Partnered by
- Big Lottery Fund - Lottery funded
- MasterCard
- Kingsmill
- Asda
- Halifax
- Communities and Local Government
At 12.30pm on Sunday, London’s Piccadilly Big Jubilee Lunch guests will sing the National Anthem to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. Fancy joining in?
The Piccadilly Big Jubilee Lunch will be held along London’s historic Piccadilly, stretching from Piccadilly Circus to the top of St James’s Street. This unique event will highlight the very best of British entertainment, culture, art, music and food.
If you do sing the national anthem at your Big Jubilee Lunch, big or small, north or south – please send your videos and pictures here to us at photos@thebiglunch.com. Entitle your email ‘National Anthem’ and our Big Lunch team will gather them together and do something lovely with them.
Below is a gentle reminder of the words to the National Anthem – we’ve chosen verses 1 and 3 as most fitting for this occasion. We’ll be singing with you!
God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.
Thy choicest gifts in store,
On her be pleased to pour;
Long may she reign:
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen.
One lucky winner won’t have to worry about keeping the drinks cold at their Big Lunch as they have won themselves a stunning SMEG Union Jack 50’s Retro Style Refrigerator. Wallace & Gromit are proudly supporting this year’s Big Lunch, and teamed up with SMEG to launch a competition to celebrate! Big Lunchers were challenged to tell us, in no more than 100 words, what Wallace and Gromit would be keeping in their fridge for The Big Lunch. Congratulations to Jennifer Osborn from Sheffield, who won the competition with this entry:
Wallace told Gromit with hand-rubbing glee
We’ll throw a big lunch for the queen’s jubilee
Red, white and blue will be the theme
It came to me in a magical dream
We’ll stock the Smeg fridge with white Wensleydale cheese
And Bordeaux red is sure to please
We’ll have a cheese of different hue
Wensleydale in original blue
What’s that Gromit? No need to mutter
Of course we won’t forget the butter!
Here take this pile of hard earned smackers
And Gromit – don’t forget the crackers.
We’d also like to say a big well done to the five runners up, who will each be receiving a set of Wallace & Gromit complete collection DVDs, and to thank everyone for their great entries!
And the congratulations don’t stop there! We’d like to say a huge thank you to Champagne Lanson, our supporters and official champagne sponsors of The Big Lunch. Six lucky winners will be receiving champagne to make their Big Lunch go with a bang, courtesy of Lanson, who were delighted with the amount of entries they received for the competition. Well done to the winners – enjoy your free bubbly!
Here at The Big Lunch team we’re super keen to know how you get on and we’d love to hear your stories about what happened at your Big Lunch. Not only does it warm our hearts, but it also helps us to encourage more people to get involved and find out how brilliantly wonderful it is to build community and get to know your neighbours.
There are lots of ways you can share your story with us this year, so please take a couple of minutes to let us know about your Big Lunch.
Email high res images and videos by email to photos@thebiglunch.com with:
It’s really important to remember that by sending us your photos and videos you are consenting for us to use them for promotional purposes. If you would like to restrict their use in any way you must make it clear in your email.
An easy way to get consent from your neighbours on the day is to pin a consent notice up around the street or area. We’ve got templates here for you to download and use.
You can also upload images and videos to your Facebook and Flickr sites if you have them, and add videos to YouTube too. Please tag everything ‘BigLunch’ so we get to see it.
We’ll be tweeting from various Big Lunches across the country over the weekend, so join in and keep us up to date from the bunting hanging to the clearing up using these hashtags – #biglunch and #bigjubileelunch
And if you wanted to let us know how your Big Lunch went in words, without any whizzbang photos, footage or social media then simply pop your story on an email and send to yourstories@thebiglunch.com
We’re nearly there! The bunting is just about finished, the food is planned and ingredients are being gathered, we know where the tables and chairs are coming from, and everyone’s been invited… But what about the weather?
Big Lunches don't stop for rain!
Ok, so I know we have a reputation of being weather obsessed nation in the UK, but I think we have due cause! After a week and a bit of glorious sunshine – can the weather hold? What is it going to do on our big day/s?
Well, help is at hand! We’ve teamed up with the Met Office and their fab events calendar. You can have a look at the weather map here and watch as the days tick by – rain or shine? We’ve also included some of the bigger events from across the UK so you can see what kind of weather other Big Lunchers will be munching, chatting, dancing and entertaining in.
The Met Office might not be able to book the weather for you, but they can give you a good estimate of whether you need to plan for Factor 30, or brollies all round. On the fabulous map you’ll be able to check out the weather, temperature, the all important ‘feels like’, and depending what the final analysis is, rainfall or pollen count.
And regardless of what it does eventually, we’re also a nation that knows how to celebrate regardless – so let’s raise a glass to the weather!
With six days to go plans will be well under way for most Big Lunchers, but if you’re a bit stuck for ideas or in need of some last minute inspiration we’re here to help.
There are lots of great games and activity suggestions to keep the children (and grown-ups) entertained from traditional hop scotch and tug of war to the more modern street karaoke. Or you could get the whole street to learn the Big Jubilee Dance.
For yummy treats try our website and our blog where we’ve just had a week of recipe ideas perfect for sharing with your neighbours, and check out this special Diamond Jubilee Grace for communities to mark the start of their Big Lunches.
Don’t forget to brighten up your area with a bit of homemade bunting it’s easier than you might think and instantly transforms your street or venue, but if that sounds too difficult, colourful paper chains are just as brilliant and with the children helping you’ll have enough to string up in no time at all.
