QMUL’s Festival of Communities, an annual weekend-long celebration of East London’s inspiring community, opened up the university’s campus for locals to explore and enjoy some family-friendly fun. Roman Road Trust was thrilled to be a part of this fantastic festival honouring Tower Hamlets’ vibrant life, culture and history on Sunday 11th June.
Adults and children, with their faces painted as superheroes and exotic animals, bounced from stall to stall learning about the many businesses, research projects and community outreach initiatives in East London. With the sun shining, children were eager to collect stamps for their activity book and win a gold medal.
Roman Road Trust had an enjoyable day encouraging families to play our interactive and engaging matching pairs game which featured trail points from our Bow Heritage Trail project. The aim of the game was to match up a pair of images to win a small prize. Winners were then invited to take a look at their winning trail point on the Bow Heritage Trail digital map on the new website.
Over 100 adults and children participated in our matching pairs activity, which offered a fun opportunity for locals to learn about the revived and diversified Bow Heritage Trail. Roman Road Trust has been working alongside QMUL’s School of Geography and QMUL Network to rediscover secret, significant spots with the help of the local community. The aim is to create a trail that reflects the rich cultural and historical diversity of Bow.
We enjoyed seeing children recognise trail pictures and exclaim, “That’s near my house!”, validating just how pleasing it is to have your neighbourhood celebrated. Many adults found the game to be nostalgic, reminding them of former sites from their past, such as Rhythm Division record store once based on Roman Road.
We were left with an empty box of prizes and a sense of success as the day came to an end. It was amazing to meet the wonderful people in our community and present our project, Rediscovering the Bow Heritage Trail. We hope to see some familiar faces when we begin walking tours of our updated and unique trail of Bow in September 2023. If you haven’t already done so, we recommend signing up to our newsletter for updates on walking tour dates.
The Festival of Communities is organised by the Centre for Public Engagement at Queen Mary University of London. Roman Road Trust would like to extend a big thank you to QMUL’s Festival Team as well as our volunteers who helped ensure our stall was a success.
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