Iain

We've been documenting with Iain Broadley as he worked with groups of young people from Burnley.

This was a keyring making session at a community centre, with the young people designing each keyring themselves. They have words and drawing on them, and phrases chosen included 'I love Stoops' and 'I love Coal Clough Lane'.

Caroline - Huckleberry Films

We Love Our Community Centre II

The banner seemed to be an effective tool for starting conversations and profiling the community centre's campaign to save their centre, so Chris asked if I would be able to do an illustration for a series of cards which would help them to spread the message and the art even further.
Happy to and I hope it helps!

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!

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