Railway 200 Help us celebrate railways, green travel, and access to nature!

This year we are celebrating 200 years of the modern railway. The Southeast Communities Rail Partnership is holding a special event at Lewes Town Hall on Friday 1st August (1.8.25!) as part of this celebration. We are inviting local groups to take part in a marketplace style event to engage the public in green travel and environmental projects.

Many of you will have seen the work we have done to celebrate local railway heroes and heroines through our Blue Plaques Project. We are unveiling 200 blue plaques across our 10 lines; 10 on each line will commemorate people/events associated with that line, and 100 in total (also displayed 10 per line) will highlight different jobs that exist in the railway industry now, as we want to attract more people to work on our railways. See their stories www.southeastcrp.org/railway-200
On the 1st of August, the event for stall holders will begin at 1000 to give time for a welcome, photocall and press interviews, etc. It will be open to the public from 1100 until 1500 with lots of stall holders offering family friendly activities, displays, music and a rolling programme of brief talks.

We want to showcase the work of the various organisations and communities we work with. We have stalls available at our event in Lewes Town Hall for our partners to highlight their work and activity.
We would very much like your organisation to be part of this, either by having staff/volunteers on the stall to talk about your work, or by providing activities for visitors to enjoy, perhaps giving them a taste of what you do. This will be the school holidays, of course, so children’s activities would be particularly appreciated. We would also value your help to publicise the free event.

If your organisation would be interested in taking part, pleased let me know as soon as possible (and definitely by Friday 23rd May), ideally letting me know what you would be able to display, or what activities you might be able to provide. Network Rail for example will field several volunteers to help with stewarding and will provide some family friendly activities. Please e-mail [email protected]
We already have interest from our partners in booking a stall/space for activities and hope you will take this opportunity to get your message out to the public. We will be looking at all the responses after 23rd May and will get back to you as soon as possible to confirm whether or not we will be able to accommodate you.

Our event on 1st August will be attended many members of the public, so will be a great opportunity for you to talk about the work you do in the community.