The Council has been made a finalist in the UK’s Hearts for the Arts awards for Best Arts Project.
By laying on performances and al fresco food in Calverley Grounds in September, with all the acts local community arts groups, TWBC offered its key workers and charitable sector a ‘lovely celebratory event with an impressive range of partners,’ said Hearts for the Arts.
The award organisers called the Big Thank You Picnic ‘a lovely celebratory event with an impressive range of partners, enabling both a showcasing of local talent and the opportunity to reconnect with people and thank key workers’.
They added: “This was certainly quite an organisational feat, so congratulations.”
TWBC and the other shortlisted Best Arts organisations will be judged by a celebrity panel consisting of the likes of Channel 4 journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy, comedian Shaparak Khorsandi and Dragon’s den entrepreneur Deborah Meaden.
They will pick the entries they love on Valentine’s Day, February 14.
The National Campaign for the Arts launched the Hearts for the Arts awards in 2016 to highlight the achievements of local authorities that are continuing their arts services against a backdrop of severe financial cuts.
Cllr Jane March, who holds TWBC’s culture and leisure portfolio, said: “It is an honour for the Council to have been shortlisted for the Hearts for the Arts Awards.
“The Big Thank You Picnic was a wonderful event, and it was great that so many volunteers, representatives of community groups and key workers were able to attend.
“We can’t praise their efforts enough and we continue to thank them for the work they are still doing.”
Dawn Stanford of Nourish foodbank told the Times that given that charitable organisations could not use their own funds for the event, the fact that the Council issued the invitation meant that volunteers could accept and enjoy the day.
She added: “Our volunteers give their time, but don’t want anything in return!”
She said that it was not just the sunshine and arts which left the community helpers feeling renewed, but also a chance to ‘just stop’ after months of ‘full on’ work, as well as a chance to find solidarity with people they had been working with, but always remotely.
“It was a chance for all of us organisers to meet face to face,” she said.
“Nobody wanted to go home!”
Picnickers were treated to performances from local groups including Trinity Youth Theatre, the inclusive dance company This Is Us, Paddock Wood Community Choir, and the Royal Tunbridge Wells Symphony Orchestra [RTWSO].
