Old Low Lights opened earlier this year. For a short time, they held an exhibition of Imagine North East – North Shields community projects.
The group welcomed two guests from the US. Patrick Harman is in the North East for two weeks before taking up his Fulbright Scholarship in January 2016 (working on Imagine). Vincent Chu is a sociology student at Durham University. He has an internship over the summer to work with Imagine North East.
Next, Yvonne Hall showed us extracts from one of the films produced for Imagine North East by the group from Cedarwood Trust (North Shields). This included scenes of North Shields accompanied by music, followed by an interview with David Peel.
Everyone enjoyed the film extracts!
We then moved on to other items further down the agenda. This included plans for the Imagine North East Exhibition Launch on 27 June 2015 at St James’ Church in Benwell and the other Connected Communities Festival Events in June (story telling and model making in Benwell and a film show and discussion with local film maker Hugh Kelly in North Shields).
The whole Imagine conference on 9 September in Huddersfield was discussed as we have the opportunity to do two workshops. Ben Kyneswood and the Coventry team are leading one and we decided to lead one ourselves on the theme of ‘Being community researchers’.
Plans for the next six months include an exhibition at the Discovery Museum from 1 October. This will be mainly digital outputs. There will also be a final Imagine North East event in November, hopefully at the Discovery Museum.
Fred Robinson gave an update on the census work he and Alan Townsend have been doing for Imagine North East.
There was an update on the two booklets being produced for Benwell and North Shields. They will be launched at the exhibition on 27 June.
We then divided into small groups to reflect on the contribution the community projects are making to Imagine North East. We considered 'What are the key learning points for you personally and for the participants in your Imagine project?'
We then turned our attention to the lunch. It was an excellent buffet and we wandered out on to the balcony to enjoy those views again.
