Oh dear ranty nuttiness must be still with me, as in highly unusual turn of events am blogging for second night in a row, to personal blog no less!
Been thinking about walking. I was until a couple of years ago a total non-driver. I was a sort of angry pedestrian who shouted at cars, even my daughter started to! I remember one night in the Prince in Moseley, maybe ten years ago, giving a district nurse grief for driving everywhere (I cringe at the memory there are just some jobs were having to drive is sort of part of the deal). Anyhow three years ago my brother moved to New Zealand and when it came time for me to go and visit I was under strict instruction 'you need to be able to drive once you're here, there's very little public transport and I'll be at work and I can't drive you about'. So I learnt to drive. As it turns out, of course, there is public transport in NZ, just being a driver and a reasonably new resident he hadn't yet investigated it. I did however hire a car and my daughter and I took a bit of road trip Thelma and Louise style around a little bit of the North island, staying in Motels all the way and got to see some of the very beautiful places.
Anyway I digress - so I learnt to drive and this year, 12 months after my first NZ trip, I finally bought a car it cost me 100 great British pounds and was certainly a recycled, many times, piece of equipment, this at some level eased my guilt, as well as feeling like I'd managed 17 odd adult years as a non-driver. The thing is now I find I am becoming more and more like all those other drivers I used to get so cross with. Today as a pedestrian I took my time walking in the early afternoon sunshine and I got to thinking, reminded of how this all happens, how folks become dependent on their vehicles, how the cycle of car dependency leads to fewer folks on the streets, fewer people policing their neighbourhoods, in turn a perception that the streets become dangerous places and further car dependency ensues. Obviosuly this is my observation not an area I have researched but let me share an anacdote. I used to work with a woman who would drive from the Perry Barr campus of the university where I work across the road (albeit a big old road) in order to use the one-stop shopping centre! This was all to avoid using the underpass. Such was her fear of being a pedestrian, bearing in mind my district nurse lecture you can imagine the ear bashing this lady received.
I mean I guess this is all pretty obvious stuff. In recent discussions on how to make Birmingham (where I live) a better place there has been much made of a need for less cars and ultimately that would make a hell of a difference.The city centre is pretty much pedestrianised but all around the city are these huge, fast roads. These roads are not really compatible with walking. I have for the majority of my employment in Perry Barr used the (what I consider) fast and relaible bus service. I have considered cycling but the prospect of negotiating Newtown Road and onto PB on two wheels is pretty scary. Anyway the thing is I understand that the existing infrastructure of a city requires these big roads, goods and people in and out. But surely we need to be looking urgently at alternatives, not just from an ecological perspective, but these roads frequently go straight through the middle of residential areas.
I think we need to be taking a much more holistic approach to our big city plans recognising that all our citizens experience the city in very different ways. There is a bunch of cosmetic stuff that might make our external image a bit better. But wouldn't it be fantastic to be known as a city that took a really innovative approach to developing its neighbourhoods , had empathy for its citizens and where they live and led in innovative approaches to getting folks out of their cars. Easier said than done I realise. I reckon the battle with making a place a better place to live and be is 'buy-in' from the residents. But here's the thing couldn't taking this approach lead to all the magic ingredients for a dynamic city and prosperous economy something like this - fewer cars, more pedestrians, safer feeling streets, increased well-being amongst all citizens, potentially leading to increased inclusion, leading to greater diversity in the workplace, this diversity potentially leading to a more creative and dynamic knowledge economy, leading to a more attractive city for potential employers to be based and recruit from. Anyway I need to think this through a great deal more, but I can't help thinking that there are some linkages here in this crude and simplistic outline, that if they could be evidenced could be the basis for a convincing approach to address a bunch of issues.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Where to start? contrasts and talking to myself
I am loosing it! This may be long and very dull but from a 'better out than in' perspective I am just going to type.
Earlier today I bumped into Antonio Gould as I walked back from swimming at, what I consider the beautiful, Moseley Road Swimming baths he asked how my research was going? I very nearly started unravelling, I think what came out was: "Um my head is full, I am talking to myself, I read all the time, if I am not reading I am writing, if I am not doing that I am interviewing people and I am reading some more and trying to make it all make sense and again I am talking to myself. Breathe."
