I’m sure by now you have all seen the fantastic video the Sun Newspaper made to promote the community funding Tesco provide. If you haven’t seen it yet, click here and to download it click here
So how did it come about?
For a few years now Tesco have provided community grants, first of all by their “Bags of Help” scheme and now under their “Stronger Starts Scheme”. If you are a Tesco customer you can nominate a cause that you’d like to see supported. Three organisations are selected and when customers are given a blue token at the checkout, they can vote for their favourite cause to receive a grant by dropping their token into that cause’s slot in the display by the exit. Over a period of a few months, those with the most tokens take the highest award. the other two getting slightly less.
Our fantastic fundraiser, Michelle Bourne, has successfully applied to the Brigg Tescos for GSCC to be in the scheme three times, in 2019, 2022 and most recently 2024. This year we were awarded £500, but in 2019 we received £2000 and in 2022 it was £500.
Here’s Michelle with some of our paddlers from 2019 receiving a cheque for £2000. On the right is Tesco’s Maria Hardy, who has been very supportive of us.
We have also raised money by bag packing at the Brigg store and all this money has been put to good use. We have bought kayaks, paddles, throwlines, a defibrillator and with the latest money, new buoyancy aids.
Here’s what we spent 2019’s money on:
The Video: Filming the Interviews
As part of the application process you can say you’d be happy to be contacted to help with promoting the schemes. Michelle said she was happy to (and the GSCC committee agreed) as Michelle believes we should give something back in return for all the money we have received.
Michelle was then contacted by the Sun Newspaper, firstly for a phone interview, than by the film people. We said we’d do both and the phone interview was published in the national daily paper, and a date was set for the filming to take place during a Tuesday session. Michelle let me Maria at Tesco know about the filming and invited her to attend.
Filming took place on the evening of 23rd July 2024. We had some debate over who should be filmed answering their questions. As most of the questions we’d been sent related to fundraising and Tesco, Michelle was the obvious choice, but she was very reluctant at first so Publicity Officer Martin Heywood was on standby! As you will have seen, Michelle did a fantastic job!
Michelle, Martin and Iain Cameron arrived early as the interview part was to be done before the members arrived. Maria from Tesco also arrived then too. We met the team of three, producer Dan, photographer Lee and lead design Sonny, who had travelled up that day from London, and they put Michelle at ease!
We set up on the jetty:
The film crew do a sound and video check
and action!
Encouragement from Maria!
We’d also been asked if any club members wanted to be interviewed. Declan Maguire volunteered and talked enthusiastically about litter picking (very important) and also displayed all his marathon medals worn proudly around his neck! Unfortunately this didn’t make it to the final edit as the finished video was to be only one minute and they had two hours worth of footage to condense! We have been promised the unused footage for our own use so keep a look out for that.
Declan shows off his medals!
The Video: Filming the Session
After the interviews the Tuesday session could commence. By this time we had quite an audience as the paddlers had arrived. Martin was tasked by the producer to keep everyone quite during filming. Not easy when you are carrying boats and paddles out!
They filmed everything! Launching from the jetty, the marathon squad setting off, then the skills session. Then they said they wanted some action shots so attached a camera to Owen Edwards’ kayak for him to perform roll, and to his paddle. Martin was asked to paddle around the session with a camera mounted on his kayak (except it was Steve’s kayak as the camera wouldn’t stick to Martin’s). Martin thought the camera was pointing forward, so got a shock when on the video it was pointing at him! And finally they wanted to go out in a canoe so Martin took the photographer out. Capsizing would have been very expensive! We got some great shots of the marathon squad returning as we paddled in the opposite direction.
Then it was all over. The film crew said it was one of the most enjoyable assignments they’d had! The final video is superb and is now on Youtube where it has had over 450 views. We have posted the link on the numerous Brigg and Scunthorpe social media sites and have had a lot of Likes. Michelle is now a celebrity in Brigg!
It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and we hope Tesco in Brigg are pleased with it too.
Martin Heywood