours and doing all
the small things that neighbours do, however modest they may be,” says
Gittens. “You don’t have to be friends, but what about friendly? The French
use a word, civilité, but we don’t employ civility very much.
Yet that is the core of community — and there is no point in talking about
communities unless people know their neighbours, even just a little.”
In 2005, Streets Alive supported 14 summer street parties in Easton, Bristol.
Afterwards the group surveyed more than 360 households that took part. On
average, partygoers reported meeting for the first time or getting to know
better eight neighbours, and 97 per cent said that they wanted to have
another party. Their comments included “I have more of a feeling that people
are looking out for each other”; “I like Easton even more”; “I watch out for
the children I met when I see them playing in the street”; “There was a more
united front when a neighbour was burgled shortly afterwards” and “Please
can we make this an annual event?”
Parties that have caught Twivy’s and Smit’s attention include a bash for 5,000
in Toxteth, Liverpool, and the five gurdwaras (Sikh temples) in London and
Bradford that will be aligning their langars — free communal eatingplaces —
with the Big Lunch for the day.
By no means all the street party organisers across Britain have signed up to
the website, and not all parties are being held in streets. “It is already
breaking down in that very British way,” says Smit. “We thought of it as
streets but there are people eating in parks, other groups that are just
meeting six neighbours — it is various and shambolic, which I love, because
that’s how people are.”
It may be called Big, but Smit says that the total number of people taking
part is not what matters most. “What does is whether it makes those who do
feel profoundly good, and creates the right mood for them to say ‘let’s do
this again next year’. If it genuinely grows like that, then we are starting
something important.”
Walthamstow There are about 100 households in Brunswick Street, Walthamstow
Village, East London, and at least 40 will be Big Lunching on July 19. The
bunting will be made of recycled carrier bags, the beer provided by a keen
home brewer and the music by the street’s teenagers, who get to act as DJs.
A neighbour of Sarah Trivuncic, 35, heard about the Big Lunch while visiting
the Eden Project.
The centrepiece of the party will be a “beach” at one end of the street. “They
are going to have inflatable toys, deckchairs and a giant palm tree,” says
Trivuncic. “We’ve had a really good response.”
Broughton Geoff Bottle, station manager at Broughton Fire Station, read about
the Big Lunch on the internet. “I thought, that’s the sort of thing we
should be involved with,” he says. On Big Lunch day guests from the area
will be able to explore the station, eat cakes baked by fire crews and enter
a raffle.
Middlesbrough Residents of Longford Street and Meath Street in Middlesbrough
have been presented with a list of street party necessities and asked to
sign up to provide one. “Otherwise,” says Mavis Arnold, “we might have got
500 sausage rolls.” The Big Lunch will be held in the alleyway that runs
behind the terraces of the two streets. Six years ago it was gated off to
deter burglars and, with support from West Middlesbrough Neighbourhood
Trust, the residents have made the alley into a communal space with hanging
baskets and trees. “People value what they had in the community in the
past,” says Arnold, 71. “We have gained a bit of that back. Children play
out here safely and neighbours get to know each other who didn’t before.”
The Big Lunch, says Arnold, is “a really lovely idea”.
How to make bunting
For fabric bunting, have a root around for old material with a pretty pattern
and cut it into triangles (about 20cm long and about the same across the
top), using pinking scissors. Then you need some twine (it can be string,
ribbon or piping cord from John Lewis, from 10p to 30p a metre).
If you want to hang your bunting in the garden, across the front of your
house, you will probably need about 3-4 metres. Fold the material over the
twine at the top and sew it into place or, if you feel lazy, use a stapler.
For paper bunting, cut pieces of coloured card into strips about 20cm long and
cut these into triangles. Punch a hole at either end and thread your piping
cord in and out. Get your children to decorate the bunting with collages or
hand and foot prints.
Celia Cox www.celiabunting.com
What food to bring
To avoid everyone turning up with the same chocolate cake, the menu needs
organisation. It is basically a picnic where everyone arrives with a dish.
If I were having one in my street, I’d set up my paella pan and ask people
to contribute, say, chicken, saffron, onions, etc. A street of barbecues
could also be fun, with lots of them at intervals down one side of the
street, cooking mini-burgers, koftas and sausages with such as hoummos,
potato salad, couscous and lots of quiches (using quick, ready-made pastry
cases) and big pies. The other side of the street could do the pudding:
strawberries and cream, cakes and easy puff pastry tarts.
One of my star turns for a party is cheat’s pissaladière, made with ready-made
puff pastry, fried onions, anchovy and black olives. It looks great, is
quick and easy, and is a taste of the South of France.
Lindsey Bareham
A bit of history
“For East-Enders,” reported The Times on April 20, 1937,
“the centre of things will be the streets in which they live.” Preparations
were under way for children’s street tea parties to celebrate the Coronation
of George VI, and this newspaper noted that “in the better class of streets”
it did not take long to raise £50 to £60 for “a three-course tea, with cakes
surmounted by plaques of the Royal Family, a jazz band to play, and prizes
for winners of the evening competitions and races”.
Although the emphasis was on “the happiness of the children”, the report
continued: “Parents have not overlooked their own need to drink the health
of the royal pair.”
Responding to the Times report above, one Beatrix Lyall wrote to
describe the scene in Fulham, West London. “Some of these streets . . . have
been made really beautiful with endless streamers of coloured papers, flags,
pennants, bells, mottoes and archways of every conceivable type . . . on the
whole, the poorer the street, the better the decorations and the gayer the
people.”
According to Chris Gittens, of Streets Alive, the first mass public street
parties were thrown to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in
1887. “There seems to have been an evolution of the idea with each of the
coronations and jubilees,” he says. “The key date, really, was VE-Day.”
There were further street parties to mark the Queen’s Coronation in 1953 and
then her Silver Jubilee in 1977. Gittens says: “From that point the concept
evolved again, first with Charles and Diana’s wedding, then the Millennium
and the Golden Jubilee of 2002.”
Where do we begin?
If you haven’t started yet, you can still join in the Big Lunch.
The first step is to contact your local council’s traffic management or events
team to get permission to close the street. If your council requires
insurance, try www.events-insurance.
co.uk/thebiglunch It may be too late to close your street, but check out
businesses and schools to see if you could hold a Big Lunch in their car
park or on playing fields — or think about local parks.
Does someone on the street have a really big garden and would they be happy to
host the party (provided you all promised to help with the clearing up
afterwards)?
Create a ripple effect: knock on the doors of the people who live either side
of you and invite them; that’s just two people. Ask them to do likewise and,
before you know it, you have covered the whole street. You can also
distribute leaflets and put posters on lampposts.
It doesn’t have to be complicated — if tables are tricky, make it a picnic; if
everyone brings a little something to share it will be a feast.
If all else fails, check out the map on TheBigLunch.com to see where the
nearest Big Lunch to your street is taking place. Head along to that one and
make some new friends.
