Sheffield's First Eid Festival at Millhouses Park - Lots of Visitors But Little To Do
Local / Sheffield Aug 12, 2013 - 04:12 AM GMTBy: N_Walayat
Sheffield's first ever Eid festival organised by the Sheffield Heritage Foundation was held at Millhouses park on Saturday 10th August (12-8pm). The festival got off to a very slow start with barely a few hundred people visible some 2 hours into the event.
The reason for the lack of visitors could be put down to a long traffic jam stretching back several miles along London Road and Abbeydale road into the centre of Sheffield, that was worsened by many drivers trying to find a place to park on a Saturday afternoon when most residents had stayed at home.
Those lucky enough to have won free tickets for the kids rides from daily competitions on Radio Ramadan Sheffield 87.7FM came early to collect from the organisers.
The festival included a stage area, that unfortunately was not used to its potential. One display was examples of martial arts.
Young spectators were encouraged to join in. Similar audience on stage participation continued throughout the day.
Festival attractions were mainly a number of rides for young children.
And one ride for teenagers / adults
By 3pm many visitors had managed to make it through the traffic jams, and found somewhere to park on the side streets. Most visitors appeared to head straight for the 60 or so open air stalls where they could literally shop until they dropped for mainly clothes, food, jewellery and religious paraphernalia.
Many charities had also set up stalls.
By 5pm the event was well attended by an estimated 4,500 people (7,000 for the whole day) as word must have gotten out that it was an FREE entry event unlike many other such festivals, however apart from shopping and a few rides for the kids there was very little to actually do, few activities, compared to the more established festivals and mela's. For next year the organisers should ensure to include many activities for adults and teenagers as well as far better utilisation of the Stage, that coupled with the traffic and parking problems may result in far fewer visitors.
And there were even only 2 ice cream vans visible for the whole festival, which is the number usually expected on Summer Saturday's.
However the festival did at least did give members of Sheffield's muslim community an opportunity to bump into people they may not have seen for several years.
The event failed to encourage mixing of Sheffield's diverse communities as it turned out to be a virtually wholly asian / muslim affair, whilst the vast majority of non muslim's could be found some 200 metres southwards congregated around the boating lake.
In conclusion the event proved a great success in terms of the numbers attending, however, it unfortunately was lacking in number of aspects in terms of activities for the public, events, displays utilisation of the stage, and in bringing the different communities together, which I am sure that the SHF organisers will seek to address for next years festival. However managing the heavy traffic from the city centre to Millhouses park may prove the hardest problem to solve, which could imply relocating to another Sheffield park such as Graves park.
The overall impression was that the organisers had expected far fewer visitors than which materialised as illustrated by the lack of visibility of security or police, and poor traffic management. It appears that many people may have only found out about the event on the day via word of mouth and social media, contributing to the surge in visitors by about half way through the event.
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Nadeem Walayat
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Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of four ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series.that can be downloaded for Free.
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