Friday 19 December 2008

another fun day announced

at the steering group meeting last night we were told that another fun was planned on 21st March 2009.

a venue has been booked, possible activities have been planned, health iniative funding is available, youth iniative funding is available.

overall budget available is less than for the first, so documental provision has been cut.

a website is being planned for the group, a member of the community is a web designer and is on board to help design and launch the site.

Wednesday 20 August 2008

images of Jackson Street




images of Drewry Lane




other work happening in the community-Jackson Street

the planters in Jackson Street were included in the replanting project. The work was carried out by volunteers from Wimbledon, supervised by Verica. Pam and Anne were involved who attracted members of the YMCA to get involved, it was all very lovely.

Maybe communal gardening is a cohesive measure within the community.


other work happening in the community-Drewry Lane

recently there has been some work carried out on a couple of planters within the community. I feel particularly pleased about this as I suggested to the Residents Action Group that something might happen to the planters as they had been neglected.
At a very personal level for me, the idea came to me while sitting on the bench in Drewary Lane, eating a bag of chips, prior to going to a wake. As I sat there eating, I realised it would be some much more pleasing to the eye if the planters had plants in.
Quite simple I suppose really.

Foot Prints Music Project

The music project does have a name - "Foot Prints Music Project"

The DVD's are complete and delivered.

I'm interested to see how the project continues to develop. Hopefully there might be another opportunity to return to a future performance to document the progress made.

Wednesday 23 July 2008

music project - update

the edits are nearly complete, the podcast is uploaded for a taster, the frame grabs are done.

Waiting for additional information for titles/credits before progressing to DVD authoring.

Looking forward to finishing and delivery of the discs.

music project pod cast

here is the music project podcast(after quite a lot of faffing)


community website builder

there is a free method for building a website for a group running commuinty based projects

music project - the podcast

There is now a podcast version of the concert.

The performance was on a Saturday afternoon, a date put in the diary at the beginning of the project, so that there was a date to work towards.

This could be viewed as a taster for the full edit.

the attempts to load were unsuccesful. Another attempt will be made later...




Wednesday 16 July 2008

music project-documentation progress

the editing progress is going well, additional information has been requested for the titles and credits.

A taster of the project will be posted on this blog soon.

Monday 7 July 2008

we documented the performance...

The weather was hot and "muggy" the reception in the church was warm and welcoming. Thanks to Chris and Graham who helped me to record the events associated with the performance of the music project.
As Cedric said:
"we started this music project eight weeks ago, we put this date in our diary to give us a target."

The process of editting the recorded material has begun.

Friday 4 July 2008

the music project

a music project has been happening in the area for a couple of months. Tomorrow, the performance will be documented.

I'm excited to see and hear what it all sounds and looks like.

Wednesday 21 May 2008

informed RAG

At the Residents Action Group forum last night, I showed a slide show of some of the images created on the day of "Abbey Doing It".

The images were well received.

Councilor Asaf is no longer with us in this ward. Some changes are about to happen. The full council meeting is today. Potentially the new people in place will be a backward step for the commuinty as they all get their personal priorities on the table.

Oh well, time will tell.

Wednesday 26 March 2008

Other stuff


We also had a workshop that involved using spices and PVA. images to follow... and of the storytelling and drumming...


So here are some face painted children...


Minnie & Callam.

Images from the Printing Workshop.





Fabric Collage Workshop





Some fantastic images were made by all ages!

Monday 24 March 2008

just an hour to get ready...





an hour was enough, would people attend, was the question...

a 9am start to set up...




22nd March 2008




after two months of actual planning for the event :

Thursday 20 March 2008

a sneak preview of the 'dislikes' image


again, work in progress, for Ryan and the guys in the office to see.

a sneak preview of the 'likes' image


this is a work in progress version. Hi Ryan, I hope you are all in good health in the office. Andrew.

Wednesday 19 March 2008

another image from the digital workshop


the forum has been looking at 'likes' and 'dislikes' from around the area. the previous example is made from 'dislikes' this is from 'likes'

a sample image from the Youth Forum digital workshop

a record of the websites we looked at during the Youth Forum digital workshop

http://www.shoefiti.com/ info about hanging shoes

http://www.flickr.com/ a site to share photos and views, the Blog can link to this site.

http://www.saferderby.org.uk/pages/stockbrook.asp?pg=1 lots of text on this, quite boring, the adults are trying to improve stuff for us.

