March is Brain Tumour Awareness Month

March has been designated Brain Tumour Awareness Month - join or hold a tea party to raise money

Tea Parties are being held throughout the month to raise money for the SDBTT charity. You could help by organising a tea party yourself. Even if you've never organised a fundraising event, you can be assured of success because the Samantha Dickson Brain Tumour Trust have put together a pack of information, ideas and support material to make everything easy! All you have to do is register your tea party by either downloading the registration form or contacting Maria on 0845 130 9733.
Once registered you can dowload additional supplies of fundraising materials by clicking here.
We are delighted to announce that Barclays Bank has agreed to hold Tea Parties in 12 of their Buckinghamshire branches and YOU ARE INVITED! Please check the list here to see if a Tea Party is to be held in a branch near you. Barclays has also said they will match £ for £ the money raised. Thank you to everyone involved.

Ball Logo

We now have a corporate identity thanks to the kind help of the people at The Creative Tribe. They have designed our logo, based on our Contemporary Art Deco theme and are getting to grips with leaflets, tickets and posters, all necessary for our 9 month campaign. We have asked for pink spot colour in the designs, as pink was Claire's favourite colour. We hope you like it.

The Samantha Dickson Brain Tumour Trust Claire Rowland Fund

Claire Rowland died aged 11 from a brain tumour. Her parents, Tony and Julie met many wonderful people along their painful journey with Claire last year. They came from many organisations and charities, so many worthy of financial help. CLIC Sargent provided a specialist oncology nurse, the Make-a-Wish Charity converted Tony's study into an in-house art studio for Claire, with mint and pink decor and the carers at Rainbow's Children's Hospice in Loughborough where Claire had a few peaceful days on a respite visit. We would love to be able to give money to them all. However our committee decided to raise money for The Samantha Dickson Brain Tumour Trust Charity (The SDBTT) as they aim to find a cure for childhood and adult brain tumours, by funding research. Julie and Tony Rowland have set up their own fund within this charity The SDBTT Claire Rowland fund to define the money that we and others raise in memory of this happy, fun-loving, helpful, pig-loving little girl.

The Venue

We looked at a number of places nearby that could hold a ball and after a rejecting a couple of places on the basis of layout and size, we have chosen Hangar One, Sywell Aerodrome, Sywell, Northampton. It's an incredible space, and as the name suggests built out of an old aircraft hangar. Ideal for a ball, the hangar can hold up to 500 people and so this has then set us the target for tickets that we must sell and the money we aim to raise. We have set this target at £10,000.

Alongside the hangar is Sywell aerodrome, a fully functional local airport. On the day that we visited to view Hangar One and its facilities, a stunt flyer was practising his breath-taking performance. Somehow we will have to find a way of incorporating this excitement into our event.

Hangar One adjoins the Aviator Hotel, built in the 1930s with a resplendent Art Deco interior. The decor set the theme of the night the glitz and glamour of the 1920s Art Deco period easily gave us the name for the event, and The Glitz and The Glamour Ball was born.