World Record Broken: Stoke Hosts the Planet's Largest Cream Tea Party!
Plus Brilliant Bamboo secures Stoke brownfield site, unveiling of new-look Stoke Station announced, and Honey Box Live gets £30k to support young musicians
Good News 🎉
🙌 We’re World Record Holders! Here’s community spirit, then. Around 15,000 people in 194 venues drank tea and scoffed scones on 08/07 to break the world record for the largest cream tea party held across multiple venues to celebrate the centenary. Guinness World Records adjudicators attended five venues – the Victoria Hall, Hanley; DoubleTree by Hilton, Festival Park; Jubilee Hall, Stoke Town Hall; Stoke Minster; and NatWest Bank, Hanley - to formally verify the record. Tea and scones were enjoyed by 777 people across the five officially-verified venues.
🏃♂️🏊♂️🚴♂️ THE KNOT’S PERSON OF THE WEEK – Natalie Linh Bolderston 🏃♂️🏊♂️🚴♂️
Join Natalie for some writing workshops on 21/07
📕 Award-winning poet Natalie is a great talent who deserves the spotlight. On 21/07 from 1-7pm, the Vietnamese-Chinese-British writer is set to undertake a residency at Stoke Library, a place she says “helped make me a reader and a writer.” From 2-3pm, join her poetry of community workshop, while from 3pm-5.30pm, there’s a writer drop-in where Natalie will give feedback on your writing. At 6-7pm, the writer Lisa Blower will be dropping in to discuss the writing and publishing process. To close the session, Natalie will read from her own work. Contact Stoke Library to secure your spot for any of these great, and free, events.
🎋 Brilliant Bamboo Secures Brownfield Site. A disused patch of concrete on the edge of Sainsbury’s car park where the Minton factory once stood is the new home of Brilliant Bamboo, which has signed a 10-year lease on the one-acre plot. The aim is to use the self-styled ‘parklet’ to explore sustainability, creativity and the impact on the environment, including whether bamboo can improve air quality in an area which traditionally has experienced high levels of pollution. Other plans for the site include art, science, nature and physical activities for all ages, as well as developing planet-friendly projects that support native biodiversity.
Brilliant Bamboo founder Gemma Thomas at the brownfield site in Stoke
🚇 Stoke Station Set to Be Unveiled. Yep, we appreciate it’s been a teensy bit annoying with all the construction work going on… but we’ll soon get the chance to admire all the hard work, as there will be a grand opening on 11/08. The project, which aims to better connect the railway station to the city centre and Goods Yard, has been supported by £29 million from the government’s Transforming Cities Fund. PS: prior to the opening, Station Road will be closed in both directions, day and night, from Saturday 19/07 at 6am until 10/08 at 10pm.
🎸 More Funding for Young Musicians. Honey Box Live has secured almost £30,000 to invest in Amplifying Grassroots Talent across the Midlands from Arts Council England. Its successful funding bid will kick start some performances at King Street in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Blue Note Nightclub in Derby, 2Funky Music Complex in Leicester, and Wolverhampton Arts Centre. To complement the performances, a development day will also be hosted at each location, with workshops in live audio and stage production. For details of how to get involved as either an unsigned artist or trainee technician, get in touch via the online portal.
👩🦰 Uni of Staffs Psychologists Use Playmobil for Menopause. Health psychologists from University of Staffordshire experimented with a unique approach to support women going through the menopause at work. Dr Alison Owen, senior lecturer in health psychology, recruited menopausal and perimenopausal women to express how they were feeling through Playmobil, which helped encourage open conversations about women’s experiences of the menopause at work. The study was published in the journal Menopause .
🥨 Good Vibes Only: A word from Helen, writer at The Knot
It was inspiring to meet Byline Festival (and Byline Times magazine) founders Peter Jukes and Stephen Colegrave last week at LUNAR the night before the event opened its doors at Keele Uni (stepping into the restaurant’s secret bar, which is adorned with portraits of the founding members of The Lunar Society was pretty cool too). The event was set up to promote independent journalism and free speech and challenge, as they put it, ‘the hypernormalisation of fake news’, and they do an excellent job of challenging this worrying trend by reporting on important issues like identity, empire and the culture war and the climate emergency. One of the speakers, Lord Victor Adebowale, a crossbench peer and chair of the NHS Confederation, also popped into say a few words ahead of his talk, ‘how to make politics human again’, including an anecdote about how he’d walked from Westminster with Kwasi Karteng just after he’d been sacked as chancellor and was surprised to see him casually stroll onto the tube after he’d just wrecked the economy.
It was a big weekend event-wise for Stoke, as we also hosted the Festival of Brilliant at Biddulph Old Hall, which was attended by some of the biggest names in children’s literature (my kids were stoked to meet award-winning writer Patrice Lawrence, who praised their pictures, and they loved brainstorming story ideas with other writers).
The word is that Byline Festival is set to host its event here again next year, and we can’t wait to welcome them back to Keele again. Our dream line-up? Protest singer Billy Bragg and rockers Rage Against The Machine… well, we can dream.
Really Good News 🎉 Your favourite news from the last week
⚽️ Keep the Kids Entertained This Summer: More than 800 free activities!
📸 How We Used to Live: There’s a retro photo exhibition at Spode right now…
🏃♀️ Potters Arf Discount With Mara: Enjoy a registration discount until 31/07
The Knot Pod 🎤 ⬇️ Catch James chatting with some of our amazing innovators
🥨 The Red Haired Stokie: Our ace local blogger, photographer & Knot contributor
🗣️ Kirsty Hulse: Get inspired, it’s the founder of leading event Confidence Live
🏃♂️ George Bettany: Jog to this chat with the founder of MARA Run Club
📽️ Daniel Moore: So much creativity going on in Stone at top agency Dissident
🎶: Ash and Ryan: Listen to two of Stoke’s biggest names in music and fashion
🕯️Beth Warren: Founder of sustainable candle brand The Wandering Bee
Weekly Weather (Stoke-on-Trent):
Mon ⛅️ 24° (10°) Tue 🌧️ 19° (12°) Wed 🌧️ 23° (15°) Thu ⛅️ 24° (14°) Fri 🌧️ 23° (13°)
Sat ⛅️ 24° (15°) Sun 🌧️ 24° (15°).
Sunrise 14/07 ☀️04:59 Sunset 14/07 🌅 21:28
So much brilliant positive news about, thanks so much for highlighting, keep up the good work team Knot.
Really enjoyed this article as did Edith Kidwell