We are so excited about seeing your market activity over the coming weeks and don’t forget – if your market does not fall between May 13th 27th then you can still take part – May is Markets Month.

With over 900 Markets taking part last year, you will already have heard that Love Your Local Market is the biggest markets the UK has ever seen.  This year over fifteen countries worldwide, who came to Brixton Village Market on April 30th to sign a Memorandum of Understanding committing to participation, have adopted the concept.

What was started here in the UK by all you hard working traders and operators, has been an inspiration to the world of markets and you should be very proud that you have started a movement creating the largest market event in the world.  Hopefully by now we have received registrations for 1,000 markets participating in #LYLM2015 – if your market is not one of them, then we hope you will register now to #BePartofthe1000.

Competition Time
In advance of this years Love Your Local Market, we would like to make you aware of two competitions that will be running from May 1st and into June, which we hope will capture some of the energy of this years celebrations.
The competition will be asking for video and photographic contributions from market operators, traders and members of the public and we hope that you will use the Press Release Template that can be found in the Love Your Local Market Campaign Pack to send details to your local and regional newspapers and TV and radio stations.

Video Competition
For this we are simply wanting people to capture what it is they love about their local market.  There is a prize of £200 to the winning and the outcome will be decided by Facebook Likes.  We hope that this approach will give you plenty of material to engage with traders and customers during Love Your Local Market fortnight, increase activity on your Facebook pages and grow the brand awareness of Love Your Local Market.

Photo Competition
Once again the outcome will be decided by the number of Facebook Likes that constitute votes for the pictures submitted.

We are hoping to have a little bit more fun with this one though and have come up with four categories based around the Love Your Local Market acronym.  There is a prize of £50 for each category with an additional £100 for the overall winner.

The categories are:
LLoveliest (market, customer, product, trader etc)
YYoungest (trader, business, customers, etc)
LLongest (market, visiting customers, serving trader/management, etc)
MMerriest (product, trader, customer, etc)

To download the Campaign Pack go to: http://loveyourlocalmarket.org.uk/lylm2014/?wpdmdl=2
From May 1st you can submit your entries using the following links:
Video: http://woobox.com/jmd9ka
Photo: http://woobox.com/zgou47

By Ellie Gill
Love Your Local Market Manager
ellie@loveyourlocalmarket.org.uk
www.loveyourlocalmarket.org.uk