Engagement Strategy

LITTLE

ACORNS

Our Vice Chairman Nick Atkinson is continuing with his campaign to engage with future Freemen and hosted another “Little Acorns” day planting oak trees grown from our own acorns on Sunday 20th March. These trees will replace the 30 we lost due to Storm Arwen. There was a fantastic turnout and we were so proud to receive positive comments and answer yet more questions regarding all that we do. Watch for our next Little Acorns project in the coming months - building bee hives.

LORD MAYORS PARADE 1ST MAY 2022

After a 2 year absence, it was our great pleasure to once again join Canon Clare McLaren in St Nicholas’s Church for the annual Lord Mayor’s parade and ceremony. The procession was led by Chairman David Wilson and the Lord Mayor, Cllr Karen Robinson Many thanks to those Freemen who were able to join us. Those who were able, stayed for the service to commemorate Danish Liberation Day on 5 May which celebrates the surrender of German troops in Denmark and Norway on 5 May 1945. During World War II, the entire Danish merchant navy fleet was ordered by their government not to return to Denmark after German armed forces occupied the country on April 9, 1940. Some 6,000 Danish sailors of all ages and ranks spent the next five years sailing the world’s oceans in service of the Allies, and half of them would end up in the UK. In the summer of 1940, the Danish consul in Newcastle offered the city as the ‘official home town’ for the Danish War Sailors, as they came to be called. The following year, the British Government opened a Danish club for them in St Nicholas’ Building opposite Newcastle Cathedral. Today there is a memorial plaque on the side of the building. An annual service is held, to commemorate the relationship between Newcastle and Demark, and to pay respect to the thousands of Danish sailors who called the city their home during the Second World War.