APAG logo


Arno's Park Action Group
  • Links
  • Gallery
  • Home

About Us


Our Committe

Our Constitution

Minutes

Contact Us

Archived News

Archived Events

History of the Park

Forum



Send e-mail to
the Webmaster
with questions or comments about this web site.








Newsletter 1

ARNO'S PARK ACTION GROUP FUN DAY 2007



The Fun Day was again a huge success.

The Park saw large numbers of people enjoying the many activities on offer which were bigger than those on offer last year.

Many activity areas seemed to grow as people like the Scout Group took on Stockwood Sharks for ‘tug o war’ and the stocks seemed a huge success considering they were last minute. The tattoos, nail art and face painting area, which again was last minute, had continual queues. Many people offered to help on the day and became quite proficient in some of the skills!

We also had an interview on Bristol Community Radio Thursday evening with Ken Taylor and Star Radio all day Sunday featuring an interview with myself.

At the last minute we wondered if the cake stall would have enough cakes and although it could have had more it was a success.

The day generally went well and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves which is mainly thanks to the people who helped to organise and volunteer on the day. However, with more volunteers we could have given others more time off and probably brought in more money, especially from raffle ticket sales.

It would be good to see more events within the park, perhaps some smaller activities such as music concerts etc as a Fun Day such as this takes months of organising.

-Emma Channon Vice Chair



All money raised will go directly to helping APAG reach your goals!




Becky Thoburn (Chair APAG) will be meeting with Richard Smith from the Arno's Vale Cemetery Trust to discuss the agreed shared cemetery/park gates. This is really great news as it will allow park and cemetery users greater freedom to walk and explore both sites more easily.

Did you know that the cemetery and the park are part of the same old Arno's Estate? The old estate house still stands and is now part of the Arno's Manor Hotel. There is only one other estate house and original parkland still together in Bristol, this is at Blaise. So we're pretty special aren’t we?




GET IN!

APAG worked with BCC to bring you the thrills and spills of a 5-aside pitch!
Let them know the truth!

This summer Bristol City Council invites you to have your say on its Parks and Green Space Strategy. This is a 20-year investment program to improve the city’s green spaces all across the city. So get your view heard.

City Wildlife

The bats have been swooping in the park this summer and the owls were heard earlier in the year. If you'd like to help with kids wildlife events please contact APAG.




New shared green space
for city dwellers!
Fantastic Family Fun !


Cheers to these guys!

Many Thanks to John, John and Richard at Bristol City Council Parks Department for their continued support and encouragement!

Many thanks Barry who has worked really hard on our play bid for under 12's

APAG management committee are Becky Thoburn (Chair) Emma Channon (Vice Chair), Jackie Freeman (Treasurer), and Steve Pearce (Secretary).

New ideas always welcome.

Fancy running a 'Build a den' compettion in the park? Please contact APAG!

BIG THANKS to active dog walkers who not only clean up after their dogs but clear up rubbish on a daily basis!



The Green Arno's
News from APAG, the hands on park group
Issue 1 Summer 2007


Arno's Park Action Group
Ooh for a 'cuppa' tea! Interested in running a mobile café at the park on weekends? Please get in touch to have a chat and share ideas. Share your views: email APAG or leave a message with the parks dept. 0117 922 3719 Better still come along...

next meeting 13th December 2007 Arno’s Manor Hotel 7:30-9:30
AGM


















Arno's Park News Archive



'Pumpkin Competition' - All welcome. To enter bring a carved pumpkin at 6pm Friday 29th October in Arnos Court Park. There will be prizes for best kids and best adult pumpkin. Entry 20p per pumpkin.





Community Advent Calender

Community Advent Calender

Community groups were invited to make posters to be displayed in December in Sandy Park Road shops to promote local interest. Residents and people working locally alike are invited to visit Sandy Park Road shops and seek out the new posters each day!

Carol singing






2009

APAG's 2nd Bulb planting Bonanza went very well. Woodland Anemone, Crocus and Daffodil were donated to us by Gary Brentnall at Bristol City Council. Many thanks Gary! We have planted around the clump of trees, the woodland border and a little by the old stone, as well as some under the freestanding individual trees. So keep your eyes peeled in springtime! Thanks also to everyone who turned up, ate cake and used tools!



Bulb planting Bulb planting Bulb planting Bulb planting





Sunday 27th September 2009

A small selection of photos from the wonderfully successful APAG Dog Show - see them HERE.

Our community's first dog show proved to be a fantastic success, with people and their dogs attending in big numbers. The show ring was big and was still full to bursting in many of the classes. We saw everything from Child Handling to a dog looking just like Harry Potter. Comments from the start were "what a fantastically organised event" to "when are we doing it next year?"

The purpose of the event was to raise funds for additional dog poo bins, which we achieved. The bin by the main entrance will be replaced with a multi use bin and the dog poo bin moved to further along the path.

These events cannot take place without willing volunteers to organise and help on the day, so a big thank you to everyone who helped. Next year’s Dog Show is already booked – Sunday 19th September 2010, so if you would like to help, however small please contact us as soon as possible.

We would also like to thank the local businesses who sponsored this event as without their kind donations the profit would have been considerably less:

Highcroft Veterinary Practice, Renatic Garage, Park News, Casanova Hair Salon, Chathams Dry Cleaners, Diamond Pet Store

Just over 1,000 photos were taken, so there should be something for everyone who took part – not only prizes, certificates and rosettes but memories captured through photos.

