As we reached the milestone of our 18th birthday, we naturally found ourselves in a reflective mood and so we decided to rummage through the YLL archives to look back at the journey our publication has been on.
One constant during these 18 years has been our company director, Karen James, who was the one to come up with the idea of creating a local directory to distribute amongst the neighbours of her local area. There were many late nights as she juggled parenthood and home renovations at the same time as putting together the inaugural directory from the front room of her home.
Edition 1 of “The Sleaford Lincs Directory” landed through your letterboxes in February 2005, a 24 page booklet mostly in black and white. It’s fascinating to see that in this very first edition we find various advertisers who continue to appear in our magazine to this very day. Over the coming years the team also produced various other local directories that were distributed in other areas around Sleaford.
The magazine continued to evolve throughout the noughties and by the end of 2010 it started to resemble the publication we recognise today with its eye-catching front covers. As you can see, the December 2010 edition featured a custom-made illustration by someone who worked for the magazine at the time, depicting her and all her colleagues as they ride a festive sleigh – if only we could deliver our magazine to you like that every December!
As the magazine went into the next decade, distribution between both the Sleaford and Village magazines was up to 20,500 homes and businesses, a few thousand off the tally we stand at today. 2011 was an important year as it was on the 5th anniversary that the magazines were merged into one with a new-look ‘Your Sleaford Lincs’, but it was the following month in March when the magazine was named ‘Your Local Lincs’ and as you’ll see, that’s how things have remained to this day!
Your Local Lincs has been an integral part of our community over the years, advertising countless businesses, putting their name in front of all our many readers and, in turn, helping the local economy go round. For many, the magazine continues to serve as a directory so that when someone needs a particular service, Your Local Lincs is sitting there on their coffee table and so is the first port of call.
With the distribution area expanding to over 23,000 homes and businesses across 50 villages, you can appreciate it has meant we’ve required a rather large team of distributors to get this load of magazines through all these doors! Currently we have 47 distributors on that team, so it’s quite likely the number of distributors we’ve had over the years runs into the hundreds. Many of these have been young teenagers experiencing the world of work for the first time, learning about such delightful grown-up things as time management and responsibilities. Local schoolchildren have also undergone work experience programs here in the office over the years, with us taking them under our wing and showing them how a local independent business is run.
Beginning in 2015, Your Local Lincs sponsored the NK Community Champion Awards for a number of years with YLL presenting various awards to members of the local area to celebrate the contributions they’ve made to our community. Supporting charities as well as coordinating charity campaigns of our own has also been at the heart of our activities.
For the more recent staff members who have been through the doors at YLL, we have joined the team as readers of the magazine who already recognise what an invaluable resource it is to our local area, and so have continued that ethos of serving our own community. We have a genuine passion to fly its flag. Every month we go out there getting to know you and your clubs, charities, businesses etc.
So now the magazine has reached 18 years old, it’s surely as apt a time as any to raise a glass and look forward to many more years of being the little pocket of sunshine community magazine that appears through your letterbox every month. A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to our pages over the years with their articles, adverts, news, photographs, etc. and to everyone who reads our pages.
Your Local Lincs Team x
