Starting with the Commercial Arcade, the traditional bright and colourful bunting – signalling the brighter days ahead – was put up by a team of some 15 volunteers from the Guernsey Street Festival.
Work started at 8am and Street Festival director and volunteer coordinator Andrew Pouteaux said he hoped to get everywhere completed by the end of the day.
‘It’s always a mark of the summer season,’ he said.
‘It brings some colour back to the streets. We’re a bunch of old friends, working as a team, and everyone’s very helpful.’
Most of the town was dressed with the help of a cherry picker, but in the Arcade ladders had to be used.
‘Underneath here is hollow,’ said Mr Pouteaux.
‘This was all bought by a Jerseyman in the 1860s, who had a beautiful plan for a lovely Arcade, which was going to be all glassed in and covered, so the drainage was taken away. But he went out of business, and it was taken over by a Guernsey company.
Underneath remains empty, now used as a storage basement for the shops, and therefore there’s no vehicles allowed.’
Katrina Bray, one of the volunteers from Titan Wealth who came to help, said that learning such stories made volunteering with the Street Festival team special.
Titan Wealth stores and looks after the bunting throughout the year. Each autumn, it grades the strands, assessing which ones are fit to be re-used next summer, and which need to be retired and donated.
‘We’ve still got boxes of the stuff,’ she said.
‘The bunting is here hopefully for years to come. It’s the hard work of Andrew and his team that bring all of this together to make it happen for the community.
'People will turn up in Town on Monday, notice the flags are up, but maybe won’t appreciate all of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes.
'It’s a huge team effort and a big job – organising the scaffold towers, the volunteers, speaking to the local businesses, making sure the awnings are back, and gaining access.’
Mr Pouteaux said the tradition started with the Young Business Group many years ago.
‘To put it in perspective, the first years saw the now-retired Peter Creasey up on a ladder, with Jonathan Creasey, who’s now in charge of Creasey’s, footing his father’s ladder. It’s been that long.’
The summer bunting will remain up until the end of September.
You need to be logged in to comment.