What will you be doing on Saturday September 24th? The Island’s new High Sheriff wants you to literally put out the bunting and support him on Isle of Wight Day. Robin took office as High Sheriff in April but he will already be known to many Island businesses. He has been an Island resident for 16 years and he ran Made on The Isle of Wight, which he set up with his late wife Serena. Tom Stroud finds out more about the Island’s big day.
What is Isle of Wight day all about? What do you want to achieve?
I want to unite this disparate community of talented souls that we have here on the Island. Isle of Wight Day has been created to bring people together, for the first time. We never really come together as a group but everybody on this island is so proud to be here and loves living here. There’s so much to celebrate about this place, as well as raising money for good causes.
Getting an event like this off the ground is always a challenge, particularly in the first year. What sort of response have you had?
We’ve already got a lot of support. Isle of Wight Day works for business, individuals, schools and for the young and old. I want to encourage individuals, schools, businesses, towns, villages, associations, sports clubs, absolutely everyone to put their thinking caps on and come up with great ways to celebrate Isle of Wight Day. From street parties, fayres, exhibitions, rallies, sports matches, we anticipate many events and activities to take place across the Island throughout the summer and especially on Saturday 24th September. We’re talking about a people’s parade through Newport, pop-up music events, and everyone waving the Isle of Wight Day flag, whether that’s bunting, car stickers, badges or t-shirts. We want to cover the Island in Isle of Wight Day bunting!
How can the business community help?
The business community can help themselves actually, by getting involved, because it gives them an opportunity to promote what they do on the Island. It also gives us a hook to promote them at the same time. We want this message to go out beyond the shores of the Island. We want to tell the world about our vibrant business community and that this is great place to come and do business. There are a lot of very successful businesses here on the Island and we should be talking about that. If businesses get involved with us, we can help them too and that helps the whole community to come together, to literally fly the flag.
You know a bit about the Island’s business community already, through Made on the Isle of Wight. With Isle of Wight Day, you’re once again making a virtue of our island location.
Businesses are definitely proud to be here. I created Made On The Isle of Wight having lived here for about 5 or 6 years because I realised there was so much talent but nobody had brought it together. Made on The Isle of Wight was an umbrella brand, particularly for small businesses and the talented art and craft people and the wonderful food producers.
On Isle of Wight Day I want everyone to take photos – of people, not the beautiful landscape. We want to celebrate a day in the life of the Isle of Wight and show it to the world. That book will be available in time for Christmas, with every penny of profits going to the High Sheriff’s Trust and staying on the Island.
I’d like to encourage new people to visit us on the day but I’m also keen that it is also a day of reunions. I’d like schools to hold reunions and bring their former pupils back to the Island on the day and I’d like businesses to do the same, with former employees. I want a lot of people to come back to the Island on that day.
To produce things like the book and the bunting will of course cost money and that will require commercial support. We need a mixture of support, from donations to support in kind. We’re open to ideas whether that’s sponsorship or donation, from the ferry companies to community groups of any size.
Isle of Wight Day sounds very ambitious and it comes half way through your year in office. What happens after the event – is there a legacy aspect to all of this?
I hope that Isle of Wight Day will become an annual event. It’s a huge task and we won’t achieve everything that we want to achieve in Year 1. If we can get the majority of the population behind us, displaying the bunting logo and we can cover the Island in bunting, coming together as a community then we will have achieved our ambitions for our first year. We will be producing literally miles of bunting and we hope that every village will join in by holding a street party. I want it to be fun, like Red Nose Day or Children In Need and I want people to come up with crazy ideas and do fun things. Why not? It’s time we had a bit of fun!
Find out more about Isle of Wight Day at isleofwightday.com
