Sunday 18th May. Bees United were at the annual Fun Day. This year for the first time Bees United (BU), Lifeline and BIAS shared a stand, as part of our joint effort to demonstrate our unity and the fact that we all subscribe to the idea of “one Brentford”. Our area was completed by Natasha Judge and family selling delicious homemade cakes, which, along with the BIAS raffle, were the key fundraising elements of the stall.
David Hawes was the mainstay of the BU area, which was largely a display of the Lionel Road stadium with fact sheets and posters. Other BFC and BU board members, including Brian Burgess, David Merritt and Donald Kerr, joined him throughout the afternoon and it was heartening to see so much interest in the stadium project. The most asked questions were “where exactly is it going to be”, and “when is it going to happen?” which are a step on from “is it ever going to happen?” There was a fairly constant stream of people visiting the stall and several were sufficiently interested to pick up BU membership forms.
Thursday 22nd May. BU (Donald) attended first day of the two day “Playing for Success” national annual conference in Stratford on Avon, accompanying Jo Emmerson, manager of the GPLZ and Lee Doyle, Chief Executive of Brentford FC Community Sports Trust. This is the 10th year of Playing for Success, which is the fundamental educational service provided by the GPLZ and the other 162 equivalent centres around the UK, and funded by government. There were over 370 delegates at the conference, although chiefly still people who provide the service themselves rather than representative from the clubs in which they are located. Essentially, it is a scheme whereby underachieving 9-14 year olds can gain extra tuition in a sporting, out of school, environment.
The courses last 10 weeks and ensure that these children don’t fall behind their classmates. It uses the power and attraction of sport to help them improve their literacy, numeracy and IT skills, and for most helps them gain a little more self esteem and self confidence. The difference it makes to young lives is fantastic and it is going on at Griffin Park throughout the school year. Most of the centres only provide this basic service but Jo has used this as a basis to extend the services at the GPLZ well beyond the norm, helping with children excluded from schools and running summer courses too.
It is often the case that the sports clubs, and these are chiefly football clubs, house the service but don’t fully integrate it into the club itself, as we do at Griffin Park. This is due in no small part to Jo’s energy and inclusive approach and BFC also have her to thank for the grants made available to refurbish both Stripes and the Learning Zone, from which we all benefit. So, it was a real pleasure and a privilege to help Jo and Lee run a workshop demonstrating how we all work together at BFC, and to be attached to her team for the day. This is one area, along with the Community Sports Trust, in which Brentford is genuinely premier league and the envy of all other clubs. All supporters should be proud of the GPLZ and a visit to their website will provide further information about the good work they do.
Apart from those two more “formal” engagements, work continues with the analysis of the stadium research results and we fully expect to issue a summary on time at the end of this week. And discussions also continue with the club on marketing and fund-raising initiatives, of which more news should be forthcoming in the next bulletin.
Donald Kerr
Bees United board member