Love Southampton organises Friendship Festival for Hong Kongers…

In what was the first event that Love Southampton put on under its own steam since its relaunch in early 2022, we coordinated and delivered ‘(another) Friendship Festival’ to follow on from the successful first ‘Friendship Festival’ that Paul Woodman organised at Oasis academy, back in May of this year.

We wanted to deliver another event for the benefit of the Hong Kong refugees that have come into the City over the last few years to help them build community, meet friendly people outside of their immediate community, and to welcome them to the City on behalf of the Church community. 90 people turned up on the day, which we felt was fantastic and led to an exciting and energetic afternoon.

The Big Difference provided most of the meat and ‘meatless’ burgers and sausages for the event and we topped this up with lots of soft drinks, nibbles, condiments, relish, and cakes on the day.  The food was nearly gone by the end of the day, which was a good sign that people were enjoying the event!

We used the main auditorium at Portswood Church, the side and back ‘patio’ areas, and the back hall.  We laid out table football, table tennis, and giant Jenga’, and we put on background music.

Prof. Keith Brown gave a short opening talk to welcome all the Hong Kongers to the UK and to the church community.  He talked about the past time that he had spent in Hong Kong.  This was followed up by a magic show from Paul Woodman that was particularly popular with the children!

There was clearly a wide mix of attendees, from young families attending with their children, to young couples, to elderly people stopping by individually.  

We feel that this was a very successful event with a good turn out.  The atmosphere and energy in the room was strong and we believe that the community of the Hong Kongers was strengthened.  Special Thanks go out to John and Mary Ayrton for sourcing the venue and cooking and to The Big Difference for providing much of the food.