BeachBuggin 2011 on the Common

Beachbuggin is the ultimate VDUB show by the beach due to their location on Southsea Common in the heart of the seafront. The show is now in it’s 11th year and is unique as it’s free to the walk on public who come on mass attracted by the amazing displays. Run on a not for profit basis with nominated charities the show is a fantastic celebration of all things VDUB so be sure to pop down on Sunday for a look.

More information can be found at www.beachbuggin.co.uk and on their Facebook group.

Southsea Common Flood 1912

Despite Portsmouth being very low lying, much of it orginally reclaimed land from the sea, flooding hasn’t been a regular threat over the years unlike other locations around the UK. One year when the city was heavily flooded was way back in 1912, when the flood water covered Southsea Common. I haven’t been able to find many photos of the flood but I did find this postcard, showing the Common. If you have any photos or links about flooding please leave a comment!

FOTOsaurus Competition

So Lunar Park has arrived on Southsea Common. It really is a pretty enormous Ultrasauros and I am sure that the view from the sea is quite amazing.

Aspex are running a FOTOsaurus competition – details below. Get up close and personal.

FOTOsaurus! Visit the dinosaur sculpture and get creative with any type of kit, from camera phone to box brownie! This photography competition is open to all ages and abilities. Submit your snaps to aspex as prints, on disk or via Facebook or Flickr. Closing date 31 August 2010. If you missed the opening ceremony then view the video below.

Heather and Ivan Morison – Luna Park, 1 August 2010 from Aspex Gallery on Vimeo.

Southsea Carnival Returns this weekend

A little reminder in case you missed our last post. After a seven year absence Southsea is to see a return of the once annual carnival taking place from July 24th to 25th and will kick off with a huge parade, and about 20 colourful floats that will meet at the Royal Marines Museum and go along the seafront, finishing at Southsea common.

From 11am until 7pm on both days activities will be taking place on two stages run by Nick Courtney, as well as an arena and stalls on Southsea Common. The event is being run as a joint venture between Portsmouth Lions, Portsmouth’s Caribbean Association and Portsmouth City Council’s seafront management team.

There is also a Facebook page up and running now which has all the current listings and acts as well information on stalls, food, prize, raffles, funfair and much more. You’re also reminded to dress colourful. Red, Blue, Yellow and Green are key…

To get involved call Mr Apps on (023) 9232 1847, or e-mail john.apps@ntlworld.com

Southsea Carnival Returns

After a seven year absence Southsea is to see a return of the once annual carnival.

The carnival will take place from July 24 to 25 and will kick off with a huge parade, and about 20 colourful floats that will meet at the Royal Marines Museum and go along the seafront, finishing at Southsea common.

From 11am until 7pm on both days activities will be taking place on two stages run by Nick Courtney, as well as an arena and stalls on Southsea Common.  The event is being run as a joint venture between Portsmouth Lions, Portsmouth’s Caribbean Association and Portsmouth City Council’s seafront management team.

To get involved call Mr Apps on (023) 9232 1847, or e-mail john.apps@ntlworld.com

They know who they are…

Outrageous barbeque burns on Southsea Common. A picture says a thousand words.

Photo : Claire Sambrook

Southsea Common Barbecue Zones

I’m sure a lot of you enjoyed the fantastic weather this weekend and many of you no doubt had a barbecue on The Common. I was out of town on Saturday but heard it was seriously busy down the seafront. A few of us had a BBQ on Sunday and we’re approached by some council officials regarding our position. They were very polite and let us carry on as we were already cooking and handed us some details of all the new zones.

Unfortunately the new zones now means hundreds of people are going to be packed in to single areas. The main common by the War Memorial will be extremely busy over the summer. More so than usual for sure. I fully back having these zones in place, but feel I’ll no longer be going to the common for BBQs if I can help it as they have made a lot of areas no go zones. It was always more appealing when you could spread out from other groups.

Snow and Skatepark

I’ve put up some snowy photos of Southsea skatepark over at Forever Circling, they were taken back on Wednesday when the snow was heaviest.

Portsmouth Kite Festival

Now in it’s 18th year, the Portsmouth International Kite Festival will be on all Bank Holiday weekend. The event is free and consists of competitions, exhibitions, etc and runs from 10am to 5pm each day down on Southsea Common. Last year’s event was hugely popular so no doubt this weekend’s will be too. Here are a couple of photos from last year, taken by local photographer Duncan Allan:

Southsea Unite-lite

Despite Southsea Unite being postponed the other weekend a big group of friends got together for some BBQ, football, cameras, dogs and general hanging out. Good times.

PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage