Manchester LG: July 2021 MeetUp: Connect's 5th Birthday Picnic & Pottery Party [RECAP]

The sun was shining, the world seemed relaxed and a group of Manchester Google Local Guides met in Beech Park for a picnic to celebrate Connect’s 5th birthday.

With 5 balloons (appropriately 5, in Connect orange) flying and Connect birthday T-shirts (with @AdrianLunsong designed birthday logos) being worn by some of the group, we were ready to party.

Plenty of food - we all brought our own and more to share, including delicious celebration ‘5’ cakes baked by @Maria68 and many other cakes, sweet things and cream cakes! I’m sure we all left a few pounds heavier than we started.

Following the Picnic in the Park, we all moved across the road to the nearby Pottery Corner (which is here ). Pottery Corner is a lovely craft venue where you can buy unglazed pottery in a variety of styles and sizes and spend up to several hours designing and decorating them under the expert guidance of the lovely staff. They demonstrate techniques and explain what will work better and what might be tricky. We were unhurried and relaxed as we concentrated on producing perfection! This was done with wine and more food on the table as the venue encourages that - as well as providing teas and coffees at very reasonable prices.

We left the resulting unglazed pottery to be glazed, fired, and collected later - with the assurance that they would look even better when they were complete - see what you think in the pictures!

You can see the photo album of the whole day (and some shots of the finished products) here. . Thanks to everyone who took and contributed pictures

I think it’s fair to say that everyone involved enjoyed the day - and that the world of Connect now has some unique pottery to celebrate its 5 complete years and look forward to the next 5.

How did you celebrate Connect’s 5th birthday?

Are there any local craft venues in your area in which you could run a similar MeetUp?

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@PeteMHW Wow, this looks really amazing for a small meetup with so many fun activities. How I long to get on a picnic for the longest time. Hopefully soon, and with @AdrianLunsong :blush: , when we in Malaysia finally open again.

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Such a fun day! I wish I was there with you all. It looks like you have such a wonderful time, and I still can’t get enough of your fabulous diy art. All items look so lovely. Thank you, @PeteMHW , for sharing the recap with the community. I enjoyed reading about your day quite a lot. :slightly_smiling_face: And, may I say that the Connect 5th birthday t-shirt look super on both of you. @AdrianLunsong , if I didn’t mention already, fantastic work on the birthday logos. :ok_hand:

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Great meet-up as always @PeteMHW ! Thanks for being such an awesome and creative organiser! It was such a fun day and the fact that we spent nearly 3 hours at Pottery Corner is testament to how much we enjoyed the activity! And it’s been such a long time that I’ve done any art that it was such a fun “blast from the past” for me!

@StephenAbraham Definitely looking forward to what I can attend/host in Malaysia now that I am here! It should be interesting! :sweat_smile:

@KlaudiyaG Thanks very much for the lovely words! I enjoyed making the logos and am quite surprised by the positive reaction/uptake from the community! It’s definitely lovely to see it pop up on numerous posts done by the community! So, definitely something that I will do again for big events. :blush:

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