A Ukrainian culture day comes to Maple Lodge in Lymm on Saturday from 4pm: Cossack games, a BBQ, karaoke and a charity auction. Entry by donation, from £10.
A Ukrainian culture day is coming to Lymm on Saturday, with Cossack games, a BBQ, an open mic and a charity auction, and the organisers say the money raised will go towards an evacuation pickup vehicle for Ukraine.
The Pokrova Party runs from 4pm to 9pm on Saturday 26 September at the Maple Lodge Scout and Guide Centre on May Queen Field Drive, WA13 0JG, a minute from the centre of the village. Entry is by donation, from £10, and the poster asks people to bring their own drinks.
It is organised by the International Centre Ukrainian House UK CIC, which has spent this year running community events across the north west, and it is open to everyone, not only to Ukrainian families.
Writing to the Wire, Anatolii Shalaiev, the organisation’s director of communications, said the day would “bring together Ukrainian and local communities to celebrate Ukrainian culture, traditions and friendship, while highlighting the strong connections that have developed between Ukrainian families and residents of Lymm and the wider Warrington area”.
Guests, he said, “will enjoy traditional Ukrainian food, music, cultural performances, family activities and the opportunity to learn more about Ukrainian heritage”.
What is on the programme
The poster bills the day as a Ukrainian culture and wellbeing day, built around what it calls the Cossack Pokrova march. Alongside that it lists Ukrainian performances, a unity flash mob, traditional Cossack games, an open mic and karaoke session, games, competitions and quizzes, a charity auction, a BBQ and an evening disco.
There is also a photo zone built around a Ukrainian evacuation vehicle, and a stall for the organisation’s public health project, Blood Solidarity, Drop of Life.
How Lymm got the event
The day exists because of a grant. In July the organisation announced that Warrington Charities Trust had funded a day of Ukrainian culture in Lymm this September, the third grant it had won in a run that also included money from The National Lottery Community Fund for Blood Solidarity and from the Manchester Airport Community Trust Fund for radio and media equipment.
That July announcement set out what the organisers wanted the Lymm day to do. Embroidery workshops would “provide a welcoming space for families and community members to learn about Ukrainian heritage, spend time together and experience traditional crafts”. A food display would introduce residents to Ukrainian hospitality, because “food is an important part of Ukrainian identity and is often at the centre of family and community life”. Live performances would feature traditional singing and the bandura.
“Step by step, and grant by grant, we continue to turn ideas into practical projects with lasting social value,” the organisation wrote at the time.
The poster issued this month lists the performances, games, auction and disco rather than the workshops, so if you are going specifically for the embroidery it is worth asking the organisers first.
The blood donation project behind the stall
Blood Solidarity, Drop of Life is the organisation’s public health campaign, run with National Lottery Community Fund money and, it says, in partnership with NHS Blood and Transplant. Its purpose is to get more people, Ukrainian and British, signed up as blood donors.
The campaign has been working its way round the region’s Ukrainian communities this year, with sessions and stalls in Macclesfield in August, Bolton in July, and Newcastle and Preston in June. At its most recent session, in Liverpool on 5 September, the group said it met three people who expressed an interest in becoming donors, and it thanked Father Taras Khomych for bringing the parish together around it.
“Our role is to raise awareness and encourage civic participation,” the organisation wrote when the Lymm grant was announced. “Official information about blood donation eligibility and the donation process will be provided through NHS Blood and Transplant resources.”
If Saturday prompts you to sign up, registration and the eligibility rules are on the NHS Blood and Transplant site at blood.co.uk, not through the organisers.
What its events look like
The group ran a summer party in Bolton in July with performances, a charity table, an auction and blood donation stands, and a Ukrainian evening in a hired hall is roughly what Saturday will be.
The venue on Saturday is run by Lymm District Guides and the 3rd Lymm Scouts. The present Maple Lodge was finished in September 2014, on the site of the old Guide headquarters and Scout hut, after a fundraising effort that began in the 1980s and drew support from Wren, the Veolia Environmental Trust, Lymm Round Table, Lymm Parish Council, Barclays and Lloyds. It has two halls and a kitchen, and it is let to community groups.
What it means for you
If you want to go, you do not need a ticket: turn up at Maple Lodge from 4pm on Saturday and give what you can at the door, from £10. There is food, but drinks are your own. Families are the point of the day rather than an afterthought, with games, quizzes and performances running through the afternoon before the disco.
Two things are worth knowing before you decide. The first is that the money is being raised for a vehicle bound for Ukraine, which the organisers describe as an evacuation pickup for humanitarian and emergency response work; that is their account of it and not something a register records. The second is that the blood donation stall is an awareness stall. Nobody donates blood in Lymm on Saturday. You do that by booking a session with NHS Blood and Transplant at blood.co.uk.
Media enquiries and questions about the programme go to Anatolii Shalaiev at Ukrainian House UK CIC, whose contact page is on its website.
More things to do locally are in our guide to things to do in Warrington, and the next big date in the village calendar is Lymm Dickensian Day.
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