We were delighted with the response to our invitation to nominate individuals who 'make Jericho feel special' for them to have a professional portrait taken by local photographer Fran Monks (www.franmonks.com). We received 60 nominations in all.
It was, of course, no easy task to select from all the impressive suggestions. However, after some debate, representatives of JLHT and the Jericho Community Association made the final choice below based on the following criteria:

• ‘To show a broad cross-section of Jericho’s communities, representing the diversity of cultural and religious backgrounds and different social and ethnic groups, while also keeping a gender balance in mind.

• To tell the stories of people whose contribution to the community tends to be given less prominence and who are not usually celebrated.

Some obvious stalwarts of Jericho are therefore be missing! But that is the point, precisely because they are obvious!

The successful nominees are:

Ash Patel, Court Candy

Bruce Heagerty, Canalboat Resident

Cheryl Codrington, St Barnabas’ School, Board of Governors & St Barnabas’ Church

Dana Marceta, Greening Jericho

Gary Clark, Port Meadow Warden

Gaye Jamieson, Jericho Pantry

Hannah Yeadon, Potter

Joel Bryan, The Coop, Walton Street

Mohammed Mahfouz, Al Shami restaurant

Sarah Montagu, Oxford Jewish Synagogue

Sue Pead, Jericho Community Centre

Fran Monks has already contacted most of the successful nominees, and even taken photographs of some of them. She has also very generously offered to take in the autumn a group photograph of everyone who was nominated to complement the individual portraits. We will make an announcement about this, and about an exhibition of the photographs, in due course. Fran's contribution to this project has already been enormous, and we are deeply grateful to her.