people like us believe that music can “save the day” and when things get tough a great tune can move mountains so we decided that our next project would be ti enable marginalised people to have access to making music for themselves.

the united state of liverpool a music project

st brides in Catherine St every Tuesday evening 8pm-10pm

Here we are in June the month of frantic activity as gardeners across the globe plant up tend and pile loads of stuff and love over their patch of earth.

I have recently been reflecting on a project I organised way back in 2003 and how being green has become mainstream.No longer the domain of the few. Recent visits to garden centres and DIY stores have amazed me how quickly [or slowly ] they are packaging the entire green basket in to a shopping experience because you can now buy an entire allotment contents with all of the vegetable already growing fine. An armchair voyeurs garden.

It is staggering also how quickly people have become environmental aware

and how what used to be seen as eccentricity and “crank like” is now smart and fashionable all in the space of a few years. 

The Earthworks Project 2003-2008 

The project  was called the earthworks project set up to enable homeless and very marginalised [to be honest they were poor very poor in both finance but poor in love in friendship and basically ignored by a large % of people those in government in general and the council in particular ] people without any knowledge of land based activities to get in touch with themselves via some earthy  messing about.

I asked the vicar of St Brides Rev Starkey would he lend us his garden which he did and got in touch with the horticulture man from the now [sadly much missed Riversdale college] who did a deal that we would buy all of his produce which we did .

This project got bigger thanks to LCVS  and MOCN we introduced some literacy elements to it then re launched it called Earthworks bringing basic skills to life.

the learners loved it and it was a great summer spent busily working away in the sunshine. The end product was a success and managed to landscape what was a lot of rough ground.

the thing that I learned was that I noticed that digging and getting on with tasks whether alone or in a team is an excellent way to relax I watched as some of the learner were so engrossed that they looked as though they were in heaven deep in meditation some where humming and some even sang as they worked. Of course this explains the monks amongst us for  need to dig and meditate No longer work but therapy

no other project has produced such results so quickly !

From here we secured an allotment in  Shorefields  and got to work on turning a rubbishy plot in to an oasis which was achieved by the sheer love and devotion of the Big Issue Vendors who volunteered on to the project.

We talked about having a  shed and secured some  funding to buy it

this  shed was a favourite place to sit and talk or just not talk and just stare out of the doorway. When it was raining it was great to be miles away in both mind and spirit.

the following year we applied for a grant from Operation Eden who supported our request too build a wind turbine we initially wanted to set up a project near to the old garden festival site however too much red tape and nonsense. we eventually got it set up in shorefeild at our allotment and when it came to switching on time we proudly made a pot of very expensive tea powered by our windmill which also doubles as an hypnotic focus point.

I have to add…………….

that not all people love wind turbines

windmills yes but I can understand how huge and intimidating  they can be [stood next to one over looking Amlwych in  Anglesey ] so aplologies to those people with a 100 m one in their back garden better than a slag heap though !

The project lasted for years and was visited by all sorts of people who used to sort of drop in then disappear, we even arranged away days to learn self sufficiency techniques. All good things come to an end and the project finished in 2008 when we had to abandon the allotment at shorefields because of staff cuts and funding issues

however some one else has  now inherited our oasis just as we did when we took it over and no  doubt developing and discovering the delights

it’s not hard to understand this as the Middlewood Woodland Trust community which is situated in the Roeburndale Valley near the villages of  Wray and Hornby are so welcome and eager to share their knowledge of communities  perma-culture and alternative lifestyle.

One of the many topics discussed  is the comparison of self sufficiency communities  like that of Middlewood and of our own urban community life.

People find many similarities not least the most misunderstood which is rural poverty yes its beautiful and green but “the grass is not that green on the other side”.

Much of the learning is done outdoors or in the yurt tents and log cabins there is of course plenty of time to have lots of fun and there really is space to express yourself. The before and after difference in learners is striking in particular the change in freedom of expression, being allowed to be yourself relaxed, happy, and  eager to do new things.

A perfect state of harmony of mind and nature.

ingleton winter snow on top

Hand holding starts when we come in to this world and of course when we exit and if we are really lucky we come across people who we take as our mentors known or unknown to them. I think we do this for many reasons in part because of identity maybe insecuruity  “me too” attitudes count for a lot but whatever reason we have its likely to be connected to wanting to know where we are.

Our psychological knowledge and awareness of ourself  in relation to other people and places is as important as our geographical knowledge of our surroundings.

When we have this knowledge we can become safe secure confident and eventually take risks and ” go outside” knowing  we understand our potential and what we can cope with.

we are all in this together

Knowing where we are and who we are is very useful it informs us of where we are from and if we want to get to somewhere else then of course we need to have come from somewhere in the first place.

So from these little but subtle changes in peoples behaviour and with a good mentor we can see some remarkable changes in people.

I was lucky enough to spend some time at The Basement Drop In Centre Liverpool [a day/ evening drop in night shelter for homeless people] last year and I came across many instances of good mentoring and some remarkable changes.

Here are some images of  The Basement  mentoring team building activity.

Yes rough seas make you bond very quickly !

We have always wanted to provide an alternative remedy to closed bureaucratic learning and in this blog we hope to provide opportunities for everyone to contribute their opinions dreams and wishes about open and informal learning activities.

learning like this is not the only way !