South West Burnley Together


The South West Burnley Together group meets at Howard Street Community Centre to discuss issues relevant to residents in the area – who have an open invitation to take part.

Chaired by Alicia Foley from Calico Housing, the group brings together community police officers, councillors, residents, local authority representatives, health care professionals and other community representatives who all know and care for the area.


The meetings are a terrific opportunity for the Ground UP team to begin to identify opportunities to start conversations with people living in South West Burnley. So far the group have discussed issues around the funding of the Stoops and Hargher Clough Community Centre, which in part led to Cath and Iain getting involved with banner -making for the big London march last Monday.

Through the group we have learned about Groundwork’s proposals for improving some underused spaces in the area and heard about the consultation methods they employed. A consideration of how to engage people in discussion and encourage ownership of the new spaces elicited a wealth of local knowledge from those sitting around the table. In particular we talked about what motivates people to get involved in this sort of activity. We thought about how younger people might be involved. Their aspirations (and sometimes their poverty of aspiration) were considered along with the power of geographical  boundaries both political and conceptual. Moreover, residents who have experienced ineffective consultation can be suspicious about those who make promises. All of this only served to reinforce our confidence that the Ground UP approach is worth exploring.   


The South West Burnley Together group have also been thinking hard about National Road Safety Awareness Week. Jackie Flynn from Lancashire County Council is organising banners for schools to hang from their railings and gates, whilst Iain has suggested a family procession to highlight the need for drivers to watch their speed. More information to follow! 

In our last meeting we talked a lot about home economics and Alicia described some exciting schemes she has developed to help people manage their finances and eat more healthily.  Potential project ideas emerged from this discussion, especially with SW Burnley resident Wendy who works with older people and saw the potential for inter-generational cooking hints and tips. Combined with Alexis Walker’s WorldWar II reminiscence sessions this could be a great opportunity to get people talking about sense of place in SW Burnley!

Stoops and Hargherclough in London


Well, we did it! The banner was finished in time for the march in London and I hear the team carried it with pride and a lot of noise, taking their local campaign to a national event and joining with tens of thousands of other people to speak up against the cuts and for a fairer future.
'The Save our Centre banner from the centre, got a lot of interest. Loads of people asked us about the banner. And we told them why we where campaigning for the centre, And were against the charges, and fighting to save our centre for all the community groups and children who use it.' Paul

We were also able to connect with the 'Make the March' national campaign to celebrate the art and creativity behind the banners and placards created for the march. We may not win the competition, but Make the March were fantastic in helping us to share our message by sharing tweets and links to the blog. Social media has helped us to make a local campaign reach a national audience and be part of a much bigger conversation.

We are hand made and digital, local and national!



Making the March

I have just come across this site 'Make the March' encouraging people to share the protest art they are making to take to the march in London on the 20th October! Fantastic. I definitely think the Stoops and Hargherclough Group should share their 'We love our community centre' banner as it is going to be big, bold, bright and beautiful.

It was Bob and Roberta Smith's twitter feed that led me to the page as he is going to be one of the judges, he is also one of the artist who appears in the 'stuff we like' page on our blog here! I have talked to so many young people about his work over the past couple of weeks and they have been inspired by his art, his humour, his politics and his style. I even dragged my paralympic poster off the living room wall to take it in to a school last week. They loved it (more than the art teacher did!) They also loved his book 'Make Your Own Damn Art' and managed to find every possible rude bit in it!


Circuit of Culture

Looking at sense of place from a cultural studies perspective, I wondered if the 'circuit of culture' theory might have something to offer in understanding how we produce and reproduce our local understandings of place. It's a theory usually applied to objects but becomes relevant if we see place as a text to be read or decoded. The circuit of culture suggests that in order to understand a text completely you should look at each of five aspects: representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation.

I tried to map this out, see what you think.

Steph 10.10.12

A Community Banner


On Friday evening I went to Stoops and Hargher Clough Community Centre to meet with local councillor Paul Reynolds and community worker Chris Keane. Paul had asked me to go and talk to him about the 'South West Streets Museum' project, to find out our plans and to help us to identify relevant people to talk to. It was a useful meeting and it was good to spend time with Paul who was born in the area, lives there now and represents his community on the local council. He asked me some tough questions about our plans and our intentions and I hope that I was able to respond in a way which reflected the project positively. We both left the conversation smiling, which I reckon is generally a good sign.

I waited for Paul in the community centre while the after school club was on and met several children and parents from Cherry Fold Primary School where I am currently working on a project for Burnley Youth Theatre. It was lovely to see the pupils and I began to feel more at home bumping into people I know in different places.

I have been looking for ways to meet with and work with local people and an opportunity has come up at the community centre. They are going through challenging times at the moment and dealing with the practical effects of cuts in funding and support. The uncertain future has been a catalyst for conversations about the role the centre plays in the community and some of the younger people have made connections (some for the first time) between decisions that are made in national government and what happens in the local community.

These young volunteers are going to London on the 20th October to join the march for 'a future that works'. They want to represent their neighbourhood and their centre and they have asked me to work with them to create a painted fabric banner which they can take to London and which can hang in the centre afterwards as a celebration of community identity. The banner pictured above hangs in the community centre at the moment and was created after the death of Adam Rickwood, a young man from the estate who became the youngest person to die in custody. The making and displaying of the banner has been an important part of the community's solidarity, grief and fight for justice and will hang in the centre until justice is achieved, at which time it will be presented to Adam's family.

Adam's banner has inspired the idea of having a banner for and about the centre and its people. Working with the young volunteers to explore the role of the community centre and to find ways of communicating that visually will be an opportunity for me to bring my skills and experience into the community, get to know people better and to identify further opportunities for the three of us to work with the people of South West Burnley.

I am going to spend several sessions with the group next week and will post photos and feedback as the banner progresses.

Cath

Getting Familiar


 

I spent a couple of hours walking and driving around South West Burnley on Wednesday, mostly taking photos of signs. I felt I needed a reason to be in the area and meet people other than just being there. Having the camera with me and having a purpose gave me opportunities to chat with people (mostly in shops) and to explore streets, alleys and buildings from a different perspective.


I did feel very self conscious with my camera and was looked on with suspicion by a couple of people, but I reckoned if I did it with a huge friendly smile on my face I should be ok. This worked on the whole until I failed to ask one shopkeeper for permission who followed me down the road asking me why I was photographing his shop sign. I explained, but he was not happy with me saying curtly 'it would have been nice to have been asked'. I'm not surprised some people are suspicious, so many people must have been round over the past few years, taking photos, introducing new projects and asking questions and I will be conscious of that in future.

What I realised whilst walking round was the amazing diversity of buildings in the area and the history in the fabric of those buildings. I have always been going somewhere previously - on my way to a school or the community centre - and have never just been in, looked at and experienced SW Burnley. I wandered round streets and alleys, looked carefully at junction boxes and stonemasonry, read graffiti and sampled the goods from several bakeries.

I have worked out how different places connect to each other and am hoping I won't feel nearly so daft in future when I am talking to people about SW Burnley and not knowing where anything is!


I used the photos as a temporary sign for the South West Streets Museum facebook group.
All in all it was a very good day!
Cath
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