Blurry Pictures and Soiree round up!

If wishes were horses.........................

Okay the quality of these images do not do the night justice, what can we say, was the photographer under the influence of a heady concoction of 70's food, mateus rose, lovely friendly folk, and talk of boob enhancing bras?

Anyway The XLadyM was a little partial to the snowballs etc and can vaguely recount her night, but has been told that about 80 or so people drifted along and enjoyed meeting each other, thinking about the potential use of the Sunshine Space for events, art and the like. There is a huge potential with the space, and we thank you for your contributions and thoughts about what it could be!

Next challenge is to work out a way to make the place pay for itself, keep it flexible, and open to all sorts of creative endeavour. So your views and feedback are vitally important. If you click the following link you can add your t'pence worth on the flickr comments....

We will be posting a series of questions here, but would love for anyone to take a seat on this blog if they want to say something about what they are doing, ideas they may have for collaborations, or events etc they want to publicise. Eventually we will create a webspace for everyone to contribute, it's early days yet.

Big thanks are due to Chris the host and owner, Phil who got it ready in time for the event, Sam for his catering, Dave and Anna who made it look great, turning up for a party and getting roped in! (Anna vacuumed! and little Christie charmed the pants off everyone)Loubie for her social butterflying and super power stickering, James for helping cart stuff down, Frank for putting up with the madness, Maria for ice, pot pourri, bottle openers etc, Ange for the super cool red ice bucket and to everyone for coming and donating booze and food so generously.

Wow that was like being at the oscars! Stay tuned for more news, but please do let me know if you want to post on a regular or irregular basis.

What kind of GURU are you?

A creative one?

Fancy a chance to meet fellow dwellers of Armley, who would term themselves semi creative to full on arty pants?
Mmmm put that way it sounds scary, and perhaps you would be right. Anyway if a chance to sup some cheap sherry and enjoy a vol au vont (however you say them) isn't up your street then what would be?

Click on the link on the right if you want to spend your Thurs evening hob nobbing with the people who always turn up for a free drink- even if they have to bring it themselves. More will be revealed.....

Festival mutterings 2

Well its been a week of peaks and troughs as we say in Lancashire.
Funding still looms fairly large, coming out of the dark corner every now and then to slap me about a bit before i kick it back into the shadows. A rejection letter from Children in Need was probably not a surprise when it landed but was still gutting because the project would have been a lovely one for all concerned. Still, as a good friend of mine said, the only person ever heard of to get money out of Children in Need is Terry Wogan.

The army of knitters helping to knit the festival shed is growing with knitters from across Leeds and beyond to Lincolnshire, Huddersfield, Manchester, Sheffield,Sowerby Bridge and not least my mum in Darwen.
The conversations im having with complete strangers about knitting are inspiring and i had a great day out with Liz Noble (my enlisted knitting guru) last week driving around west Leeds scouting for knitting locations. Our ideas may have occasionally got out of hand, not least when we were in the woods in Stanningley planning midnight tree climbing to put knitting in the top branches... Expect knitted fish fingers and a knitted mop and bucket..the rest is a secret for now!

ps. If anyone has a really long set of ladders i could borrow...

Festival Mutterings

After several nudges from the honourable lady mayoress i have finally got round to writing the first of my weekly posts (weekly! im sure i never agreed to that..).

So lets start with the big stuff first...
It seems poignant to be beginning a creative community blog in the week when the arts council announces a 30 percent cut in its arts grants budget. You would be forgiven for not being aware that this has happened as the press dont seem to be that interested in the story. I was just beginning to think that as a creative community we were making progress at getting the power holders to understand the value of creativity and how vital it is to a community, but maybe we weren't as far ahead as i had hoped. A third slashed off the grants for the arts budget will affect a lot of artists and organisations including those in Leeds.
I would like to think it will just get creamed off the big elitist arts orgs and im sure they will have their grants reduced slightly but while their post-it note quota may have to be reduced it will be little orgs and individual artists that go under and communities that suffer.

Too ranty for a first post? i promise the next will be more lighthearted and will include "funny things i heard at the forum!"

Now get out there and bang some shields...

Read the Guardian article here