I’m really lucky to live on a really friendly street in London. It’s the type of street where you bump into your neighbours often and informally know what’s going on. Over the last 15 years our street has been having an annual party where everyone puts money into a pot to pay for games, music, food, drink AND pay the council for a license to have this party. The council license takes up about 25% of our budget, which I think is shocking. If we are trying to encourage communities to come together and create a ‘Big Society’ surely the state shouldn’t be charging them to have a party on their own street!
Our annual street party is this Saturday, the day before this year’s Big Lunch http://www.thebiglunch.com/ a national event encouraging people to get together with their neighbours. The Big Lunch believes that when people get together, they can be a catalyst to facing up to tough issues. Building new friendships means we can start to sort stuff out together. Seems like a really great idea to me, but one which could be discouraged if we have to outlay a lot of money to make it happen.