Happiness and inspiration
You see I have had a fantastic week, one of those weeks where on several occasions I have experienced happiness as it happens (if you know what I mean? as opposed to retrospectively). I feel like I have done a bunch of stuff that has inspired me or made me think, spent some nice chunks of time with my girl on half term duty, stood in the autumn sun in the park watching children play, seen her selected from an audience in a full-on audience participation play at the Midlands Arts Centre had some interesting meetings with interesting people and realised there are connections within connections. I've attended the Opera, Birmingham Opera Companies La Traviata, which was spectacular and awe inspiring to keep realising that the majority of people were just folks from Birmingham - the whole thing was fantastic. It was cool for me as my friend Sara stopped off in Birmingham on her way down to London from up north and thanks to some frenzied email/telephone exchanges and a little help from Facebook friends I managed to secure some extra tickets. I was interested to see what she made of Birmingham's cultural offerings being a little bit a snooty Londoner (sorry Sar just a little bit). I think she enjoyed it. I will write more about the whole show either in a bit or in a separate posting.
Talking to myself/writing in my head - this is becoming alarming
Something I have found in the last year or so and I think following some personal changes in my life is my ability or lack of to sleep. I mean I can sleep but I spend a lot of time awake thinking and writing in my head - does this make sense? As I try to process all the stuff, read or otherwise, I think about and sort of recite to myself, in my head, how I will write it. It now isn’t just in the night it is sort of whenever I am alone. This has been today driving me a little nuts today as I've struggled to stay focussed on what to write/think about first. As I swam laps of the little Moseley pool so many things were going through my head stuff happening locally, regionally how it fits in with my thinking and research anyway briefly-ish here is some of it:
Showbiz - all the shows I have been to this week Acts 1,2 and 3
My final theatrical visit of the week was to the deepest Black Country to see my daughter’s paternal grandmother perform in her amateur dramatics panto. Now I have to say that this was by some distance a contrast to the opera the previous evening but for all the amateurish bits it was highly entertaining. What these three shows had in common the Snow Queen at the MAC, La Triviata at the NIA (en route from Verona) through to Snow White in Tipton was that they all conveyed and offered absolute joy to the participants and to the audiences. You know I've been kind of reminded what it's all about why people sing and dance and perform. But here's the thing each of these offered some regular people the opportunity to be involved and to benefit from that endorphin inducing pleasure. When I heard some one describe the opera as a ‘community project’ the other day (I felt in slightly dismissive tones) I felt sort of insulted on behalf of all those folks who'd worked so hard and whose collective joy and energy made for an extremely professional event. Might blog some more about this in the future.
The fit with the research is I guess from the social inclusion angle. I was talking to a group of students last week about the creative industries not necessarily being conducive with regeneration or as a vehicle for social inclusion – the networks being pretty exclusive or at least might seem kind of intimidating. Def more on this another time.
The usual suspects
A final thing to mention is this thing I've been reading about on other blogs about Birmingham's (where I live) creative sector being run by the 'same old faces’ and 'usual suspects' etc .. Now I understand these feelings, have felt them myself of course sometimes it does seem like the same people get funded to do stuff year after year while others don't or whatever but I have to say I have been finding it a little amusing recently. It's hard to articulate what I am trying to say but here I'll try and say it as simply as possible. There is a sense from the younger end of the local CI sector that they possess some new view, some new way of doing things and some how assume that the old guard didn't imagine the same thing themselves when they too were the bright young things. Being somewhere in between age wise I remember the latter when I first moved to Bham I've seen them become the 'usual suspects’ I now see a younger generation working their way up to become exactly that 'the usual suspects' - I am not making any judgement on either just a bit of an observation. I sort of feel that these are imagined barriers between the two groups or perhaps I have misunderstood the whole thing.
Okay it is late.
There are a few other issues I would like to cover which have come up this week, which I will hope to explore in more detail soon:
- Gender and the music industry
- Woman's Hour's thing about artists and there never having been, other than maybe Frida Kahlo, any 'great female artists'.
- And some other stuff
Earlier today I bumped into Antonio Gould as I walked back from swimming at, what I consider the beautiful, Moseley Road Swimming baths he asked how my research was going? I very nearly started unravelling, I think what came out was: "Um my head is full, I am talking to myself, I read all the time, if I am not reading I am writing, if I am not doing that I am interviewing people and I am reading some more and trying to make it all make sense and again I am talking to myself. Breathe."
