Tag: Visit Banbury

Banbury #OX16 – it is Your Town

Earlier in the year we noticed some posts on twitter about a proposed National Town Day to be held on Sunday 23rd September.

The tweets were by @YourTown https://twitter.com/yourtown which is a CIC (or Community Interest Company, a type of social business).

You may know that Visit Banbury is going through the process of becoming a formalised social business so we were keen to understand more about what they were looking to do.

Following some social media conversations with the founder Mark White it was agreed that as part of Your Town’s tour of 50 towns in 60 days, they would come to Banbury to meet up with me.

So during one of the coldest days of the year at the end of February (it was -6 !) we had a meeting in Pinto Lounge then went to set up by The Fine Lady Statue in front of Banbury Cross to record a short video about Banbury #OX16.

Then, as Your Town’s main concepts are built around running and wellbeing as well as celebrating our towns, they went off to the other partner in Banbury énergie fitness to do a 5km run around the town (very brave of them!).

Then over the last couple of months, working together with Mark, Ben Trickett manager of énergie fitness and Tim from Visit Banbury have agreed to try to make something special happen in Banbury on Sunday 23rd September, the date of the first National Town Day.

National Town Day 23.09.18 (Nationwide)

In short there are two elements of the proposed idea:

  1. A celebration of the Town Centre – hopefully shops & cafés who don’t normally open deciding to open and showcase their unique, independent offerings plus a range of exciting sport, art and retail focused activities – still all to be worked out, resourced and funded (where necessary) – but with the express intention of encouraging people to come into Banbury Town Centre who maybe have not ventured in before or not for a good while;
  2. A “Get Together” to start the day – this is a well established social 5km run, walk or cycle for people to take part in, which we hope if all comes together as we would like, it will start and finish outside The Wild Lime / HMV in Banbury. A unique element of this is that the event acts as a crowd funding activity for a local good cause or project. We hope, subject to the decision at the end of July, that the first one will be in aid of Banbury & District Community Bus Project but this may change.

In order to try to get the message out to a wider group of people associated with Banbury, Visit Banbury agreed to sponsor the Summer drinks for the latest Business Buzz town centre based networking event on Wednesday 25th July and the weather was very different to that freezing February day!

In glorious Summer sunshine we networked and chatted and the mocktails provided by The Wild Lime were deeeelicious and went down a treat on such a steaming hot day:

Importantly, we made the announcement about the partnership between Your Town, énergie fitness and Visit Banbury with an introduction video from Mark White:

It was effectively a soft launch as we still have much to do to make it happen but we have some positive feedback from Banbury BID, Your Letterbox plus others and so we really hope we can make it happen.

What we need to know from you:

  1. do you want to celebrate our lovely town?
  2. what could we all do to make that happen?
  3. what would you like to see happen on that day?
  4. could you help us make it a reality by getting involved to offer an activity, a special offer in your shop, to provide some sponsorship / funding, or to help recruit others to take part in the Get Together or simply to #VisitBanbury on the 23rd September?

This project is a work in progress – but we are putting lots in place, as you can see from the landing page Your Town is building for Banbury, so help us fill the gaps and celebrate everything positive about Banbury on Sunday 23rd September.

#OX16 https://www.yourtown.community/banbury-ox16/

Thanks to Katrina, Lisa and James for a fab launch meeting and to everyone who supported the event on Wednesday and has expressed interest so far.

Want to know more or to get in touch?

Mark White    mark@yourtownuk.co.uk

Ben Trickett   Ben.Trickett@energiefitness.com

Tim Tarby-Donald   VisitBanbury@aol.com

 

 

 

 

 

Another Positive Perspective 

One of the great things about being involved in promoting Banbury is that you get to know lots of other people who share our perspective.

They also have the view that Banbury has lots to offer and a latent potential ready to be realised, if only people were to accentuate the positives rather than to dwell on the areas to improve (which town doesn’t have those).
One of those people is US expat Deborah Menikoff Simmons who blogs about all sorts of wonderful things Banbury-based. 
Here is Deb’s great blog page – give it a good read because it is a good read!

Blogging about Banbury 
Blog & biog photo credits: Deborah Menikoff Simmons / Neil Simmons

Positively Brilliant!

