Somewhere nice to live.

Somewhere nice to live.

Ok so it’s all been a bit negative of late, but not everything in south Leeds is horrible. Last year I volunteered at the Beeston Festival and had a fantastic day.

A few of us from the community group sat on a stall to encourage young people to draw some art work that could go on the gable ends of the houses waiting for demolition; a project that was to hopefully be funded by charity, a local housing association and maybe the Local Authority. The idea is that as well as seeing the empty houses passersby (good and bad) also see some uplifting art that explains that this is regeneration in action and not general neglect.

The day was sunny and I got nicely sunburned. The Festival is great, loads of stalls, music, entertainment and activities and some amazing food on offer.

I had a great day and it was good to spend the day with some of the people that really helped to support the local community, sadly many are redundant now. Short term funding financed many community outreach workers but this funding was one of the first things to be slashed once the recession began. (Ok not meaning to be negative, but this does seem to be the case)

The afternoon was spent talking to local residents and getting local kids to produce some artwork that they might want to see on a gable end of a local house. We got some first-class designs and it really highlighted that children all really just want the same things: somewhere nice to live, somewhere safe to play and somewhere nice to relax. It’s not a lot to ask for really.

Sadly my understanding is that our request for funding was turned down so there won’t be any gable end art, but I’ll definitely be baking a cake or two for the festival this year (I’m a pretty mean baker even if I do say so myself) and hope to have as much fun there as I did last time.

Regretfully I don’t think I can show individual pictures but here’s a few of the more colourful creations.