Sandy Town Council: The delights of Sandy Skatejam
Date Added: 04/10/2023
Saturday 16th September 2023 was a brilliant and bright day to host the anniversary of our new skatepark opening. The Mayor Joanna Hewitt opened the event by thanking the sponsors who had made the development of the Skate Park by Maverick Skateparks possible: Central Bedfordshire Council, Frontier, GeeJay Chemicals Ltd., Grand Union Housing Group, Tarmac Landfill Communities Fund, The Police and Crime Commissioner for Bedfordshire and The Rotary Club of Sandy.
While celebrating the skate park the event was focused on the opportunity to raise the issues of Crime Awareness and Prevention with our young people and we were joined by our local community policing team PC Dave Lace and our new PCSO Donna Donnelly.
The event kicked off at 12pm with music playing out and Geoff at Camp Rubicon entertaining the crowds. Many young people walked away with fabulous prizes from BMX, skate, and scooter competitions.
Sandy Town Council along with our police team, had also paired up with Nicola King from Grand Union to use the event as an opportunity to engage with the community about their opinions on the skatepark. We engaged with 41 young people and 11 parents and overall had some great and thought-provoking feedback. 63% of the young people that we spoke to said they found the skate park an extremely friendly place to be (with a further 10% responding ‘friendly’, 23% were neutral and only one young person said they found the park slightly unfriendly). Sandy Town Council are committed to making the skatepark a safe and enjoyable place for young people to be and are looking forward to how we can continue to do so. We engaged with young people to promote the Safer Streets competition from the Office of the Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner, where entrants could win a GoPro creator and Tablet package for entering a short video / digital artwork. Several young people also filled in the ‘Youth survey’ from Safer Central at Central Bedfordshire Council, where people are given the chance to have their say on community safety. As this survey was slightly longer, Old Red Barbers, located in Sandy, donated some wonderful prizes (including t-shirts, hats and stickers) to thank the young people for taking part. The survey can be found online at: https://safercentral.org/youthsurvey/
We had some excellent vendors who kept the everyone fed and watered – a huge thank you to Tony B for the delicious and refreshing ice cream, Pecoro for the mouth-watering pizza, and Really Awesome Coffee for their incredible set up.
AAMS were present to assist with any bumps and falls as part of the event (and nature of being on the skate park!)
Finally, the event would not have run so smoothly without the assistance of our volunteers: Eileen & David Crowe, Aguma Isaac & Ndunwa Barnabas Chidi. We appreciate volunteers who give their precious time to the event. Our volunteers assisted with litter pick up, manning stalls, marshalling and operating the gate. If you would like to volunteer at another of our future events, please reach out to us on: [email protected].