Champion London Chinatown's Heritage

Brilliant backers Here’s a brief but bumper update on our project: Walking tours have proved so popular that we’ve welcomed over 1100 people back to Chinatown since last summer and raised over £3000 for three Chinatown charities. We have bookings throughout this year and demand for private tours is so high that this year we’ve invested in training five more History Champions for our incredible volunteer team. Our intangible food culture heritage project concluded in February with the launch of our free food heritage trail map. This project involved eight volunteers who recorded original oral histories and food production techniques, which have now been archived. The maps are available to collect from outside China Exchange and we’re given out 7,000 already. After some pandemic related false starts, we are finally installing our Chinatown heritage boards. We aim to unveil these to mark the 2023’s East and Southeast Asian heritage month this September. We would love to invite you – the people who made this happen – to the unveiling ceremony (Wednesday 28 September 11am-12noon). Please email us if you wish to receive an invitation ([email protected]). We anticipate that we’ll send one final message to you once the boards are up. We hope you’ll see the impact of what you helped to create. Thank you for your support and involvement in Champion Chinatown Heritage, our 2021 project.

Brilliant backers We wanted to let you know how our project is progressing. Our History Champions have completed their training and started giving tours of London's Chinatown last month. They've had rave reviews from visitors so far and we think all tour guests are in for a unique and rich experience. Book your own place and see what all the hype is about! Tickets available here: https://chinaexchange.uk/whats-on/ Our Food Heritage Trail volunteers have started their process of documenting heritage in Chinatown. Following an intensive training weekend, they are now in the early stages of securing the involvement of people from our local neighbourhood. We've also just finished an extensive consultation exercise for our Chinatown history boards. This involved over 70 people and included 1:1 conversations, focus groups, surveys and on-street canvassing. We recognise what an important moment it is to create the first permanent public display of East and South East Asian history in Chinatown and we wanted to understand more thoroughly what people's expectations are for these boards. Now we're working with a talented team to bring these expectations to life. And, even with all this to manage (there are many, many to do lists in our lives just now), we're always thinking of you - the amazing and generous people who made this happen. We're so grateful for your support and we'll look forward to telling you more in the autumn.

Hello Chinatown Champions It’s been a month since we met our crowdfunding goal and we have not wasted any time getting started. Here’s what we’ve been working on: Our new History Champions tour guides are now fully trained and ready to conduct their first tours this summer. Dates for in-person Chinatown tours will be released next week - see www.chinaexchange.uk for details. The history boards are in the development phase as we hear views from a wide range of people with a connection to the area. Through both one-to-one conversations and group discussions we have been learning more about people's expectations and hopes for this new public permanent display. This consultation process will continue throughout June and July as we develop the content of the boards. Our food heritage trail volunteers have all signed up and the trail's research and development process will start at the end of July. It's looking tasty so far! You made all of this possible! Thank you. We'll provide our next formal update in mid-August - in the meantime, you can get in touch [email protected].

Thank you to everyone who backed our campaign. Spacehive are processing your donations and we've already got started on project delivery - we cannot wait to introduce you to our new History Champion volunteers who started their training this week. We're getting in touch as some of you have asked us about adding Gift Aid to your donations - we thought we would share the details with everyone who backed the campaign. If you made your donation as an individual and you are a UK tax payer, you can choose to add Gift Aid to your donation. This allows China Exchange to then claim an additional 25% on top of your donation from HMRC - this would be a substantial boost for our work. If you would like to support us in this way, please complete your details here: https://forms.gle/8rLyd5Kyvv1azd117 If you would prefer a paper form, please email [email protected] and we will provide one to you.