PRESS RELEASE
Embargoed till December 12th 2007
Market House Festival becomes a reality
On the evening of December 11th, Kingston resident Marilyn Mason was awarded £1500 to enable her to run a two-week festival in Kingston's Market House in April 2008. The award ceremony took place at the Royal Society of Arts in central London and the award was funded by the RSA, Starbucks and T-Mobile, sponsors of the 2007 Coffeehouse Challenge.
The Festival project was the outcome of two Coffeehouse Challenge discussions held in Kingston Starbucks in 2006 and 2007, the first on community in Kingston, and the second on ‘101 Things To Do With A Dead Market House”.
“The two Coffeehouse Challenges that led to this project brought complete strangers together for some open-ended conversations about Kingston,” reports Marilyn. “The first started with a bit of grumble about the lack of community space and things to do for those past their 20s in central Kingston, but moved quickly onto positive suggestions, and the second one built on that very creatively.”
The aim of the Festival is to show how this underused asset in the town centre could be used to help diversify and improve Kingston's evening culture, along with the new Rose Theatre. The award should cover some publicity and the hire of the Market House for 10 evenings, so that local groups and individuals can put on a range of free public events, such as discussions and debates, workshops and events where people discover a new interest, and fund-raising evenings for charities. This website gives further information for event organisers, and will feature the Festival programme as it develops.
The Market House Festival will kick off on the evening of Monday April 7th with a discussion led by editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine Julian Baggini talking about his latest book Welcome to Everytown, subtitled “A journey into the English mind”. Will the ideas of Kingston residents and workers turn out to be anything like those of the residents of “Everytown”?
Marilyn says: “I’m really excited and slightly daunted by the possibilities of a Festival in this venue. I hope that local clubs, community groups and individuals will help to put together a really good programme with lots of variety and participation – and which also involve some socialising, with refreshments and informal conversation afterwards. I also hope that this short Festival will lead to more community use of the Market House in future, but Kingston Council will have to make it easier and cheaper to hire if this is to happen. I think it would be very good for Kingston if people knew they could come along to the Market House after work or shopping to do something different, talk about something different, meet different people – and then maybe go on to the new theatre or out for a meal.”
Notes for editors
More about the festival and its background elsewhere on this website.
See "Contact us" to contact Marilyn Mason.
The Coffeehouse Challenge is about getting local people to come together over coffee to talk about community issues they care about and to take action for local change. Where Coffeehouse Challenge ideas develop into projects, the RSA, Starbucks and T-Mobile offer a share of over £20,000 in awards to help some of the best initiatives get off the ground.