Laurs Woodward-Drake, chairman of Exmouth Chamber of Commerce, writes for the Journal
Both Exmouth and Budleigh are beautiful tourism destinations and have an array of amazing hospitality and retail businesses in each to welcome visitors. They are also both brilliant towns to live and work in.
Although 2020’s lockdowns have brought a huge range of struggles to the tourism industries, one of the positive things that have come out of this year, is that many residents have had the chance to go outside more and appreciate the beauty of the area we live in.
In our Chamber of Commerce business network support forums, maintaining a positive mindset and looking after our wellbeing has been a key factor for pushing through this crisis. During one of our Breakfast in the Cloud networking events, featuring guest speaker Mark McGlade (Managing Director of Home Instead), the group discussed the wonders of taking pictures of the views at sunrise or sunset, as we had a few budding photographers within the network.
Running with this idea for our love local initiatives, The Exmouth Chamber of Commerce has partnered up with Budleigh Chamber and The Journal, to run a competition for both residents and visitors.
I’m pleased to announce that, launching on Wednesday January 6, the Exmouth and Budleigh Sunrise & Sunset Competition 2021 hopes to brighten up January and engage both the local and business communities with images of our amazing towns, showing them off as great places to live/work and visit.
Budleigh Salterton Chamber of Commerce’s Chair, Helen Warren, said “We are pleased to join with Exmouth Chamber in this Sunrise & Sunset competition. We have experienced some amazing skies recently which have been shared on social media and made the community appreciate how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful environment.
"In challenging times when many have not been able to share time with their families a walk along the beach while the early morning or evening light is enhancing the view can be uplifting and I encourage anyone with a camera or smartphone to venture out and submit their entries.”
The competition will run throughout January, with weekly features in The Journal of some of the entries, along with regular posts on both Chamber’s social platforms.
Inspiration for the idea came from Mark’s brilliant talk and so it was great to hear that Home Instead have generously offered to sponsor. Mark commented:
“Home Instead are pleased to sponsor the photo competition. We are so fortunate to live in this beautiful part of the world and experience the most amazing sunrise and sunsets throughout the year. We thought it would be lovely to share some of these moments captured on camera by the readers of the Journal, to share and enjoy with the community and be thankful for the opportunity to live on the beautiful Jurassic Coast”
As the Chambers are both business networks and have been supporting local businesses with our #lovelocal initiatives, the winner will receive £75 to spend in a local business of their choice.
Mark commented: “We are pleased to be able to support the local businesses at this time and encourage everyone to shop local where possible to help our High Streets recover from the events of this past year”
Helen from the Budleigh Chamber has also offered to include any winning entries from Budleigh in a future Budleigh calendar and on the new TIC website.
So if you have experienced an amazing sunrise or sunset in Exmouth or Budleigh, take a picture and send it in to chair@exmouthchamber.co.uk by February 3rd 2021 . Please use the hashtag #ExmouthSunComp2021 or #BudleighSunComp2021 when posting so we can re-share your great photos too.
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