As you may know, one of the underlying concepts for the Visit Banbury initiative is positivity and I just read this great article on LinkedIn by Keeran Gunnoo which really shows what important forces optimism and positivity truly are.


I for one will be heeding much of the advice to boost my positivity levels. Tim

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/optimism-artform-5-ways-unleash-your-positivity-keeran-gunnoo?trk=prof-post&trk=v-feed 

Eating together makes you happier


Taking the time to sit down together over a meal helps create social networks that in turn have profound effects on our physical and mental health, our happiness and wellbeing, and even our sense of purpose in life.
http://bit.ly/1WraUN1

There is a growing number of Big Lunches taking place across Banbury and they are so easy to organise – go for it ! See the Facebook page Banbury Big Lunchers.

For more on organising a Big Lunch, see The Big Lunch info

The above blog was published on http://www.thebiglunchers.com

Love Is….Banbury – we have a winner!

So, after a number of entries to our Saint Valentine’s competition in conjunction with The Italian Larder, Visit Banbury can now confirm the winner of the delicious Tiramisu Panettone & Prosecco.

 The fabulous prize donated by The Italian Larder.
The winner chosen by random on Saturday morning was Guillaume Grall.

  Here is Guillaume with his prize and his wife Dawn & son Thomas.

 Guillaume’s main reason he loves Banbury.

Thanks for taking part everyone and keep a look out for future competitions with local independent businesses.

#Visitbanbury

Love is…… Banbury

Do you remember those 70s cartoons of the little man & woman with the message “Love is…..”?

www.loveiscartoon.com

To celebrate the anniversary of the Visit Banbury “Be Positive About Banbury” video which we gifted to Banbury on St. Valentine’s Day last year and to give someone a special treat, we have a little competition for all of our Twitter followers & Facebook likers. And we have taken inspiration from those famous cartoons.

Our friends at The Italian Larder www.theitalianlarder.co.uk


also have something to celebrate as this is their first St. Valentine’s Day in their new location on Wildmere Industrial Estate (close to Banbury Gateway Shopping Centre) and so they have very kindly donated a Tiramisu panettone & a bottle of Prosecco for us to give as a prize to one lucky follower or liker of the Visit Banbury Twitter feed or Facebook page.  

How to Enter
All you have to do is ensure you are following http://www.twitter.com/VisitBanbury or have liked http://www.facebook.com/VisitBanbury and send us a tweet or a Facebook message with the hashtag #LoveIsBanbury and tell us what is the ONE thing you most love about Banbury.


You can also find The Italian Larder on Twitter & Facebook

http://www.twitter.com/Italianlarder

https://www.facebook.com/theitalianlarder/

Ts&Cs

Closing date is Midnight on Friday 12th February 2016.

All entries received with #LoveIsBanbury, an item which you love about Banbury and which are verifiably from a follower or liker of the Visit Banbury social media channels mentioned will be entered into the competition and one entry will be drawn at random.

The winner will be advised on Saturday 13th February.

Prizes will NOT be sent by post / courier so please ensure you could collect them from the Visit Banbury team in Banbury.

The winner agrees to take part in promotional photography & authorises Visit Banbury to retain ownership of the photos taken and to use them in Visit Banbury social media / internet or print media publicity.

Neither Twitter or Facebook are involved in this competition run by Visit Banbury in conjunction with The Italian Larder.

The decision of Visit Banbury is final and Visit Banbury reserve the right to withdraw the competition if circumstances dictate.

E&OE

 

Get involved with Visit Banbury

Morning all – and happy February to everyone.

February is a special month to Visit Banbury as effectively it is the anniversary month of Visit Banbury’s public launch in 2015.

This time last year a small group of us had put together the “Be Positive about Banbury” video

Be Positve About Banbury

and we were busy preparing for our first public event the “Banbury Positivity Summit”.
Since then, lots of things have gone on, we have built a presence on various social media platforms, we’ve had a number of events, most significantly for us the “Create a Banbury Dish” competition won by Phil Seal and the fabulous night market in September, working with Banbury Presents.

  

We have also designed, created and sold a range of merchandise promoting Banbury which has ended up being sent right across the globe.
Some of you may know but we have been taking a little breather over the winter period but now we are ready to start promoting and supporting the positive things about Banbury and organising some positive things of our own!

