It has been a much quieter time on the community front in August with the holiday season in full swing. However, we continued to represent Brentford at local events and took every opportunity presented to engage the local community in discussions about the plans for the new stadium, as well as publicising the great family offers being made by BFC to attract more people to the home games.
One of the most enjoyable events of the summer was the Big Brentford Picnic held on 6 August in St Paul’s Park, just around the corner from Griffin Park. This was organised by Luke Kirton among others and he insisted I joined him in his rather grand stall for the day. The whole idea of the event was for local people to take a picnic to the park and enjoy a non-commercial family day out, and it made for an extremely laid back atmosphere. Our stall was supplemented by a table-top table football game loaned by Paul Steadman, one of my fellow BU board members, and it was amongst the most popular attractions of the day, guaranteeing a constant stream of children and their parents to our display of the new stadium plans. As you might imagine, given the location of the event, the questions raised were as much about the plans for Griffin Park once BFC moved out, as about those for Lionel Road. Consistent with all the other local fairs we have attended, the majority of people to whom we talked were very favourable and all were grateful for us being around to answer questions and to discuss the club and its prospects. On the more formal side of representing the stadium plans, Luke had asked the Mayor of Hounslow to open the event, and we took the opportunity to take her through the details and answer any queries she had regarding the scheme.
Many families that we met at the Picnic talked about the rising cost of taking the family to football and they were all very pleasantly surprised to hear about our £20 family ticket offer. It is clearly a big help to families and I’d like to encourage all Brentford fans to broadcast this offer to all their neighbours and friends to whom they might think it appropriate. It is difficult for the club to find money to promote offers such as this through paid-for channels such as press or radio advertising and any help to spread the work beyond the official sites and programme is hugely appreciated.
The other fair we attended was the Kew Fayre which coincided with both the home game against Dagenham & Redbridge and one of the wettest Saturdays of the already wet summer. The attendance was down on last year apparently, but we still attracted a good number of local residents to the stall. In contrast with the questions asked at the Picnic, the Kew residents were much more concerned about crowds at the new stadium and, in particular, getting people in and out of the stadium, and keeping the traffic moving on match days.
Much to our dismay, we did not manage to attend the Brentford Festival at Boston Manor Park. This was due to lack of people to manage the stall and was disappointing given that it is our local fair. However, looking back on the whole summer, I feel we have done a fairly good job of taking the club to the local community and giving them a chance to see us and talk to us about all aspects of BFC. We have now folded up our gazebo, our table (thanks again to Stedders for that), and our displays, until next summer.
I attended both of the stadium planning liaison meetings with local stakeholders over the last six weeks. They focused on the key issues of sustainability and transport, the latter issue clearly at the heart of concerns in the Kew area. Barratt invited to each meeting their partners who specialise in these issues and their presentations were followed by very lively debate. The attendees on both occasions included representatives of the local council, local resident associations, Bees United, BIAS (Phil Marchant) and Barratt’s. Both presentations and all others presented to this group are now to be found at the new website devoted to the stadium project – www.brentfordcommunitystadium.com – along with other information on the plans and the process adopted towards the submission of the planning application.
One of the innovations of the new season was the BU boardroom draw and part of the reason for its introduction was to help us get to know more of our own internal community. From the response of those who have won and joined our representatives in the boardroom it seems to have been a success. We are fairly limited in our ability to reward BU membership but any suggestions along these lines would be gratefully received.
The other community to which we belong is, of course, Supporters Direct, and they recently sent round a reminder of their annual conference that we will attend next month. In their bulletin they drew our attention to the statement by the Minister of Sport, Andy Burnham, about the ownership of football clubs in the UK and as few people see the SD Bulletin, I thought I should pass it on. He said he was not flinching from his view that supporter ownership is the ideal model for football clubs, most true to their character as sporting homes of belonging, rather than global brands to be bought for profit. At one of the fairs we attended, a group of young lads in Chelsea strips approached me and challenged me with “Why would anyone support Brentford?” and, while it may seem a bit optimistic to expect “because it’s my local club” to have any affect on their views, in the context of everything else that is going on in football, that is why I was standing there in the first place. If there is a community event that you feel BU should be attending, or other things you feel we should be doing, just let me know.
Donald Kerr (donald.kerr@beesunited.org.uk)