What a Wonderful World Parkinson's Day... 

 

We had a very successful event and a thoroughly enjoyable day at Sutton Library for World Parkinson's Day last Saturday. The aim of the day was to spread awareness of the Parkinson's condition and the local services and amenities available for those affected by it either directly or indirectly in the local area and hopefully beyond. Well we certainly fulfilled the brief!. Between ours and PUK estimates we think we received approximately 350 visitors.  Some great conversations were had and it was a very meaningful day to many 

 

 Thank you to all who brought their knowledge to the day. Special thanks go to the Mayor of Sutton Councillor Louise Phelan and David Newbold, Director of Community Parkinson’s UK, for opening the event and SKEM member Dave Lambert & his band The DMs for closing the show. To St. Helier Hospital Radio’s  Andy Acton for your compering, LEGS Neurophysiotherapy Exercise Group and The Chi Clinic Banstead for your brilliant showcases, Sing out Sutton choir for brightening up the afternoon, the amazing Bibi Heal for your beautiful voice and movement lesson, and the inspiring Movers & Shakers ( special thanks to Mark Mardell :-) for your talk and launching your new Voice campaign at our event. If you click on the following link:- https://www.moversandshakerspodcast.com/thevoicecampaign “ The Voice Campaign “ click on Podcast from the menu, scroll down and click on the play arrow of the Podcast entitled                             “ World Parkinson’s Day 2026: Speak Out! “ all will be revealed 

 

 As an additional bonus, we also managed to raise over £300 in donations at the event, for which we are truly grateful and give a sincere thank you to all who donated, we appreciate the support.

 

We are very proud to have been able to hold the event so successfully and wish to thank everyone involved with participating, informing or visiting. Stallholders included:- Age UK Sutton, Right at Home Sutton and Mid-Surrey, The Change Foundation, Sutton U3A, Parkinson's UK ( special thanks to Jan Williams :-) , Parkinson's UK London, Carshalton Park Rotary Club, Everyone Active, Healthwatch Sutton, Home Instead - Sutton, London Borough of Sutton Councillors and Officers, Rosebery Manor Care Home - Avery Collection, St.Helier Charitable Foundation, St Raphael's Hospice, Sutton Neighbourhood Watch, National Tremor Foundation (Sutton Shakers), Sutton United Football Club, Sutton Womens Centre, Tennyson Grange Care Home and Wallington Community Wellbeing Charity ( special thanks to Christine Lindsay :-)

 

I would also like to thank the 40+ of you that helped us stage this great event by volunteering to help us on both the night before at the venue and on World Parkinson’s Day itself. I’ve never seen so many people wearing the same Tee Shirts and Lanyards at a single event before and wow! didn’t you all look smart 

 

Finally, I would of course like to place on record my heartfelt thanks to the CEO of Parkinson’s UK Caroline Rassell , she joined us after taking part in the Finsbury parkrun earlier and from who I was delighted to receive a Certificate of Appreciation from PUK, on the branch’s behalf  Also, the members of our wonderful SKEM committee for their assistance with this rather large scale “ project “. However, it would be remiss of me not to make special mention and express my very personal grateful thanks to Mary Varty ( committee member ), Sophie Hesdon ( branch secretary ) and Liezel Teague our super sub and volunteer, who quite simply gave up a good part of their personal lives to help me achieve my vision……which I did ……….Thank You Ladies. X

 

With my warmest wishes,

 

Arthur.  

 

 NB: - We are intending to post many wonderful photographs of the event on our social media sites and in our newsletter in the near future.