The Arsenal Foundation helped to fund the Well Street Common Summer Festival. Organiser Kay Richardson tells us how our donation helped locals to have fun and reach new heights.
“Last year’s Well Street Common Summer Festival was our biggest and most ambitious yet. The festival has grown over the past two decades and this year we had more than 6,000 visitors. None of this would be possible without support from local charities such as The Arsenal Foundation.
“Our ambition is to help the community use their local green space, encourage and inspire locals to try new sports to improve their health and increase their skills and confidence.
“The Arsenal Foundation grant enabled Well Street Common Friends group to hire a climbing wall from Event Higher. The wall is so big that its visibility helps to attract residents on the day. Climbing is an inclusive activity and it attracts people of all ages and backgrounds, from complete beginners to professional climbers, and the wall can accommodate 80 visitors per hour. We used it for six hours.
“The feedback from our young volunteers who helped manage the activity said the wall gave many residents from disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunity to try out a sport that they wouldn’t normally, and that the sense of achievement they got from reaching the top was incredible. And escalating costs meant Arsenal’s support made this possible.
“Arsenal funding also contributed towards Marawa’s Majorettes, a hula hooping performance and workshop. This was an activity we hadn’t been able to afford in the past and it was one of the most well received elements of the whole festival. The award-winning hula hoopers performed a high-energy routine with 50 hula hoops and then ran a free workshop to an audience of all ages. It was an exciting new element to the festival and enabled us to establish new links with the organisation that we hope to build on in the future.
“We also worked hard to reach out to teenagers through local charity Hackney Quest and a consortium called Rise Up East. We had about 40 young volunteers from these organisations who helped run events, pick up litter and conduct surveys. The results of these were hugely satisfying: 82 per cent of visitors felt very strongly that the festival helped visitors have a strong sense of belonging to the community, and 71 per cent felt strongly that the festival helped feelings of loneliness decrease.
“Well Street Common has, since lockdown, become a more popular green space. Our organisation’s focus is to promote it to residents and encourage locals to connect with and benefit from it. We’re passionate about promoting our local green space and we work hard to encourage people of all backgrounds to feel welcome and claim this green space for their use to improve their health and wellbeing. We have always consciously tried to support residents from low-income backgrounds by providing free or low-cost activities to ensure all residents, no matter what their backgrounds, can benefit from our festival.”
For more information click [here](https://www.wellstreetcommon.org/).
Community Stories Well Street Festival
Copyright 2025 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.