And what a glorious thing it turned out to be! My own day started with a telephone chat with James from Radio Humberside that got hijacked by a barky dog and our staunch friend from Seafood Village – have a listen here…
But the community action itself you can get a good sense of from Connor’s article here. And from Lee’s wonderful photos below (we have such talented East Marshians!).
We all gathered at the Methodist Chapel car park and there was that feeling when you throw a party – will anybody come? They did, and we were such a happy bunch, fleshed out by our friends at YMCA (thank you!) and NELC (thank you, too!) and some East Marshian kids who had heard about all of this and came along to join in (that’s their work on the boarded up house in Rutland Street, the lovely cat and dog picture).
It was a very hot day, so we drank plenty of liquids and treated ourselves with cakes – and it was Vivienne’s birthday, so what a memorable way to celebrate a phenomenal human! On top of everything we had our Granarchists leading us all in uplifting songs and a very special appearance by the gifted tenor Robin Datta, whose voice echoed and tumbled joyously down the whole of Rutland Street.
Carolyn, our collector of East Marsh Stories, was out collecting those stories from people who live on the street and our plan to tart up the decrepid boarded up houses was simply astonishing – all these contributions from the Sun & Moon Festival of Community Arts, what a joy that is turning out to be even in these early days!
We also had a visit from the Absolutely Clueless @LucyLauraClark from Radio Humberside, who have also been supporting us via @Caeros01 and shiny new CEO @TheCarlWheatley.
It was all such fun, and we’re very happy about how it went, but we have to put the project aside for a little while as we have made a bid for funding to support a whole year of it (it’s not cheap to do this stuff!). However, now we’ve had a tryout, we can improve on the way we do it – and if you have any ideas for improvement, please contact us or leave a comment below. And here are Lee’s fabulous photos…
