Rathbone Derby has been reaching out to its city with a packed programme of events including a lunch to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond jubilee.

With support from a host of local folks including St Peter’s Church and business bidding to regenerate their area, Rathbone set up a street party complete with tombola.

“Our young people organised this event and the hope was that members of the public would take an hour out of their day to come together and enjoy lunch to mark the Diamond Jubilee and get to know each other better” said Aaron Denton, Youth Programmes Coordinator at Rathbone Derby.

Dawn Shiels-Houston (Community Support Officer, Derbyshire Police), Jonie Agencie (Team Manager, Connexions Derby) and Rev. Anita Matthews (St Peter’s in the City, Derby and Rathbone Chaplain).

But organising a street party isn’t the only thing the partners are doing to portray St Peter’s Quarter in a positive light. Local artist Darren Reynolds has been working with Rathbone trainees to create a colourful mural to celebrate the Olympic torch coming through the city. Darren commented: “The Olympics is obviously really important to the whole country and to Derby as we hosted the Torch Relay. We used this as the inspiration for the design.”

Being such optimistic people, Rathbone Derby also held a Do Something Positive Day recently where good causes show-cased their work at St Peter’s brilliantly refurbished church.

This raft of community work hasn’t gone unnoticed and has certainly caught the ear of BBC Radio Derby – who has been massively supportive. The city’s newspaper – The Derby Evening Telegraph – also featured Rathbone learner Feven Ghebremedhin in their pages as part of their We Want to Work campaign.

Stephen Jeffery, chair of the St Peter’s Quarter Board concluded: “There is a great sense of community spirit in the area which we are building on under our new status as a Business Improvement District.”