The next Mill Road Winter Fair will be on Saturday 4th December 2010 from 10:30 to 16:30. For timetable click here.

Mill Road is an ordinary street in Cambridge comprising mainly Victorian houses and shops. A rough survey in 2010 demonstrated that people of 85 different nationalities attend the local Mosque; another 25 nationalities are represented at St Barnabas Church and more again at the Hindu temple of Bharat Bhavan, St Philip's Church and the Mill Road Baptist Church. This means that, in the vicinity of this street in a small city in the East of England, people of some hundred different origins live and work together. Because Cambridge is too small to support individual "ethnic quarters" we are all mixed in together. We like it and it works!

If you talk to people from Rotherham or Lahore, Seoul or Sichuan, Caracas or Cambridge, it is clear that we all want the same things: A secure and safe environment; sufficient money to feed and clothe ourselves, and to remain healthy. We want our children to do well and be happy and we want to be treated with respect. If things don't go well, we want some support through the difficult times, a sanctuary.

This neighbourhood offers all those things. We are all bound by a sense of belonging, a real feeling of being at home, wherever we first came from.

Mill Road Winter Fair is the essence of Mill Road, distilled into a single day. Over 100 of the shops, cafes and restaurants open their doors and offer unusual dishes from their cultures, things which they might not usually serve here in England. Talented local people from all over the world emerge from their homes with arts and crafts, performances, food, entertainments and a warm welcome in a day of general celebration.

It is, in the truest sense, a 'unique' event.