A day in the life of the Borough Police Commander

This is a speech given by Commander Mark Toland, the Brent Borough Commander, Metropolitan Police on 15th April 2010.

He talks first about growing up in Brent and his career, and how he came to be the Commander. Then he picked an interesting day, 29th June 2009, and talked about what he'd done. As he talked about the day's events, he explained what they were aiming to do and why, and how the public can help the police and vice versa.

Gavin Selerie reads from "Music Duel"

On 21st January 2010, local poet Gavin Selerie talked about his roots in the Cricklewood/Willesden area, and read from his recently published book "Music Duel". This includes poems about Stoll Film Studios, the Slade Brook and the Welsh Harp.

At Gavin's request, we only recorded the part where he was reading his poetry. You can watch this below.

5 reasons we need fiction more than ever - Melissa Benn

Melissa Benn, local author, gave a great talk on 5th November 2009 at Cricklewood Library on "5 reasons we need fiction more than ever".

Apologies for the delay in getting it posted to the blog - hopefully better late than never. Enjoy. :-)

Promoting Green Transport lecture

This talk features Mike Evans, the Senior Sustainable Transport Officer in the London Borough of Brent, speaking about "Promoting Green Transport"

It happened at 7pm on Thursday, 11 December 2008.

History of Cricklewood (lecture)

This is a talk that was given at Cricklewood Library on 9th October 2008 by Malcolm Barres-Baker, of the Brent Museum. He gave a talk with slideshow about the history of Cricklewood illustrated with photos from the local archives.

(Apologies for the shaking/fuzziness in the beginning, it wasn't till about 4 minutes in that we realised we needed to zoom in on the slideshow for them to come into focus on the video!)

Memories of Cricklewood during wartime

This talk was given by local resident, Mrs Nora Marshall, who has lived in the same house in Temple Road Cricklewood since 1940. It attracted quite a crowd, and proved to be one of the most popular talks that has been given.

Mrs Marshall talks about:

• What the houses & Temple Road were like (1.5 min; 24 min, 38.5 min)
• Food rationing (7 min, 32 min) and clothes rationing (26 min)
• Local businesses and shops (28 min, 37 min, 42 min)
• The bombing (16.5 min, 33 min, 51 min)
• Smiths the factory (21 min)
• Gladstone Park (44.5 min)