Thinking at The Fold - a planning meeting blogged by Steph.

Yesterday myself, Cath and Iain spent the day at The Fold doing a bit of planning. It was great to spend time together exploring ideas and charting a path towards achieving our objectives.  We were pleased with the feeling of rapport that has developed between us and we're enjoying working as a team. Chocolate fingers, ginger cordial and plenty of tea oiled our creative wheels as we thought about how to stimulate residents to think and talk about local sense of place.

This put me in mind of research conducted by John Dixon and Kevin Durrheim (2000). They looked at sense of place through the lens of social and environmental psychology, pointing out that our identity is closely related to context and place. They described this as the located nature of subjectivity. They thought place was incredibly important in our creation and maintenance of a sense of ourselves. More interestingly they also pointed out the value of conversation in lifting the notion of sense of place from ‘the vaults of the mind’ to the ‘foreground of human dialogue’. This is what we want to get up to in South West Burnley!

But how to start those conversations? One idea that we’ve bounced around for weeks has been to procure an old, quirky vehicle that we could adapt into a touring ‘pop up’ museum. We imagined parking up in any number of spots in South West Burnley, sparking the curiosity of passers-by and offering them a cup of tea. Then we’d invite them to step inside and visit our museum, hopefully donating a memory, photo or object as they did so.

Our planning day helped us to realise that we actually want to invest in more sustainable activities – events that bind people together, bridging the differences between groups and levering in support through some of the services operating in South West Burnley – this would leave behind stronger relationships and networks instead of an old vehicle requiring tax and MOT!

So we started brainstorming. We don't want to give too much away but here's some clues: we’ll be searching for Eric, hunting ghosts, planting and growing, exploring water underground, mythmaking, and possibly 'pap'ing!…. Curious? Watch this space!

If you want to be involved, why not message us on facebook or contribute to the South West Streets Museum?

 

Dixon and Durrheim - British Journal of Social Psychology - BRIT J SOC PSYCHOL , vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 27-44, 2000

Flower Walk for Life Poster

Drawn by Iain, coloured in by Cath. A creative collaboration of the simplest kind!

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!

Ground UP at In-Situ

Last Monday evening we were invited to talk about our work at the regular monthly In-Situ In-Conversation session at Brierfield Library.
After working on the project for a couple of months now, it was a really useful opportunity for us to reflect on what we have achieved so far and seek input and feedback from other people.
Paul from In-Situ did some filming of us in action and you can view the film on youTube

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!