The free NHS dental checkup van has been on Abingdon Market Place over the last three days, and is there again today. It is available to people who have not been to an NHS dentist in the last two years. If dental problems are found then they aim to refer people to an NHS dentist.
The van started a tour round Oxfordshire in November, and is trying to address a perceived lack of access to NHS dentists in Oxfordshire.
Is it just me or has there been very little publicity for this: it is on the Town Council Events Diary but I haven’t seen any mention of it anywhere else. What a shame snce it looks a really good idea – could help people avoid dangerous dental health problems.
I admit I haven’t been out and about much in the last couple of weeks so it may be that there are posters everywhere about it, but somehow I doubt it. I can’t help but feel that despite people like me having been harping on for 5 years now about how bad we are at publicising things – and trying to do my bit to improve it – we aren’t much further forward.
So – a new year reminder to anyone organising an event – TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT. The TC is a start, but how about some or all of: posters and banners (and NOT just in the town centre), Choose Abingdon Whats On diary, local papers (Herald + free papers), Round & About, AbingdonXtra, Twitter, Facebook etc etc There are links to several of the relvant sites form this blog!
Re-reading my earlier comment i realise that I may have inadvertently broken some of my self-imposed rules about commenting on blogs.
Rule no 1 – post positive (constructive) messages, don’t just whinge. Put that down to January blues – will try to do better next time!
Rule no 2 – re-read before posting to make sure you say what you mean to say. on reflection this might have read like a dig at the TC staff who in fact do a wonderful job with very limited resources when it comes to publicity.
What I MEANT to say was that all of us who organise events need to be as imaginative as we can about ways of publcising them. There are lots of different routes, many of them free – we can’t assume that jst using one or two – and relying on others to do much of the legwork – will be enough.
Final clarification – my remarks were not about this event as such – there may well have been lots of publicity – i just used this to make the general point.
Don’t worry Hester – we all know you’re very positive, and a good reminder to us all to publicise our events.
Taking you’re advice to heart I’d encourage people to look at the guildhall website which is publicising a series of events including monthly comedy, tribute bands and cookery classes.
I think there is a point though that despite all the social media, websites etc, we do find out a lot about what is going on by just being around the town and seeing posters. When the weather is bad we miss out on this source of information.
If I see a market place event advertised when I am walking through the market place, I am far more likely to remember about it than if I see it advertised on line, when my mind is on other things.
I saw a poster for the bus on the Town Council noticeboard in Abbey Close last week but that was the only place I saw it advertised.
Toothbus has it’s own twitter account here https://twitter.com/ToothBus but doesn’t tweet much!
This is about everyone rowing in the same direction again isn’t it? (Hidden Britain report) It is possible to do more to let everyone know what is going on but it takes a little bit of effort to ‘cascade’ this out to everyone.
How many different organisations are there running, promoting and supporting Abingdon? I wonder if it’s time to get everyone together and see how we can support each other?
With a good structure for communicating activities we could then encourage shops like doctors surgeries, Waitrose and Co-op to have a ‘What’s on Board’ like they do in the library.
Is this something the Mayor could take the first step towards?
We are always happy to put up “Whats On “posters on our notice board at The Honey Pot Florist.We have lots of people passing by who stop and look.