Children's activity guide 'like the Yellow Pages' marks 40 years in Maidenhead

A longstanding community directory for children’s activities is marking its 40th anniversary in Maidenhead.

CHIME guides or  'Childhood in Maidenhead explored’, were first created by a group of mothers concerned about the lack of information on children’s activities in the area in the early 1980s.

The voluntary CHIME organisation launched its first 50-page CHIME Family Information and Leisure Guide in 1984 – a distinct, bright yellow-covered booklet filled with ideas to keep children entertained.

One of the founding members, Erika Seekings described the ‘comprehensive guide’ as ‘unique’ for the time.

She said: “We were all young mums with children under five at the time. In those days there wasn’t a huge amount that you could do with children, so we were producing a leaflet of what was going on in the Easter holidays, summer holidays and Christmas holidays.

“It was a huge effort. Everybody that had a book used it as a directory like the Yellow Pages. Quite a lot of the time we discovered it was grandparents that were discovering what they could do with children.”

CHIME also simultaneously produced three A5 information leaflets every year ahead of each spring, summer and winter school holidays which complemented these guides.

The ‘endless list’, collated by an ‘army’ of volunteer researchers, comprised clubs, community, sport and leisure centres, Sunday schools, family services, self-help and support groups, dining out and parties as well as parent and toddler groups, pre-schools and nursery schools.

The booklets covered Maidenhead, Cookham and Bourne End as well as Henley, Marlow and Wycombe, Reading, Bracknell and Wokingham, and Slough, Windsor and Ascot.

CHIME was granted charitable status as the Children’s Maidenhead Association in 1985 and it updated and published the CHIME booklets bi-annually from 1984 until 2000 and every three years until 2017.

CHIME was approached by the council in 2000 to run the Children’s Information Service (CIS) but it was too large a project for the voluntary group to manage alone so they offered informal support instead.

The CIS became The Family Information Service (FIS) and covered the whole borough which required a separate booklet to cover the Windsor and Ascot area, published between 2001 and 2009.

Founding member and treasurer Jane Crawford said: “Ultimately The Children’s Maidenhead Association could not sustain producing CHIME booklets for both the Maidenhead area and the Windsor and Ascot area.

“We didn’t have the volunteer researchers or the financial resources so together with the reduced scope of the FIS this resulted in us just concentrating on the Maidenhead area from 2011.

“All CHIME publications are distributed free of charge through places used by children and their carers eg. local libraries, community and leisure centres, council offices, playgroups, toddler groups etc.

“The CHIME project was financed by our own fundraising activities, advertising, grants and donations from local companies and trusts.

“For many years, the only expenditure is for printing. Fundraising was an ongoing task. As soon as one edition of the CHIME booklet was published fundraising had to start for the next edition.”

She said the CHIME guides were the ‘sort of booklet that is highly informative if you have just moved into the area’ and was a popular resource among professional groups of community workers, health visitors, council and tourist information officers.

The COVID pandemic halted the publication of the print booklet but in 2022 the CHIME guide was issued online as an 80-page flick book.

To view the online guide visit: www.tinyurl.com/y8c8t36e