Thousands join us to celebrate the opening of Northern Roots
On Saturday 19 September we opened the gates to Northern Roots for the very first time with The BIG Welcome, a free, family-friendly afternoon of nature, food, fun, creativity and community.
Thousands of people from across Oldham and beyond joined us to explore our urban farm, café, shop, play area and wider site. The day marked a huge milestone in the journey to transform 160 acres of neglected land into a place where people, planet and place can thrive.
We hope you enjoyed exploring the play area, taking a peek into our urban farm, eating delicious food from the cafe, chatting with our growers, onsite businesses and volunteers, adding to our community artwork, browsing our shop, meeting performers and musicians and getting a little taster of the potential of our beautiful green urban space.
It was a day of nature, food, fun, creativity, hopefulness and joy.
Visitors enjoyed a host of free activities, including roaming performers, live music, free fairground rides, face painting, henna hand painting, wildflower seed bomb making, seed planting and community artwork, alongside plenty of opportunities to learn, play and get creative.
Our new farm-to-fork café, headed by award winning chef Mary-Ellen McTague, was also open for visitors to try for the first time, serving hearty, healthy food make with ingredients sourced from our own Snipe Clough farm.
Thank you for joining us
The BIG Welcome was a huge achievement for everyone involved and a real team effort.
We’d like to say a very big thank you to everyone who came along and helped us celebrate, as well as our team, partners, funders, volunteers and local communities who have poured so much into making this moment possible.
Northern Roots is a young charity with a long term vision. Over time, we will continue to grow, creating opportunities for local people, connecting communities with nature through health and education, bringing heritage stories back to life, supporting conservation, and providing new spaces for people to meet, learn, work and enjoy.
The BIG Welcome marked the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Northern Roots, but it is just the start of our adventure.
From Oldham, for everyone.