Happiness and inspiration
You see I have had a fantastic week, one of those weeks where on several occasions I have experienced happiness as it happens (if you know what I mean? as opposed to retrospectively). I feel like I have done a bunch of stuff that has inspired me or made me think, spent some nice chunks of time with my girl on half term duty, stood in the autumn sun in the park watching children play, seen her selected from an audience in a full-on audience participation play at the Midlands Arts Centre had some interesting meetings with interesting people and realised there are connections within connections. I've attended the Opera, Birmingham Opera Companies La Traviata, which was spectacular and awe inspiring to keep realising that the majority of people were just folks from Birmingham - the whole thing was fantastic. It was cool for me as my friend Sara stopped off in Birmingham on her way down to London from up north and thanks to some frenzied email/telephone exchanges and a little help from Facebook friends I managed to secure some extra tickets. I was interested to see what she made of Birmingham's cultural offerings being a little bit a snooty Londoner (sorry Sar just a little bit). I think she enjoyed it. I will write more about the whole show either in a bit or in a separate posting.
Talking to myself/writing in my head - this is becoming alarming
Something I have found in the last year or so and I think following some personal changes in my life is my ability or lack of to sleep. I mean I can sleep but I spend a lot of time awake thinking and writing in my head - does this make sense? As I try to process all the stuff, read or otherwise, I think about and sort of recite to myself, in my head, how I will write it. It now isn’t just in the night it is sort of whenever I am alone. This has been today driving me a little nuts today as I've struggled to stay focussed on what to write/think about first. As I swam laps of the little Moseley pool so many things were going through my head stuff happening locally, regionally how it fits in with my thinking and research anyway briefly-ish here is some of it:
Showbiz - all the shows I have been to this week Acts 1,2 and 3
My final theatrical visit of the week was to the deepest Black Country to see my daughter’s paternal grandmother perform in her amateur dramatics panto. Now I have to say that this was by some distance a contrast to the opera the previous evening but for all the amateurish bits it was highly entertaining. What these three shows had in common the Snow Queen at the MAC, La Triviata at the NIA (en route from Verona) through to Snow White in Tipton was that they all conveyed and offered absolute joy to the participants and to the audiences. You know I've been kind of reminded what it's all about why people sing and dance and perform. But here's the thing each of these offered some regular people the opportunity to be involved and to benefit from that endorphin inducing pleasure. When I heard some one describe the opera as a ‘community project’ the other day (I felt in slightly dismissive tones) I felt sort of insulted on behalf of all those folks who'd worked so hard and whose collective joy and energy made for an extremely professional event. Might blog some more about this in the future.
The fit with the research is I guess from the social inclusion angle. I was talking to a group of students last week about the creative industries not necessarily being conducive with regeneration or as a vehicle for social inclusion – the networks being pretty exclusive or at least might seem kind of intimidating. Def more on this another time.
The usual suspects
A final thing to mention is this thing I've been reading about on other blogs about Birmingham's (where I live) creative sector being run by the 'same old faces’ and 'usual suspects' etc .. Now I understand these feelings, have felt them myself of course sometimes it does seem like the same people get funded to do stuff year after year while others don't or whatever but I have to say I have been finding it a little amusing recently. It's hard to articulate what I am trying to say but here I'll try and say it as simply as possible. There is a sense from the younger end of the local CI sector that they possess some new view, some new way of doing things and some how assume that the old guard didn't imagine the same thing themselves when they too were the bright young things. Being somewhere in between age wise I remember the latter when I first moved to Bham I've seen them become the 'usual suspects’ I now see a younger generation working their way up to become exactly that 'the usual suspects' - I am not making any judgement on either just a bit of an observation. I sort of feel that these are imagined barriers between the two groups or perhaps I have misunderstood the whole thing.
Okay it is late.
There are a few other issues I would like to cover which have come up this week, which I will hope to explore in more detail soon:
- Gender and the music industry
- Woman's Hour's thing about artists and there never having been, other than maybe Frida Kahlo, any 'great female artists'.
- And some other stuff
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
phone and facebook together.
Just keep having this slightly odd thing. Sara (one of my oldest friends) and I keep finding ourselves on the phone chatting and facebooking at the same time. I was suddenly reminded of when we were kids and we used to speak, for what seemed like hours, on the phone while looking at each other. You see we lived opposite and if we stood in our respective mums bedrooms and spoke on the phone, we could look out of the window and see each other speaking to each other. There is something sort of similar in our new communication. Multiple perspectives or something like that.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
sunday afternoon stuff
Today I had a pretty standard Sunday kind of day - pretty standard to how I used to spend Sunday that is, in fact most of the Sundays of my childhood, adolescence and early twenties before settling in Birmingham. Get up in a leisurely way (or at least as leisurely as my six year old will permit), make coffee, breakfast, listen to desert island discs and a few mins of the Archers (depending on tolerance levels), read papers, head to a market, go to a cafe, eat brunch etc. Then head out for a walk get some coffee etc.
