Community spirits combine for halloween fun
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The Strand on the Green Recreation Ground (off Thames Road, Chiswick) was host to scores of small witches and monsters on Halloween night, as local families attended a children’s Halloween party arranged by the Friends of Strand Rec (FOSR).
The Halloween party was a free event, through which FOSR hoped to encourage more people to come into the park, as well as to raise some money from donations towards park improvements.
The party was a great success, with over 100 people attending, wearing some very scary Halloween costumes and bringing spectacular pumpkins. Children plunged their hands into buckets of gory entrails (cold spaghetti and lychees), decorated Halloween gingerbread biscuits and ate donuts hanging from the trees while wearing blindfolds. As darkness fell, the park was lit by glowing pumpkins and we huddled together on the grass, where local actor Saikat Ahamed frightened us all with the tale of Dr Frankenstein and his terrible monster.
The event was sponsored by Annie’s Restaurant, supported by Marks and Spencer and organised with help from CiP.
Colette Connors of FOSR said “We were delighted to see so many people enjoying the park and getting together to have fun at Halloween. We want to make this a park that is enjoyed and cared for by the whole community and hope that events such as this will help return it to a central position in local life.”
FOSR is a newly formed friends group, which is working in partnership with Hounslow CIP Parks and Open Spaces to clean up the park, improve the range of play equipment, plant more shrubs and flowers and encourage more community use and care of the park. CIP manages the park on behalf of Hounslow Council.
The Friends are now working with CIP to put together a plan for improvements to the park, drawn from a list of park users’ suggestions. They are, with the assistance of CIP, seeking funding to implement these ideas, and plan to hold a series of social and fundraising events in the park in the coming months.
November 8, 2005