TELLY IS DEAD LONG LIVE STREET PARTIES
by Melissa Mean
Bristol has been declared the Street Party capital of the UK- 25 in one neighbourhood in one summer alone. If you are inspired to do your own, then this ace new website created by Streets Alive!tells you how to do it- everything from sourcing bunting (yes a whole section just on bunting) to how to close your road.
I'm thinking of hosting a street party on my estate in Waterloo. Neighbourliness has rocketed since Southwark Council began renovating it last September. We've all had plenty to moan about (builder's boots through ceilings) and compare notes (optimum colour for the new front doors). Nothing like a good moan to bring people together, and maybe a street party is the thing to turn it into something a bit more positive.
The stakes have been raised by Southwark deciding that part of the effort to restore the estate to its 1905 glory includes removing all telly aerials from the building- satellite and terrestrial. The estate is now a telly free zone. A radical social experiment indeed- Robert Putman after all blamed the rise of telly for the collapse of social capital in western society. So the revolution might have started in Bristol, but I am excitedly anticipating social capital activity to rapidly go off the radar in Waterloo'