Woooo slow down - go to a market? Okay so it's been around for a while and it's not that big or that fabulous but still the essence is there. You see today I popped over to the Custard Factory flea market luckily having had brunch at Peaceful mind in Kings heath.
You see the whole time I've lived in Birmingham I've sort of been waiting for it to be like it is or at least how it is getting to be. Something to do with spending my young life living a ten minute walk away from Greenwich market, which although disappointingly down at heal and oddly touristy now was in its day a lively mix of thrift, flea, antique, gift and craft market - well markets in fact. It was huge, hours of perusing, coffees, lunches and Sunday paper reading, meeting up with friends to dissect the Saturday night which the Sunday followed - I love this kind of endless Sunday pottering - and if you're really lucky you get a longish walk in a park followed by a boozy Sunday lunch sometime mid afternoon, somewhere warm and cosy..
So how does Birmingham’s answer to a Sunday measure up? Well Kings heath/Moseley does well on cafes, Sunday lunch places to eat and parks - If I can be bothered our Sunday dinner might be pretty good too! As for the market well - um it's small (but perfectly formed). It's kind of got all the right ingredients some market stalls, live music and good live music (although I didn't catch who they were but some jazz guitar Jiango Reinhart style (poss something to do with Jibbering records in Moseley), an art gallery, some stuff for kids but here’s the thing it's small I was hoping it would be bigger we kind of exhausted the pottering possibilities within 40 minutes.
The thing is Digbeth, although just a short walk from town, a ten min bus ride from Moseley/KH, is still a slightly unlikely destination unless there is a good reason to go,. Now this market could be a good reason to go but needs to be bigger, needs to keep you there longer. Also I was disappointed that Rooty's was closed and that the majority of little shops in the Custard Factory were also shut. Seems a little counter-intuitive as the market 'user'. If you think about the long rambling flea markets of Paris (that I would happily take a couple of metros to reach) you know you can spend a whole day there.
Now I am not trying to do the Custard Factory flea down - I enjoyed my time there and realise that it being a good place to go is just as dependent on the crowds coming and that there is a certain amount of momentum required for these things to grow and get really good. So I would suggest they keep everything open cafes, shops and stuff and all you folks who like to meander, potter about on a Sunday head down there.
Woooo slow down - go to a market? Okay so it's been around for a while and it's not that big or that fabulous but still the essence is there. You see today I popped over to the Custard Factory flea market luckily having had brunch at Peaceful mind in Kings heath.
You see the whole time I've lived in Birmingham I've sort of been waiting for it to be like it is or at least how it is getting to be. Something to do with spending my young life living a ten minute walk away from Greenwich market, which although disappointingly down at heal and oddly touristy now was in its day a lively mix of thrift, flea, antique, gift and craft market - well markets in fact. It was huge, hours of perusing, coffees, lunches and Sunday paper reading, meeting up with friends to dissect the Saturday night which the Sunday followed - I love this kind of endless Sunday pottering - and if you're really lucky you get a longish walk in a park followed by a boozy Sunday lunch sometime mid afternoon, somewhere warm and cosy..
So how does Birmingham’s answer to a Sunday measure up? Well Kings heath/Moseley does well on cafes, Sunday lunch places to eat and parks - If I can be bothered our Sunday dinner might be pretty good too! As for the market well - um it's small (but perfectly formed). It's kind of got all the right ingredients some market stalls, live music and good live music (although I didn't catch who they were but some jazz guitar Jiango Reinhart style (poss something to do with Jibbering records in Moseley), an art gallery, some stuff for kids but here’s the thing it's small I was hoping it would be bigger we kind of exhausted the pottering possibilities within 40 minutes.
The thing is Digbeth, although just a short walk from town, a ten min bus ride from Moseley/KH, is still a slightly unlikely destination unless there is a good reason to go,. Now this market could be a good reason to go but needs to be bigger, needs to keep you there longer. Also I was disappointed that Rooty's was closed and that the majority of little shops in the Custard Factory were also shut. Seems a little counter-intuitive as the market 'user'. If you think about the long rambling flea markets of Paris (that I would happily take a couple of metros to reach) you know you can spend a whole day there.
Now I am not trying to do the Custard Factory flea down - I enjoyed my time there and realise that it being a good place to go is just as dependent on the crowds coming and that there is a certain amount of momentum required for these things to grow and get really good. So I would suggest they keep everything open cafes, shops and stuff and all you folks who like to meander, potter about on a Sunday head down there.
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