Red Desk LOVE organisation. If we aren’t organising our clients, or things on behalf of our clients then we have itchy hands and are looking for other organisational opportunities. We are the VA company who cannot not volunteer. If there is an opportunity, we will put our hands up to help. This article is about how we got involved in our community Hallowe’en event – Muswell Hill Geisterfest.
In September 2014, Lindsay from Red Desk and Deanna Duda Bogdanovic of BonaFide Studios started talking about running a Hallowe’en event for the Muswell Hill community. Before we knew it, there was a website, twitter, Facebook, flyers and weekly meetings. Red Desk, along with Peter Thompson (community stalwart), Deanna and Chris from Crocodile Antiques cooked up a plan for the best Hallowe’en evening in the area.
Muswell Hill Geisterfest 2014 was dotted over several locations in Muswell Hill but due to a fire at Crocodile Antiques and Marks & Spencer, just a few days before, most of the action was concentrated in O’Neills. This had its advantages and disadvantages as it was VERY packed, creating great buzz but the craft market upstairs didn’t see the footfall we had expected. Still we learn from our mistakes and onto Muswell Hill Geisterfest 2015.
We started running meetings from the end of September and decided to change the location to the newly built and named St James’ Square. The square had been used in Midsummer Muswell, a wonderful event set up by the Muswellife (which we are part-time members of). Tasks were divided into our talents: Deanna in charge of entertainment, Peter in charge of local engagement and Red Desk in charge of social media and the website.
We believe that this event worked better than last year’s. The kids loved the pumpkin letter trail treasure hunt, the traditional games (apple bobbing and pin the wart on the witch’s nose) and sweets galore. Even the groups performing seemed to work better in the outside space as a lot more people could see what was going on. We tweaked the competitions from last year, ditching the best carved pumpkin in favour of the bonkers dogs in Hallowe’en costumes.
Our next event that we are helping with is A Last Hurrah to Vivian Stanshall on Sunday 29th November. Meetings have already started and we are sure this will lead to yet more events!