Well look no further!

The West Dulwich community is at it again, only this time it is a Christmas street party. The local community is hosting the holiday shopping event on December 8^th (between 10am and 5pm). This will be their second Christmas street party, following on from the success of the one held last year, and there is no shortage of fun things to see and do.

Not only is the party your one-stop-shop for gifts your whole family, but it also allows you to escape the madness of Christmas shopping on the high street. Gift stalls will be arranged along Croxted Road offering their exciting wares and there will also be a festive farmers market on Park Hall Road, so there is something for everyone.

On the entertainment front there will be children’s entertainers, carol singers and women from Circo Rum Ba Ba. The best bit about all this is that community is really supporting independent, local shopping. Each shop has taken it upon them to do something individual, and are all offering customers something different, like serving mulled wine or giving out mice pies – now that can’t be bad!

Lovely photo supplied by Wasabicube over on Flickr.

As Helen pointed out to me this morning it’s been a while since I last wrote anything on this here blog. So it seems appropriate that my return post is about the roaring success that was last nights inaugural London Bloggers Meetup.

The night was organised by Andy Bargery who writes Marketing Blagger as well as Cheap Eats in London and was held at The Camel and Artichoke just outside Waterloo train station. After a tentative start the group started to take shape and some good banter on a range of topics broke out including important issues such as the state of the blogosphere, the housing crash, and how to make a bit of cash from your blog, to less grandiose, but certainly fun topics such as the quality of celebrity gossip in the UK, and what you’d do if you were offered fifty grand for a text link on your blog.

A great cross section of the London blogging community were party to the discussion, including Katie and Gemma from Shiney Media, Kieth from Housing Panic, Andrew Bulhak, our very own Helen Evans aka Little Doll Face and Peter Marshall who runs both RE: Photo and My London Diary, the latter of which has been running since 1999. Apologies to anyone else who I have forgotten to mention, there was lots of names and faces and I didn’t get a chance to meet with you all; in fact if you feel like getting in touch head over to our contact page, I’d love to hear from you.

Luckily for those who missed this one another is already in the pipe line for just before Xmas, December the 18th to be precise. I’ll be there; I look forward to seeing more new faces next time.

Excitement!

The welovelocal team has been very busy working away on ways to improve and expand the site and all our efforts have almost paid off ….almost!

So, we have some changes happening on the site over the next week, while these changes are very exciting, they may cause the site to misbehave a little or just look a bit strange from time to time. Please bear with us, we all have our bad hair days and welovelocal is no exception. We are working on it, and I guarantee that the site will be all the more improved for the changes.

Admittedly, we have been a little tight lipped lately regarding changes to the site.The truth is we have been saving all our lovely developments up, and they are soon to be unleashed!

We very are excited, watch this space….

Scrap that…..watch this site!

John Londei’s amazing photograph collection of small, independent and family owned businesses is hugely nostalgic, yet it is undeniably a stark reminder to us all of just how many independent businesses Britain has lost over the last 35 years. The portraits that make up the book “Shutting up Shop” show shopkeepers with their businesses, Londei wanted to capture the pride and enthusiasm that they had for their businesses - and the communities that they served.

Londei began his photographic project in 1972, with an aim to capture the essence and spirit of Britain’s independent retailers. He managed to capture an impressive 60 businesses over a 15 year time span. The shocking part of his project came when in 2004; he revisited all the shops that he had once photographed, he found that out of the original 60 only 7 were still in business.

With such a gloomy future forecasted for independent retailers it was exciting to see that one of the business photographed, The Umbrella Shop on New Oxford Street (or James Smith & Son’s as it is formally known) - which is only a about a mile from the welovelocal office and is still open, and trading today!

Check out John’s great pictures at the National Portrait Gallery it is on until the 4th of May 2008. Let’s hope that it reminds, and inspires everyone to keep shopping locally!

“Want more local food in your shops and on your plates? The WI has the tools to help you get it.”

Welovelocal.com is excited to announce its brand new partnership the Women’s Institute. Have you ever wondered how you could do your bit to eat more locally produced food, but never really been sure of the best way to go about it? Well, the WI has been actively promoting living local for some time now. They have developed a really great toolkit that is used by WI’s, community groups, shops, and suppliers. The toolkit includes tips and information on how to get started living, and eating locally. There are helpful Q&A’s on what really defines local food, and what makes it so much better.

This is a really exciting initiative that ties in perfectly with what we are about here at welovelocal.com. The toolkit encourages people and communities to reap the social and health rewards from eating local food - that has not traveled thousands of miles before it reaches you, the consumer.

Interestingly the living Local toolkit taught us that: ‘every £10 spent with a local food initiative is worth £25 to the local economy, compared with just £14 when spent in a supermarket chain’ (New Economics Foundation, 2001)

It is an exciting day here at welovelocal, not only are we busy preparing for our impending nationwide launch but we have our very own article in The Evening Standard. In line with their ‘Save Our Small Shops’ campaign the article focuses on the success that can amount from small independent businesses using welovelocal.com to take word of mouth online, and stand up against larger competitors. The issue of small independent shops is extremely relevant at the moment, and with an estimated 7,000 individual or family owned shops lost in London in the past six years it is time to make changes. (The Evening Standard)

The Article also focuses on the success that the some of our businesses have had using welovelocal - like that of Euphorium Bakery in Islington. It draws on an interview with Euphorium’s general manager - Rupert Dunn who talks of how the site has helped him connect with customers, by giving both the business and the customers a voice - thanks Euphorium.

Also must give a mention to our featured reviewer Edward H, whose great descriptive review of Euphorium Bakery and their drool worthy chocolate éclairs made it into article.

It’s been a while but Free Fun Friday’s are back, and even better than before. Here at welovelocal we like to reward our local reviewers for their efforts. This week Amanda J really stood out with her great review of Buen Ayre, the lovely Argentine Grill in Hackney. Not only was her review fantastically detailed, but it warmed our heart to see our locals taking heed of the advice from other fellow locals. It was the super helpful list of tips provided by Barnaby C that Amanda J followed when visiting Buen Ayre – real insider information at its best.

We have rustled up a lovely prize this week, following our commitment to great local shops we have a goodie bag of luxury lovelies from the yummy Myddletons delicatessen to send to Amanda J to show our appreciation. Myddletons is a fab deli located in the uber local Amwell Street area. We will be dropping some more subtle hints from now on, and giving out some more great prizes for original reviews that take heed of our hints. So keep a look out!

London has recently been crowned the most expensive place to eat out in the world. It has taken over both Paris and Japan with its annual meal price increasing by three percent, bringing the average three course meal in at a whopping £39.09 per person. The findings are based on a study carried out by Zagat London Restaurants Guide, which included 705,000 meals, in over 1,000 restaurants.

Despite the soaring prices Londoners are still dining out, and the restaurant trade is booming. It was noted that three quarters of diners reported that they in fact ate out more regularly now, than they did two years ago. The report recognizes that there are great quality affordable places to eat across London, but many restaurants offer poor or erratic service to customers - resulting in diners not knowing what to trust, cheap eats or hefty prices?

Step in welovelocal.com. Every day the site receives great reviews recommending affordable, friendly good quality restaurants. I love the restaurant reviews we get on the site, it really feels like you have insider information helping you to avoid the poor service and get a great tasting meal on the cheap. Beating the statistics that claim London is damn pricey!

Here are a few welovelocal’s top cheap eats in the City: Icco Pizza , Angel Curry Centre and Afghan Kitchen

Photo by ccgd over on good ol Flickr