Bedford Park Festival to celebrate 40th anniversary with photos and videos

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Local residents are being asked to search out their old photographs, videos and home movies of the Bedford Park Festival, to help mark its 40th anniversary as Chiswick's biggest community event. This year's Festival, which begins in three months' time on June 9th, will include exhibitions and a film evening looking back over the past 40 years.

One exhibition will celebrate the Festival's role in saving Bedford Park from property developers, who were knocking down fine Victorian houses to build blocks of flats.

"The first Festival in June 1967 included an exhibition celebrating the architectural importance of Bedford Park, as the world's first garden suburb" says Torin Douglas, the Festival co-ordinator. "It was visited by John Betjeman and a senior government official. Within a month, 365 houses had been listed and it was later declared a conservation area by Ealing and Hounslow Councils (Bedford Park lies in both boroughs).

"We'll be recreating and updating that exhibition, with the support of the Bedford Park Society. And we also want to rekindle people's personal memories through photos, films and videos of past Festivals, including Green Days and all those children's fancy dress parades!"

People with material to offer can write to Torin at the Parish Office, St Michael & All Angels Church, Priory Avenue, W4 1TX.

The 2007 Festival will include all the regular events - the Bedford Park Summer Exhibition, the Open Gardens, the Bedford Park Walk, a children's musical and a photographic competition, as well as concerts, talks, meals and a few surprises. The full programme will be announced nearer the time.

The opening Green Days weekend on June 9th and 10th will have stalls, fairground attractions, live music, craft fair and children's fancy dress competition, with food and drink at the beer and refreshments tents and the barbecue.

Unicef AIDS campaign named as this year's Festival charity

This year's Festival will raise money for Unicef's 'United for Children Against AIDS' campaign and the Upper Room, which feeds the needy in west London. It will also benefit St Michael's repair and repainting project and the St Michael & All Angels Trust.

The Unicef AIDS campaign is also being supported by the ICC Cricket World Cup, which began this week (http://uniteforchildren.org/index.html ) . The filmmaker Carlo Nero, a parishioner at St Michael & All Angels, has made a film celebrating Unicef's 60th anniversary. He is the son of Vanessa Redgrave, a Unicef ambassador.

March 26, 2007