About Highbury Roundhouse
Friends of Highbury Roundhouse
The Friends of the Highbury Roundhouse is a voluntary group whose main goal is to promote and to raise money for the community centre. The Friends had a very active and prosperous year in 2007 and early 2008 thanks to the tireless work of Bronwen Taylor and her team of supporters.
Three separate events raised just under £3,000 for the Roundhouse. In June 2008 we held a lecture on an international effort to help the Bushmen of Botswana return to their homeland in the Kalahari game reserve.
The Friends also organised a Scottish Ceilidh and two medical lectures. One of the lectures was about the "Great Stink" which lead to the construction of the first sewers in London and the second was about the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology.
Bronwen and her helpers also organised a barn dance in the autumn of 2007 which took place outdoors and featured live music.
The three lectures were jointly organised with other charities. The two medical lectures were given with the help of the Whittington Hospital in aid of a new intensive care unit for neo-nates, and the Bushmen lecture was jointly organised with charity called Survival.
Survival provides legal and other assistance to indigenous people around the world who are at risk of being removed from their homelands.
By working with other charities, the Roundhouse accomplishes several objectives. We can raise money both for ourselves and for the other charities at a single, well-organised event that caters both to our local community, and to the wider London community.
We also bring in the expertise of professionals associated with outside charities, who can share their experiences and knowledge with us. We were very grateful to Gordon Bennett, a London Barrister, for explaining how Survival International was able to help the Bushmen return to their homeland.
Mr. Bennett challenged the Botswana government on behalf of the Bushmen, and won the case. It was the first legal action of its kind ever to take place.
Another example of how an alliance can benefit the Roundhouse was an offer by the American School in London to organise two "clean-up" days at the Community Centre. The school dispatched volunteers to the Roundhouse on two occasions to both fix up the gardens and to renovate the floor space in the Youth Club.
They even donated the paint! Altogether it was a very big contribution to the upkeep of the centre.
Anyone is welcome to become a Friend of the Highbury Roundhouse.
For more information:
- Telephone: 020 7354 0397
- email: ellingtonbill@aol.com