Lockdown Heroes!

During the lockdown years, the amazing people at The Foresters Friendly Society have continued to support Play In A Week. We would like to say a very special thank you to them, and in particular to Tony Pearson for his unstinting support. For many years he volunteered and built amazing scenery and props, and he continues to champion the cause.

We have already mentioned previous donations, but since then The Foresters have been kind enough to send us even more money to help with 2022 production costs.

In the Spring they sent us a whacking £500. Then a lovely calendar arrived at Christmas with a very special July 2022 page as you can see in these pictures!

That was all fantastic, and then another £325 donation arrived just a couple of weeks ago. Wow!

MASSIVE THANKS to all the members of this organisation who are doing so much to support us.

Lockdown fundraising

During the pandemic and the associated lockdowns we may have been forced to postponed the production, but we still managed to do some limited fundraising.

We were chosen by two branches of Waitrose to be part of their monthly “Community Matters” schemes. Due to the restrictions they were no longer collecting the green tokens but instead decided to split the £1000 equally between the three causes in each branch. So we send big “Thank you’s” to both the Epsom and Dorking branches who each donated £333 to Play In A Week.

Play In A Week has also received two very generous donations from the Foresters Friendly Society which, when combined with the Waitrose donations, totals over £1600!

2020 Waitrose West Byfleet

Once again we must say a huge ‘thank you’ to Waitrose in West Byfleet and their “Community Matters” (green tokens) scheme and to everyone who has collected the tokens which we dropped into the PIAW section of the collection box.

After they counted the green tokens in the collection bin we received a fantastic £240 from them!

2019 The Grange Has Got Talent

Helen was delighted to be invited to speak about Play In A Week at The Grange in Bookham’s AGM event in October.  Many of our participants were in the audience, as well as friends, families and supporters of The Grange.

After a short talk, clips which were shown of this years show DVD were very well received.  We were absolutely thrilled that a surprise presentation was then made, and a cheque given to us for £400 which was raised at The Grange Has Got Talent show in the summer.

Massive thanks to all those those were involved with the talent show and raising this money to help fund Play In A Week 2020!

2019 Waitrose Hersham

Waitrose in Hersham were kind enough to include us in their “Community Matters” scheme again in the month of June.

After they counted the green tokens in the collection bin we received a fantastic £280 from them!

As well as a huge ‘thank you’ to  Waitrose and their “Community Matters” scheme, thanks must also go to everyone who has collected the green tokens which we dropped into the PIAW section of the collection box in store. Also, thanks go to the members of the general public who have visited Waitrose in Hersham and have put their tokens into the PIAW collection box.

2019 Something For Everyone Quiz Night

Our 2019 Quiz night was a great success.  Huge thanks to all those who braved a very dark and stormy night to come along, sit under the bright lights of the stage and support Play In A Week.  Particular thanks to those to helped out on the bar, serving food, co-comparing and scoring, and to Justin who arrived super early to let us in and set up all the tech, and then stayed to the bitter end of the clearing up!

We had lots of laughs and fun answering an ecclectic mix of questions, including sensory challenges and even a couple of questions asked using Makaton signing.  Lots of people went home with prizes of one sort or another and everyone seemed to enjoy the hearty supper.

We are delighted to say that after costs we raised just over £600 which will go towards this summer’s production costs.

Thank you everyone!

Visiting Aspire’s End Of Term show

Two of our Producers went to see the Aspire Theatre Company in action at their End Of Term show and to explain about Play In A Week to their cast and supporters.

The amazingly talented children treated us to individually performed extracts from Shakspeare’s “Scottish play”. After the intermission all the cast performed Romeo and Juliet in its entirety at a standard which would not have been out of place on a London stage.

Once again we would like to thank Jeanette and her team for their generosity in supporting Play In A Week.

Aspire Theatre Company support PIAW

We are delighted to announce that the Aspire Theatre Company have decided to support Play In A Week as their chosen charity.

Their Director, Jeanette Lawrence, heard about us from Josh, one of our amazing volunteers. She visited us a couple of times during the week and was blown away by the experience. Part of Aspire’s philosphy is to “put back” into the wider theatrical world and they have made us part of this through their generosity.

Aspire Theatre Company is a performance based drama company, for 11-25 year olds, that specialises in adapting, modernising and performing Shakespeare’s plays. We love a contemporary twist and aim to tell his stories in a fun, dynamic, physical way.

2018 Cake and Plant Sale

It was a lovely day for Joslyn Arnold’s Cake and Plant Sale in Worthing. Lots of friends, family, and locals turned up to grab a bargain from the array of donated plants, flowers and veg on offer!

Once they had bought their horticultural goodies they then made a beeline for the delicious array of locally made cakes and biscuits.

A big thank you must go to everybody whose contributions resulted in another fantastically successful day.

Our special thanks go to Joslyn, Kim and Ciso, and their army of enthusiastic helpers, for running a fantastic, fun and fabulous fundraising day which put over £200 in the Play In A Week pot!