Every year our Local Hero campaign shines a spotlight on the incredible work of individual fundraisers. This campaign sees fundraisers competing over a month to top our Local Hero leader board.
2016 saw a nail-biting race to the finish line, with fundraisers changing positions right until the last minute. Our eventual champion, Alastair Sill, secured an incredible 317 unique funders, raising over £4000 for Taking Flight Theatre Company - plus a further £1000 in prize money.
We recently had a chat with Alistair to discuss what inspired him to take part in Local Hero, to find out what his greatest challenges were during the month and to gather some tips for those interested in participating in this year’s campaign.
“The theatre company had heard about the Local Hero campaign and told me about it as it coincided with plans I had already been making to fundraise for them”
“I have worked with them for 6 years now as an audio describer. I recognise how hard they are trying to make their work accessible to a wide audience and the difficulties they face”
“I enjoy cycling and wanted to do a cycling challenge anyway. My decision to ride from the East to the west of Wales matched the tour route the theatre company were taking.”
“Throughout the ride I stopped off in places they were performing to explain what the company was doing. The theatre company sent out actors to the schools before I arrived and delivered iambic pentameter workshops. I did some games involving audio description and talked about my role and explained what audio description is"
“I followed a hilly route quite near my house when cycling. There is also a lake quite near where I live that I cycled around. I built up to the challenge, got my stamina up and made sure I had enough supplements.”
“I didn’t expect as many people to get behind it as they did. I wanted to do something to help Taking Flight Theatre Company. I was quite baffled by how many people got into the idea.”
“I got into the friendly competitive edge. You respected everyone who was participating, all of the charities and causes they were raising money for were equally important so you wanted them to do well.”
“The competition got lots of people involved who I hadn’t been in touch with a while. It was a nice surprise when people you hadn’t seen in a while donated. The amount people donated was also a surprise – we had somebody donate £500!”
“It got really close at the end. Beth House, one of the directors of the company got really involved. I could see emails coming through saying “we need 7 more sponsors and then we’ve done it, we’ve only got 10 minute left”. I tweeted a lot about what I was doing and put updates on Facebook too."
“The fact it was so tight created a great atmosphere and built up publicity for the company. It also engendered excitement for the tour before it had even begun.”
“Taking Flight are about putting on accessible performances with artistic and creative integrity. The signers for example are characters in the play. There was a deaf actor playing the role of Juliet and the audio description was integrated into the performance. All of these things push the boundaries.”
“These things take time to work in during rehearsals. The money raised from Localhero was spent on creating even more accessible performance so that people can go to watch the shows who wouldn’t ordinarily think about going to watch a live performance - to ensure nobody is isolated or segregated in any.”
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