Saturday 14th of July saw us host our "40 years of making Waves" event at Chaplin's Bar in Boscombe. The Bournemouth group has been slowly expanding over the past few months and we were lucky enough to have 12 hard working volunteers on the day.
What an incredible day! The rain stayed away and a lovely friendly crowd packed out the garden. There were 10 accoustic acts playing out in the garden, including the Freeway Circle of Poets who performed a selection of environmentally focused poems.
Paul A. Bear was in attendance, performing a poetry set with Steve Biddle before going out on the streets to promote the event.
There were amazing vocal performances from Jemma Davies, Sophie Reed, Krista Green, Jack Chuter and Danny Cutler, who completed the acoustic garden session with a fusion of powerful vocals and snappy rhymes.
Our cake stand was nothing short of epic, with dozens of scones, vegan carrot cake, sponges, vegan chocolate cake, brownies and assorted other goodies. We estimate that the cake stand alone made over £250!
A number of local businesses and Fisherman's Friends donated prizes for our raffle which included: 2 tickets for the Purbeck Folk festival, a meal for 2 with wine at Fishy Fishy (Dermot O'leary's fish restaurant), a meal for 2 with wine at Coasters fish restaurant, surf lessons with Sorted Surf Shop, vouchers for Chez Fred (local fish and chip shop of the year). The raffle netted (pun intended) £120. I had a great deal of fun going on stage announcing the winners later that night.
The evening commenced with an incredible African drum performance by Senegalese master drummer Cheikh Diop and his Bourne drummers. They blew the roof off of Chaplin's bar and had hundreds of people singing along with african songs and rythms. Gav Sant from Dubheart did some unplanned freestyle trumpet with the drums which sent the place wild.
Next up was Perico with a soulful blend of folk rock underpinned with electric violin and trumpets and the night was fully under way.
Furry fiends Draw Me Ugly then played to a full capacity venue of dancing, smiley party people.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace volunteers had a production line going on at the door, taking money, stamping hands and getting fish signed. By 11pm people were queing down the street and we were having to turn people away.
We handed the door back over to Chaplin's just after 11pm so everyone could come downstairs and have a well earned dance to the mighty Dubheart who finished the night with their deep dub bass and vocals from MC Bashy.
When the dust had settled the next day, we counted £1200 and 264 fish signed for the CFP campaign. It was a fantastic day and night, very hard work for all involved but so much fun at the same time. I'm hugely proud of the effort that everyone put in to the day to make it such a success and we're so grateful to The Cellar Bar for providing the venue and Conrad for being the very definition of a sound man.
We will definitely have to do this again :)
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