SOUP and good conversation brought a town's community together yesterday.

Dalton Creatives hosted their first Big Lunch event to unite all corners of the community around the table.

The group hope to welcome guests to a number of community events in future.

Shaun Blezard, director of the group, said: "I think it's really important to get the community together. It's something that we've lost over the years through lots of different things.

"To sit down with the community around the table and have something to eat or chat doesn't happen enough these days.

"Dalton's got a pretty good community anyway, but we've still got problems of isolation with unpaid carers, single parents, the elderly, so we want to find ways that they can all come along."

The lunch was the first event held by the group, set up to bring people together in shared spaces with shared activity.

While guests enjoyed a range of food , part of the aim of the day was to discuss how best to move forward.

Cllr Blezard said: "Part of the process now is finding out what people want in Dalton. We've had some nice chats with people and we've got a clipboard for people to write down some thoughts.

"It's about putting ourselves out there and knowing it's going to be a slow process until people hear about us.

"It's about the little acorns and getting the conversation started.

"Hopefully, people will go away from this smiling and tell their friends that they've had a good time and we'll get more and more people in future."

Ahead of the event, guests were asked to bring their own offerings to the table to complete a Jacob's Join to share around.

Cllr Blezard said: "I made a couple of pans of soup and the tomato and lentil has gone down particularly well. A lady brought a beautiful quiche in and we've had cakes, biscuits and salads. It's been fantastic.

"Any leftovers we're going to take to the Community Kitchen because that starts half an hour after we finish, so nothing is going to go to waste.

"We want to try and do a few more things like this in Dalton on a more regular basis.

"It's been good. We've had some good chats with people, and a lot of nice food that's been brought and eaten. It's been a really nice community atmosphere."