The Hawick Group sprang up as a result of the demise of one of our great festivals, the much missed Jazz Festival.
Building on the wonderful enthusiasm of the local population, we have made good progress by honing down the dozens of ideas into around eight potentially workable projects. The group thrives on a variety of doers, thinkers and organisers, and consequently we have a grand range of people involved.
We started with a small project, around 40 enthusiasts undertaking a Litter Drive around the town, targetting the main entrances and beauty spots. The group then decided to turn their talents a number of sub-groups, whilst still supporting the larger group. With such an array of talented and hard-working individuals, all pushing and pulling for Hawick, failure was never on the agenda.
We were able to celebrate the wonderful success of the first Annual Teri-Buskers Festival which will now go from strength to strength. As part of the Teri-Buskers committee I was delighted to find that we had so many interested and resourceful people who all helped to ensure that the festival was such a great success. Many people have fed back to us and indicated that they have rarely seen the High Street so busy and that they thoroughly enjoyed the wide range of entertainment on show.
The Group also learned that our Heritage Sub Group is going from strength to strength and has some wonderfully strong ideas, to help boost Hawick's profile as well as run events and themes, throughout the forthcoming years, all of which have a heritage base to them. Given the wonderful history of the town and its surroundings, it is little
surprise that this group has found such enthusiasm. They meet regularly and are always looking for more interested parties. Anybody who wants to know more can contact myself or Scott Fobister (who is a History
Teacher at Hawick High School).
The Food and Drink Sub Group has, slightly concerningly dropped in numbers since the original enthusiasm. However those left on the Group (and as usual we are looking for others to join in and for some earlier members to return), have managed to make great strides with regard to a Farmers Market and are also in negotiation for other events to be held in the town regarding food and drink.
The general feeling of the wider Hawick Group was that making Hawick "The Town of the Horse" was a very positive idea. Given all that goes on regarding horses in and around the town, we were surprised how few "horsey people" have come on board. This idea perhaps has the greatest potential of all of the ideas that the Hawick Group have come up with, but we desperately need "horsey people" to come to the Group meetings
and share their expertise. With such a welter of people involved in the Common Riding, in Racehorse Training and ownership, Flapping and the like, there must be people out there that feel passionately about promoting this area and its horses.
Given the recent, and welcome, success of the Annual Steve Hislop run, we would hope to build that events established base. We did start a Steve Hislop/Jimmy Guthrie Group to look at events for the future.
Those involved in it have shown enthusiasm but need an opportunity to rekindle that with help from others.
In addition the positive idea of a High Fashion/Knitwear Fashion Show is still very much at the development stage and again would welcome people coming on board who have either enthusiasm for the idea, or some level
of experience in that field so that we can take that idea forward.