You Tube :
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=S7GGkKpBR-g a beat box guy in the kitchen.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-8w2nFOu8wM a bloke what does funny stories, he’s called Eddie Izzard, this clip is about star wars.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h8YoLwsg-nc clip of a band at a German festival, I like the tune and the setting of the festival.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lSYV4-S89d0 this was popular at the beginning of the 1990’s. I don’t find it that funny. What do you think?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJWT3p7uM6Y this short film won an Oscar in 1990. I really like it. No speaking, just visual stuff.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eOzz-D82VjA&feature=dir there’s a world record for smashing eggs with toes, this record is held by a woman from Spain.
Enough You Tube…

http://www.gimp.org/windows/ gimp is free downloadable software for manipulating image files. It’s a bit like Photoshop, everyone uses that coz it’s what everyone uses. It’s expensive to buy, so Gimp is a good place to start.

http://images.google.com/ if you want to find an image. part of Google.

http://www.youthforum.org/ again loads of words by adults what are in a position to help us all do what we want. These are in Europe somewhere. Thing is, is it just more words with good meaning, or can they do stuff to make things more enjoyable for more people.

http://www.barking-dagenham.gov.uk/9-democracy/forums/youth/yforum-menu.html another Youth Forum.. This is in Essex. It’s part of the local government process. Government is a good thing if you get genuine people within it, trying to make things better for everyone.

http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/education/youth_service/youth_forum/default.asp this is like the barking and Dagenham Youth Forum, it’s happening in Derbyshire.

http://www.stedmundsbury.gov.uk/sebc/play/YouthForum.cfm another Youth Forum that is involved with the local government.

http://www. stockbrookcommunityhub.org.uk/ this is a website for the Stockbrook area. I wonder if the Youth Forum can get a link to their Blog listed on this site. The Youth Activities section is still a little short of information.

wednesday before the event

It's only a few days until the event now. The posters are out, the brochures are being delivered. Last meeting about the project in a few hours.

Sunday 2 March 2008

on going work with the Youth Forum

the forum has set up a blog:




the words to go with the image...

The Box of Rejection

“ The Box of Rejection is a scaling up of the ‘Book of Rejection’. The Book was a small piece of work that became cathartic for me. In the book were words to describe things and notions that I rejected. It seemed appropriate to scale the idea up for a community event and make it a box into which residents can place their written words about what they reject. The words are between the resident and the box. The destiny of the box is still undecided. Current thinking is to never open the box, maybe the box will be burnt at a future community event. As a community, we can decide the outcome of the box.” Andrew(resident).

an image for the brochure


I'm going to send this image in for inclusion with words about the box of rejection.

the poster-what did I learn ?

I learnt that this event is owned more by the funders than the residents. It's the way it is.

What was painful about that experience was the realisation of just how much the funders require control of what happens.

Before the money had become involved, it did feel like the residents were being empowered to do stuff for their community, that they wanted to do and thought would be beneficial. Once the money became involved, the emphasis swung to the funders. This swing was gradual and gentle. The poster brought the swing into focus.

The outcome of the poster incident was the placing on the back burner the cake shop, bread shop project.

for the record, the rejected poster looked like this.


for the record, the first version made by Chris and I looked like this :

the poster has been decided upon and distributed has begun.


the final version of the poster has been drawn up. Here it is:

Tuesday 26 February 2008

Youth Forum

On another track. The digital workshop with the Youth Forum set up a blog and discussions about using images from the park walking thingy that the Youth Forum do, to make a multi sheet image, for placing on the wall at the event in March.

The next Youth Forum meeting will be at the Library.

dis-engagement

following the attempted poster making, I find myself removed emotionally from this project. There is another meeting soon, where I will need to talk about this.

The poster was rejected as it failed to meet "funder communication standards". having been allowed to make the poster and putting a lot of thought and effort into the design, to find out it was unsuitable because of the rules set by the funder, my feeling has been, why was I allowed to get that involved in the design, when it was always going to be rejected if it was not what the funder wanted. I don't do what people want, I do what I want. I put forward at the last meeting what i wanted to do, it was approved.

As a result of the rejection, the brochure information has also grounded to a halt.

I don't like being empowered and then disempowered by the very thing that empowered me. Calls into question trust.

Time will tell, I guess.

Monday 11 February 2008

New Name?

Now that the steering group in charge of what does happen with events in the Abbey Ward have given themselves a name and a logo, do we reveal it on here or wait for the banners to go up?

Love the pictures, especially the passageway to the back garden one.

until it was time to walk again...





and played for quite a while...