So plenty to get on with but make sure you involve your neighbours too and make the preparations as fun as the day itself – after all, it’s what The Big Lunch is all about.
As a brand dedicated to putting the fun back into lunch, Big Lunch partners Kingsmill are always on the hunt for inventive sandwich ideas. This year they launched a nationwide competition encouraging children across Great Britain to come up with their own dream sandwich and enter them into a competition for a chance to win a street party for their street, £250 Toys R Us vouchers and a set of chefs’ outfits for their class.
Over 5,500 children submitted their favourite sandwich recipes into the Fun Lunch competition and the top 24 recipes have been featured in the Kingsmill Fun Lunch Recipe Book, which is now available to download for free.
Judges marked entries according to their creativity, ease of preparation and clarity of recipe. The top three entries from each region have been recreated and photographed for the Fun Lunch Recipe Book, which also features an extra-special recipe from Kingsmill’s celebrity ambassador and mum of four, Jo Whiley.
The overall winner of the competition was eight year-old, Hayley de Pelet whose Funky Turtle recipe was an amazing creation that uses Kingsmill 50/50 rolls to create a turtle like sculpture.
Children aged 16 and under were encouraged to enter their dream sandwich either at one of the 21 Fun Lunch regional tour stops that took place during the Easter holidays across the UK, or in conjunction with a programme of Key Stage Two lessons developed in partnership with the National Schools Partnership, which ran in over 1,000 schools nationwide throughout the spring term.
To find out what else Kingsmill have planned for The Big Lunch, and to get some tasty inspiration for your Big Lunch feast, visit their website www.kingsmillbread.com.
You can also see some of Kingsmill’s delicious and easy to make recipes on The Big Lunch food ideas pages, including Salmon and Prawn crumble and Grilled Halloumi and Sunblush Tomato Pocket.
The sun is shining here today and it has got the Big Lunch team in the mood for a BBQ! Perfect timing, as today’s recipe is this mouth watering recipe for barbecue pork chop with green herb sauce and summer bean salad by Jamie Grainger-Smith.
Serves 6
From Jamie Grainger-Smith
Ingredients:
For the green herb sauce
For the summer bean salad
Method:
For the pork
To celebrate the upcoming release of George and Flora’s Big Party, the latest edition to the popular series from Eden Project Children’s Books, today’s recipe is this delicious Banana Cupcake recipe featured in the story.
The book, written by Eden’s very own Jo Elworthy, follows George and Flora as they set out to get to know their neighbours and arrange a street party, whilst learning new scrummy recipes along the way!
Cakes
Icing
Tip: To check if they are ready to come out of the oven, try pushing a wooden toothpick in one. If it comes out clean (not sticky) they are ready.
For this and a dozen more delicious easy recipes for your Big Lunch take a look at George and Flora’s Big Party, by Jo Elworthy and Ley Honor Roberts, published by Eden Project Children’s Books, £5.99, on 7th June
.
Last week we shared some of our stories and ideas for The Big Lunch with our patron, HRH The Duchess of Rothesay. The excitement and enthusiasm of Scottish communities planning celebrations was clear; from the Highlands and Islands to the Borders, people are coming together with their take on having a Big Lunch.
There are certainly lots of events to be a part of over the bank holiday weekend, from parades and coronation re-enactments in Elgin; a Kilt- run and one thousand pipers parade in Perth; a dazzling ‘Diamonds and Tiaras’ street party in Edinburgh and a ‘Govan Sparkles’ street party hosted by Glasgow charity, Starter Packs. And after all this piping, kilt-running, ‘coronation-ing’, sparkling and taking in the variety of entertainment on offer throughout the country, people will have worked up the hearty appetite required to sit down together to share a Big Lunch!
Big Lunch Scotland Cake by 3D cakes, Edinburgh
The get-togethers are also set to continue throughout the summer! After working hard to develop their community garden, Cumbernauld High School are planning to host a Big Lunch with parents and the local community to celebrate their achievements. In Brechin, members of the Gardner Memorial Church are encouraging local residents to bring a picnic dish to share in the square in front of the church.
Students at Glasgow’s Strathclyde University are putting on a Big Lunch in the halls of residence gardens. They want to encourage home and International students to share food and time together. The South Indian Cultural Centre are putting on a Big Lunch to encourage the local community to come and get a flavor of the centre’s events with both South Indian and Scottish country dancing displays on offer.
First Minister, Alex Salmond, is very supportive of all the Big Lunch activity happening in Scotland. He commented, “I would encourage anyone to host a Big Lunch, particularly in this Jubilee year. The event is a great opportunity for communities to get together, making new friendships and strengthening existing ones.”
See our reception blog here
Start, which is behind one of the UK’s largest Big Jubilee Lunch street party (on 3rd June at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich), was keen to make the event one that celebrates one of the best things about Britain – our sensational ‘seasonally grown’ food.
Concerned about the fact that many of us around the UK might not be planning dishes based on seasonally grown ingredients for our own Jubilee celebrations, Start decided to investigate. Early research by Start revealed that many of us just aren’t sure what seasonal food is or why we should buy it and eat it.
To highlight the issue, Start sent team member, and G-list celebrity Michael Davies on a journey of discovery to unearth just what is meant by seasonal food, and why we should be buying, cooking and eating it. Watch this short film to see what he discovered…
Michael’s Seasonal Lunch Box also stars sustainable food guru Jamie Grainger-Smith, founder of Think Eat Drink, and community gardener extraordinaire Makaela Gilchrist, founder of The Edible Bus Stop.
Big Jubilee Lunch 2012, an Eden Project
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