Welcome to Western Park Beer Festival
Our supported Charities
Supporting Local
The Western Park Beer Festival began life to raise much needed funds for a new hall at the local parish church, St. Anne’s back in 2015 has since grown to include the Pop-Up and a Festival. Both these events with the local community and local businesses have raised over £50k for range of local charities in and around Leicester and Leicestershire.
We have supported a range of charities have including, Leicester Wheels, Western Ward Community Enterprise, Loros, Coram East Midlands and Menphys, and because we a not-for-profit organisation run by local volunteers every penny raised goes towards our chosen charities.
So pop along and raise a glass in the knowledge that your enjoyment of craft beer is going to be helping others!
This year we proud to be supporting three, small local charities:
This Years Local Charities:
Hope Against Cancer
Hope Against Cancer is Leicestershire and Rutland’s local cancer research charity. Over the past 20 years, they have raised funds for cancer research in our area and have made clinical trials available to local people.
The charity works in partnership with local universities and hospitals to make sure that Leicestershire is a hub of expertise in cancer research and treatment.
Since they set up in 2003, they have funded over 60 research projects, tackling many different forms of cancer.
The charity’s focus is to beat cancer rather than manage the consequences. They prioritise research for early detection, treatment and prevention of cancer.
They have funded over 70 research projects in the form of fellowships, PhD studentships and consumable grants.
New ideas for cancer treatments are developed from the lab, where experiments are done to understand the molecular events that make a cancer cell. If the process of cancer formation or spread is known, drugs can be developed to target and stop this.
The charity has funded over 100 original research projects in partnership with our area’s hospitals and universities. Since opening in 2012, Hope Cancer Trials Centre has hosted over 30,000 patient attendances and has helped dozens of new cancer treatments come into use and nurture a new generation of cancer specialists.
Leicester Musical Memory Box
Leicester Musical Memory Box (LMMBox) is a Leicestershire-based Community Interest Company established in 2018 which is all about ‘making a difference with music’.
LMMBox believes that music is essential for all of us, for our health and well-being. Their fun, interactive music-based sessions are held in various locations in Leicester city (including at the hall at St Anne’s, Western Park) and Leicestershire and soon they will be offering regular sessions in Rutland. They also deliver weekly online sessions on Zoom.
It is widely known that music is especially beneficial to those experiencing memory loss or who have a diagnosis of dementia. Music can help stimulate memories and communication, reduce anxiety and agitation or help lift mood. This is especially the case with an individual’s own choice of music.
LMMBox is a Help Point for the charity Playlist for Life, so they also promote the use of personalised playlists and can assist people to create their play list, which they can use whenever it is needed.
They aim to enable participants and carers to see that it is possible to ‘live well with dementia’ and have arranged subsidised trips to dementia-friendly performances at Curve. As part of this year’s Dementia Action Week they also held a ‘Big Sing’ at Curve, bringing together over 130 participants from all of our groups.
They work in partnership with other local and National organisations to offer a wide range of other opportunities for their participants. These include an annual project (‘Hear & Now’) with musicians from the Philharmonic Orchestra, bringing together participants from their LMMBox and Geet Sangeet groups.
