HUBFEST 2016

September 29, 2016 2:36 pm by Tony

On Saturday & Sunday 24,25th September, Church on the Roundabout, in partnership with IOW day ran our first ever HubFest event. We call it HubFest, because the church here is at
the hub of a very large community of people who use the building or attend the church. Hubfest was the brainchild of church member Martin Gibson and Minister Tony Murphy. Tony said,
“This church is so much more than a Sunday service. Our vision is to be open for all sorts of groups and events. We thought how amazing it would be if we could invite all the groups and people linked with the church along with the local commun ity to one big weekend event”

On a beautiful sunny Saturday we had over 400 people come through, after great advertising on Facebook, local leaflet dropping, schools giving out invites and personal invites. People were treated to a great afternoon, including a free barBQ and refreshments and  live music from Rick & Son and The Andersons.

There was non stop action including, Sue Bailey from the Learning Zone telling some very entertaining stories, our friends the  IOW Shakespeare co doing some clips from their plays, Fight club demonstrating their sword fighting and offering some workshops to some very appreciative children on the green. Tom Murphy, who is launching the “Coppins Community Food Forest did some very popular food taste testing, supermarket vs home grown.

Meanwhile, inside, children could join in the Creation Station Craft Corner, and together produced a very colourful handprint canvas.There were information tables from Youth For Christ, Foodbank, “Building Schools for Africa” charity and Suzie Anderson’s amazing Wonkey Doodle art products.

On the Sunday, an invite was offered for people to come back to a special community service, where Pete Luther (Revive Newport), Denzil Collins (Biker group Choice MCM) and Ian Johnson (“Building Schools for Africa”) all spoke about their work. The Barton Primary school children came along, told us about their new school and treated the congregation to some great songs songs.

The great thing is that all these groups or individuals are linked in some way to the church here on the roundabout, demonstrating as it says on the title, we are a real HUB in the is community!