Hosting a vintage fair
It took a whole army of volunteers to make the UEA Vintage Fair a success, but I think we can all agree it was worth it.
Let us start by taking you through the journey of getting to UEA…
Ever since the date was booked and the stall was reserved by the president of UEA Oxfam Society, our deputy-manager Emma was on a mission to secure the jazziest, festival-like and most unusual items for us to sell. If it looked like it belonged at Latitude – it was going to be on our stall.
First there came all the preparation! Our vintage specialist volunteer Tash, was working over-time but she was absolutely in her element working through all of the clothes. And through all of this, she still had time to do her beautiful little descriptions on every single label. When I (Cerys) came in and visited one week there were only a few items put aside and a week later there were more than five boxes – everyone was so committed to finding items to suit our UEA audience. (However, when we told Wendy to look out for ‘weird and wonderful’ items, I’m not sure we were expecting to take a bone necklace similar to something out of the Flintstones!)
Next, came the stall! Emma and Georgie were greeted by Georgia, Anna and I who were adamant to get the stall up and running as quickly as we could. Before we’d even got the clothes on the rails, we were attracting attention - leading to a busy morning! Despite there being exam stress in the air, our stall caught people’s eyes with a little help from our big foil ‘Oxfam’ balloons. And, although many were perhaps not looking to spend due to the time of year we came to the uni, we had several people ask us about our zero-waste products – spreading the message further about what Oxfam sells and promotes. 
It was lovely to see so many students take time out of their day to stop off at our stall to browse, buy and even just to talk to us. Within the first five minutes, we had sold our first item, making it all worth it. It would have been worth it from just selling one item, let alone raising just under £200 on what we saw to be a very quiet day at UEA.
Thank you to all that helped make this a success, something we hope to continue running at UEA into the near future. Thank you to Emma, Anna and Georgia for helping make this event a triumph and offering to help in any way you could.
P.S – I think it is also important to note Georgia’s efforts to try and make The Vamps visit us. Although they didn’t respond to our tweets or persistent efforts to get our flyer in their hands – Georgia did give one to who we believe was a crew member. Close enough!
Written by: Cerys Rees
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