There is a much larger selection of high quality photos one the photographer's site HERE. Steve says:

"Here you will find photo albums for the 2009 APAG Dog Show!
There are over a thousand pictures from the show so I've divided them into 10 albums to make viewing a little easier. You might want to look at a couple of albums now and come back later to view some more...
The original image files are very large, so to save space on my server I've had to reduce the quality of what's here. What you do see here will probably be ok if you print them up at 7" x 5" (some might get away with 10" x 8").
If you see something that you'ld like a better quality picture of, drop us a line saying which picture you want (each picture has a unique number) and I'll email the large file to you.
I can get large prints done at reasonable cost. For "standard" sizes why not use your normal print supplier?

Please do go and take a look.




Dog Show

June 19th

On Friday evening we brought music to the park in the form of Holymead Junior School Choir and Recorders, The Salvation Army Youthband and several performers from Brislington Enterprise College.

The sun came out just in time for the school choir and queues at the barbeque never stopped.

The music from all groups was great and provided a good chance for the community to see the talents of local schools. It included everything from Ave Maria, Brass Band to Indie Band and went on for 3 hours.

Everyone finally left the park by 10.30 pm after spending an enjoyable summer's evening listening to good music. Comments following ranged from

'what fantastic music and singing' to
'we will be using the park more often to have family activities'

Our thanks must go to the following, without whom the evening would not have been possible:

• Holymead Junior School Choir, Recorders and Mark Hoskins, Music Teacher for some fantastic singing and recorder music
• Anthony Selfe and the Salvation Army Youthband
• Richard Sykes, Teacher from Brislington Enterprise College for arranging for students to play at the event
• And the young people themselves, many of whom have never performed in the community, especially in a public park

We should also thank those who spent time organising, setting up and putting away as the 'behind the scenes' work is just as important.

There are a few photographs here.

summer 2009 programme summer 2009 feedback





Hi everybody!

We've decided to hold the Easter Egg Hunt again this year and it will be on Easter Monday (13th April) from 10am to 12pm.

I'm looking for lots of helpers for the following tasks:

1) Would anybody be happy to design a basic poster (A4) and flier (A5)? I'll give you all the content so you just need to create it! We already have a volunteer for printing.
2) Circulating fliers - we distribute fliers from w/c 23rd March around local streets, school book bags; and posters at local venues such as the libraries, toddler groups, churches, bocabar, and many more! Anybody who can help please let me know.
3) On the day, we need to get there by about 9am to set up our tent and hide all the tokens around the park - before the children begin to arrive at 10am. I'm looking for about 6 people to hide the tokens - we want to make it a bit of a challenge to find them!!
4) We need 2 or 3 people to help man the tent, tokens, eggs, donations, etc, etc.
5) At 12:00 hopefully all the tokens have been found, all the eggs have been claimed and we can go and have a well earned drink!

It was really good fun last year and lots of people came along - I think we estimated around 400 which was brilliant! I am working on getting some donations from local businesses to enable us to purchase the Easter Eggs, so again, if you would like to help out with this then please let me know. Marks & Spencer have just donated an absolutely massive chocolate bunny!
Thank you in advance for any help you can give. Even if you can just circulate fliers on your street, it will make a really big difference.

And, if you can't help, please help spread the word to get as many people along as we can!

Sarah
Email HERE


Brislington's Reflex Camera Club are asking for photographs! The subjects are:
Things I like in Brislington
Things I would like to improve
Send your images as jpegs to Rosie by email by 30th April. In the body of the email please give some explanation of why you've chosen these images

The club aims to show these images at the camera club meeting of May7th. Depending on the results they may be useful to us as a community forum in other ways such as funding bids or highlighting issues. But let's see how it goes. Initially it would be of interest just to see what comes out of this as a visual exercise.





February 2009


The bat/bird boxes are now up (all except the owls as these require something a bit different and we ran out of children's patience!, there is also 1 more bat box to go up as it fell apart so needs fixing (easy)). They're on the trees at the far end of the wall as you turn left from the Kings Road entrance and follow the wall and then as you turn the corner and go up the tarmac path there are some on the right. We tried to site them so that they faced the right way and were off the path a bit but not buried deep into the woods so that they can be seen fairly easily. They all needed a ladder to put up so hopefully the casual vandals will be put off. Hopefully they'll be quiet enough. We had a few positive comments from people and I mentioned APAG. Mike has agreed to resite any in the wrong place in October/November so let him know by then!


November 2008


Hopefully you've all seen the newly resurfaced path up to Somerset/Withleigh Road – much safer and easier now there are no pot holes! Also work has continued in the Cemetery to clear the path to the park and make ready for the fence/gate. There are also woodland steps down the slippery bank (just as you emerge from wooded area/enter the park at the top of the hill) – we will investigate whether these will be extended.



August 2008

The council should have risk assessed the park, including the bike track the kids have been making (down by the concrete 'pond') – they are looking to see if it's feasible/desirable to keep the area as the kids have done it: any comments are welcome especially any views as to whether we want it fenced off or not. I think the councils view is to let them keep the ramps they’ve created there to contain it (it makes it easier to mow and is more easy to identify) but ensure any other ramps done are filled back in (ie the ones that have appeared on the main slope which are hazardous and make it difficult to mow). Any comments to me or via the website please.

New benches and bins should be appearing soon (!)

Cemetery Trust are considering our request re taking over the steep wooded area behind the natural pond and the new fence will be erected soon. Work will be starting to clear the way to erect it as well as the gate between the park and cemetery. Work on the path leading up from the park to the War Cross will also start in the autumn.

The main path up to Somerset/Withleigh Road is set to be repaired this year.

Older News

Bulbs and goal-posts!

Newsletter 2007



© APAG 2006 - 2011

APAG Sitemap