There are about 15 people involved in Visit Banbury but some of the original team either have decided to step down due to a very busy 2015 or have increased commitments in 2016 and so we need more people to help us be “the glue that sticks together all the good stuff in Banbury”.

We will soon be organising the first team meeting of the year and if you would like to be involved we would love you to join us!

So, if you’re interested in being part of the group, please contact us on VisitBanbury@AOL.com or via Facebook or Twitter.

Guest Blog on Visit Banbury 

Are you a Banbury based community group or charity and want to guest blog on Visit Banbury?#VisitBanbury

https://visitbanbury.wordpress.com/

We are seeing great results from blog posts this week with great reach each time on FB plus good response rates looking at the blog stats.

You write the blog – we’ll review it and reserve the right to tweak it to ensure it complies with Visit Banbury values and then we’ll post it on the blog, our FB page and Twitter feeds.

All free of charge to help local charity & community groups as we want to continue doing good in Banbury.


Interested?

Email VisitBanbury@aol.com

Geek Con Fast Track Pass Competition

Hi all !

One week to go until Geek Con 2016 happens in Banbury!

https://www.facebook.com/events/212690559064200/

Visit Banbury are really excited to be able to offer 2 Fast Track passes in a fun competition so that two lucky people can keep ahead of the crowds and not miss a moment of Geek Heaven!

Banbury presents

This is what the organisers of Geek Con, Banbury Presents, say about the Fast Track Passes:

FAST TRACK PASSES!

GEEK CON: Banbury’s 1st Comic Con and is coming to Banbury Town Centre for January 2016 and it’s so much more than the usual comic con.

With so much on at Geek con, you wouldn’t want to miss a minute! So why not treat yourself to our extra special service and get yourself a FAST TRACK PASS. A PASS gets you to the front of the queue in a flash and saves you time so you can get to as much of GEEK CON as you can squeeze into one day.

Yeah, we absolutely LOVE our STAR WARS, but we have so much more in store for you this January at Geek Con.

Geek Con brings together a classic con full of Q&A, signings, cosplay, gaming, showings and screenings, early releases and special appearances together with added features like body art demo, dance performance, circus and contortion, steam punk, modelling, art exhibition, illustration, music, fantasy battles, martial arts and stunt displays, behind the scenes workshops and much more.

Link to FAQ:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=454404438080573&id=368250960029255

What do you need to do to win ?

Simple really – we know how much you all love Cosplay, so we are going to give one Fast Track Pass to what our three judges decide are the best home made costume and the best pro / shop bought outfit.

How you can win?  Meet our three judges at 8.45am on Saturday 30th January outside the entrance to Castle Quay by HMV and Debenhams and we will decide the two best cosplay costumes from the people who are there at 8.45am.

At 9am we will give you a code and go with you to the Geek Con desk so that you can pick up your wristbands which will allow you to have access as a Fast Track Pass holder.

Our judges’ decision will be final.

See you there !

Check out https://www.facebook.com/BYHPServices/ for info about a Wii Mario Kart Tournament for 16-25 year olds on the evening of Geek Con

Visit Banbury on social media:

http://www.twitter.com/visitbanbury

http://www.facebook.com/VisitBanbury/

http://www.instagram.com/visitbanbury/

 

 

 

VisitBanburyDigital

 

Across the Miles

When former Town Mayor and fellow weightloss challenger Cllr John Donaldson mentioned to me that he regularly visits the Mayor of Hennef to celebrate carnival with him and his family and the next time would be at the start of February, I was delighted on behalf of Visit Banbury to offer a goody bag of promotional merchandise to send to our German Twin Town.

So, a couple of china mugs, fridge magnets, stylus pens, a tea towel and a couple of packets of Brown’s Banbury Cakes from Banbury Museum all safely stored in a Visit Banbury shopping bag, will be winging their way with Cllr Donaldson to promote our lovely town and to encourage our German cousins to #VisitBanbury.

Here is Cllr Donaldson’s lovely wife, Paula, collecting the goody bag at yesterday’s Volunteering Fair. Let’s just hope the Banbury Cakes survive the journey with John being such a fan of cake and being pretty hungry at the moment……

goody bag for Hennef