Home News & Events News & Events TimeLine News September 2010 Shirley Collier 1942 Just at the start of the new school year, and as the Summer gently goes to meet Autumn, we are able to let you know about another TimeLine prize winner!   Exactly seventy years after the Blitz began, in September 1940, we are delighted to announce that the Putting it Down (Senior) Prize has been won by Shirley Collier.  We thought that her essay "The Sights, Sounds and Smells of War" really helped to describe what everyday life was like during the Blitz.  You can read the winning entry if you click here - and you will also be able to catch it in the special supplement of the Hackney Gazette which comes out on September 9th 2010.  So Shirley is the lucky winner of the prize - lunch or dinner for two at the delicious (and prize-winning) Yum Yum Thai Restaurant in Stoke Newington High Street.  We do hope you have a nice time!   And thank you very much to Yum Yum for donating the prize, and to the Hackney Gazette for publishing the winning entry so loads of people will definitely read it on the anniversary of the start of the Blitz. Do have a look - and listen - here to all the people and stories about Hackney during the Blitz - including memories of many people who wrote in to us.  We keep adding to the page, with lots more amazing stories and fantastic pictures to look at.   And don't forget - TimeLine still has  three more prize competitions about the Blitz for you to enter.  They are all  open until 31st October 2010.  You can read about them here, and we really look forward to seeing your stories (Juniors) and pictures (Seniors and Juniors). August 2010 Precious Umeke Some good news for the summer is that Precious Umeke has won the top prize in the Henry VIII competition that was in Issue 25 of TimeLine.  So Precious can settle down to a delicious cream tea with all the trimmings - sandwiches, cake, scones, jam, not forgetting the cream - at The Tea Rooms at 155 Stoke Newington Church Street.  Hope you have a scrummy time, Precious.   Runners-up prizes have also been won by Mark Taha and Zakiya Said, so congratulations to them too.  (By the way, the answer to the competition was that King Henry VIII had SIX wives). We also want to let you know about the Putting on the Blitz competitions (you can read about them if you click here).  There are four competitions altogether, two for juniors and two for seniors.  The winner of the seniors' writing competition will be announced in the Hackney Gazette in the first week of September, and by 9th September 2010 you will be able to read the winning entry there - as well as on this website of course.  And, as well as suddenly becoming such a famous writer, the lucky winner will get another prize - a slap up meal for two, very generously donated by Yum Yum Thai Restaurant in Stoke Newington High Street. We have decided to extend the deadline for the other competitions - juniors' creative writing, and the drawing competitions for both age groups - until October 31st 2010, so there is plenty of time to enter.  We have had lots of fantastic entries already, and look forward to receiving still more.   We are delighted that Professor Morag Schiach from Queen Mary, University of London has agreed to be the Chair of the judges who will select the winning entry -  which will also be published in the Hackney Gazette.  So do send in your entries to us before Halloween. A little later in the year there is going to be lots in the news about the 70th anniversary of the Blitz: you will soon be able to read, listen to and watch some stories on this website about what it was like to live through the Blitz - some people staying in Hackney, others being sent out of London to keep safe.  The stories are told by both children and the people with memories of those terrible times in 1940, and there will be lots of pictures of  the people involved in our Putting on the Blitz project.  As well as that, there is going to be a Special Issue of the Hackney Gazette about the Blitz in September 2010 with lots to learn about how things were in Hackney all those years ago, so do look out for that.   Plus, we are really hoping more people will share their memories of  Hackney and the Blitz with us.  We can put more on this website here, and we are also hoping to produce information packs as a community resource.  That will be quite expensive, and we are trying like crazy to raise enough money so we can do it.  If anybody would like to make a donation to help us - or if you could raise money, perhaps by holding a cake sale, please do!  If you would like to make a donation it is easy, if you click here - or let us know at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it if you have any other brilliant ideas to help us fundraise. Spring to Summer 2010 We have not added any news for a long time, but that does not mean we have not been busy.  In March 2010 Awards for All gave us funds towards Where in the World, which is our fun and educational community cohesion project centred on Hackney.  If you would like to read more about its award-winning creative approach to celebrating the ethnic diversity of Hackney, please click here.  We are very happy to be working on that with a range of community organisations and people of all ages who have volunteered to take part - including one Hackney secondary school. In May 2010 we joined with The Learning Trust,  Rio Cinema, Age Concern Hackney and Hackney Council to celebrate Local & Community History Month with our Putting on the Blitz project.  Over a hundred people - including more than fifty pupils from six Hackney primary and secondary schools, representatives of the older residents of Hackney, with their personal memories of The Blitz, joined The Speaker, and lots of other very special people (including the Queen's own representative to the London Borough of Hackney) in Hackney Town Hall to mark the 70th anniversary of The Blitz, which started in September 1940.  If you would like to know more about Putting on the Blitz, please have a look here.  To find out about more of our news you could read our most recent Annual Report.   Why we need your help .... When readers contact us the two things they say to us most often are:  "I love TimeLine" and "Keep up the good work".   Last year we did a consumer research survey about things that people like about TimeLine, and what we should change.  Click here to read some of the responses we got.   So you can see that people like TimeLine a lot - but we are always struggling to keep going because after five years we still do not have any core funding. We have applied for funding from lots of places over the past four years, but almost always we get the big NO, which is why we were so pleased to have won some help from Awards for All.  Like all charities, we are very grateful to receive grant funding and donations to support our work.  The support received from individuals is a big part of what keeps us going.  If you are a TimeLine fan, please consider making a financial donation.  As Tesco (which started in Hackney almost one hundred years ago but - we think very meanly - refused to offer support to TimeLine when we were researching their corporate history through people who still had memories of it) says - every little helps.   If you would like to make a donation,  it is now very easy.  Please just click here, and you will be able to make a donation online to TimeLine through a brilliant organisation called JustGiving.  Thankyou! Read more...