Forest Gate Community Garden 10th Anniversary Celebration

@Jay Smith hello again Jay. We are hosting the event IN the garden but need overflow space as advised by our upkeep gardener. We’ve expanded the event time to spread out crowd times. Durning hall was not available when we applied so we had to request street closure on a near dead end in front of the garden. We have since reserved DH for our event and have asked that our application be reduced by nearly half to reflect that. The garden has been a great asset to FG for 10 years and we have acquired quite a number of volunteers and community members use the garden over the years that we would like to invite to our event.

@Lisa Wenborne Thank you for your reply. I completely agree it is a large amount and unfortunately one that we can’t control. We can’t risk the wear and tear on the garden that an event of this size with entertainment would bring. Durning Hall has recently become available and was not available when we applied. In light of this we have inquired about amending the amount requested and we are also requesting that the street closure be considered in the Play Street scheme. These two things would mean we also don’t have to rent a marquee could bring our costs down by more than half.

@Misty Dampier Thank you for replying as most other projects havent even bothered and those that did mostly didnt even answer the questions I was actually asking. So £5k on street closure, £1k on the marquee, £1k to staff the marquee, £4k on everything else. Thank you for explaining the high costs but the Forest Gate festival is asking for a similar amount to you but is already established on the Forest Gate calendar, lasts the whole day, Im told gets 4000 visitors maybe more and brings together hundreds of local services. It already delivers much of what youve put in your project description that this event will achieve so what is the point of having basically a second but less successful largescale community event on an adjacent street just on a different day. Just theirs is fine. You will probably both get voted in as you have big followings. £24k is an eyewatering amount for the council to fund on just 2 events. If you get Durning Hall instead, how much will that be to hire? but honestly even if Durning Hall is free I still think £4k is a lot to ask the council to spend on a single event to celebrate yourselves and your own supporters. You could do that for £500 and even then I dont think it should be council-funded anyway. Its not that you dont deserve it. But lots of community groups deserve it too, have a think why they haven't asked. As someone points out above, just hold any celebration in your garden. I understand why other projects have to pay venue costs but you are a venue so isn’t the point that you don't have venue costs? Just dial it down. Actually when you say you want to use the street or Durning Hall to save wear and tear on the garden, do you mean it’s £4-11k to celebrate the garden but without anyone actually getting to be in it? Id like to know how this other £4k will be spent so can you give rough figures for staff costs vs music acts vs materials vs equipment vs food/catering vs project management vs other costs, don’t need line by line, just 7 numbers please. Sorry to go hard on you and its not like I dislike the garden, far from it, Ive supported it in other ways over the years but this is council funding. Other projects are providing a whole year of sessions or things that the public can use well past December 2026. I agree with the person above that this project is a distasteful use of precious public funds.