Of mice and men . .

Grrrr, Bad Community Activist!

Last year I really enjoyed the Beeston Festival and had an absolutely clear intention to go this year and contribute by baking a cake or just buying something from one of the lovely food stalls. However, as so often happens real life gets in the way – bloody real life.

I am currently in the midst of completing an assignment for a Masters course, which is proving a lot more difficult than I had intended, and writing this post is proving to be a welcome respite from writing about pedagogical rationales and reflective and collaborative learning.

After initially finding it difficult to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, it is 2011 after all) I now find that I have to cut 1000 words from my assignment.

So what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men? In the face of the above I completely forgot about the festival, about baking a cake (I love baking) and enjoying a bit of interaction with the fellow members of the South Leeds Massive and I am gutted and very cross with myself for being such a knob. I saw a banner advertising it and thought “oh I must go”, and then realised that it had taken place the day before, curses!

I’ve missed the hottest day of the year sitting at my laptop, grrrrr, and have become a virtual recluse in the last three to four weeks (I really don’t remember my last assignment being this difficult), barely leaving the house not even for beer and disco.

I have taken a fair bit of time off work however to write, so it’s been interesting to be at home during the week and seeing what occurs in our little derelict corner of the world. As predicted in other posts the summer weather, disappointing as it has been, has brought out the evening socialites of South Leeds. It’s the South Leeds Summer Lullaby – blaring music is short bursts (just long enough to pop outside and have a nice fag) and shouting to the person standing less than 2 feet away from you . . . . aahhhh, how lovely; squealing car tyres, screeching breaks and revving engines and yes the ever present bass-heavy throb of dub step.

Yesterday was Father’s day though I did manage to get a card, my Dad’s present didn’t arrive until today and I’ll be honest I didn’t really make a big fuss of him which is not great is it? So confessions and whingeing out of the way it’s back to work on my assignment and to wrap my dad’s belated pressie.

Hopefully I’ll have something interesting to report next time.

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.