Year of celebration

A year of celebration...

2012, The year of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee; of the anniversary of Dickens’ birth; of the Royal Engineers; of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It’s the year of Medway. Our Year of Celebration.

This year sees a number of landmark dates that are important both nationally and locally, here in Medway. We’ve picked out some key events and dates for the year

• Queen's Diamond Jubilee:
Medway is planning three days of celebrations to mark Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee. On  Saturday, 2 June we will be staging a festival on the river, which defines Medway. The following day a special service will be held at Rochester Cathedral, the second oldest in the country. Then on Monday, 4 June we will be joining in the national celebrations by lighting six community Jubilee beacons.

• Dickens Bicentenary:
There will be a series of events, performances, talks and displays across Medway in February, to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Britain’s greatest novelist, Charles Dickens.

Dickens spent many years of his life in Medway and a number of his books are based on the area, including Great Expectations and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. A travelling Dickens conference, A Tale of 4 Cities is taking place in each of the locations in Dickens' work, with the Chatham leg being organised by Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of Kent. The Guildhall Museum (the museum was opened in 1897 as part of Queen Victoria's
Diamond Jubilee and 2012 will be the museum's 115th anniversary) will hold a Dickens exhibition and the Royal Engineers are loaning their collection of first editions. In addition, Medway will be staging its annual summer Dickens festival in June and Dickensian Christmas in December.

• Royal Engineers: Medway is the Home of the Royal Engineers and 2012 is the 200th anniversary of their headquarters being established in the area. It is the 100th anniversary of the Royal Engineers Museum and 25 years since the Queen opened the museum on its current site. The Royal Engineers will be building a bicentenary bridge on the Great
Lines Heritage Park to mark the occasion and will also be staging a special football match against Gillingham Football Club, who in 2012 will be celebrating 100 years since changing their name to Gillingham.

• Olympics: With our £11m regional centre of sporting excellence, Medway Park, serving as a pre-games training camp for a number of countries including Senegal, Burundi, Congo and Barbados, we are very pleased to be having the Olympic Torch coming through Medway. The Medway Mile is a tremendously popular community participation event and we will also be hosting the British Transplant Games in the summer of 2012.

• World Heritage Site: We are bidding to be named as the UK nomination for World Heritage Site status for Chatham Historic Dockyard and its Defences and are hopeful there will be an announcement in 2012. This would be fitting tribute to Chatham's role at the forefront of British naval history for the past four centuries, with 2012 being the 445th anniversary since Queen Elizabeth I named Chatham as a Royal Dockyard. 2012 will also be the 250th anniversary of the naming of HMS Victory.

When all this activity is added to our already impressive 28 days of free festivals and events each year, more than anywhere else in the southeast, Medway is the place to be in 2012 and we hope you will have the opportunity to take part in our impressive array of activities and join us in our Year of Celebration.