miklaus

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I’ve not had much to blog about lately. I’ve been busy but can’t seem to explain what I’ve been doing, whenever anyone asks. Anyway one thing I know I’ve been doing is having an introduction to the eastern European celebration of Miklaus, or St Nicholas, over the past couple of days. I’ve been to events in Salford and Leeds attended by the Czech and Slovak Roma communities there, the second of which ended with an impromptu sing along and dance-off in a family kitchen. I haven’t taken very many photos I’m into but I am hopeful the events yielded some useful contacts which could develop into something more. Fingers crossed.

HMR on Channel 4 news

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Channel 4 News did a great piece on HMR’s collapse tonight, focusing on Werneth in Oldham and Anfield in Liverpool, and briefly speaking to Brendan Nevin, whose research underpinned the regeneration programme. It’s great to finally see the national media sitting up and giving this debacle the attention it deserves – because until now very few outlets have been interested. There are limits to what you can squeeze into 11 minutes on a subject like this – despite it being a really long time for a news package – so the piece really focused on what has happened since the ConDem coalition came into power in May and took away much of HMR’s funding. I still think it’s worth pointing out though that this whole scheme was a disaster from the start – I didn’t feel that was made clear enough. The pathfinders took on too much at once and did it quite often in an inhumane and cack-handed way, led (in my view) by developers and an overheating housing market. The new government has made things worse by decisions which mean the whole thing will drag on for far longer – at the expense of Kadija in the piece and other householders like her and like the people I have met in the past four years. But make no mistake – disaster was well underway under the previous government.

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The background of the HMR pathfinder and its impact on ordinary people like Kadija can be seen on my Street Fighers site

“the heroin had been cut with glue”

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I’m trying to learn some new editing software so have been practising on an interview I did earlier this week with a client of the homeless charity Crisis. Scott is a punk and I found him to be an interesting guy. I wasn’t recording with using the audio in mind as it’s for a written feature. Thankfully not because we were shunted from meeting room to meeting room during our hour and the noise from the road beyond the window was unbelievable, not to mention that the edit is ropey and my own voice is all over the recording. I wouldn’t be so lax if I was doing this with the intention of making multimedia. Still though, what he said was interesting

Bulldozers for Bootle

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Even as the infamous Housing Market Renewal regeneration initiative lies in tatters – with half-empty terraces and vacant plots of  land littering the nine annointed areas of the north and midlands and little available public finance to finish the job – the juggernaut staggers onwards. This week two public inquiries took place in Bootle, Merseyside, with the aim of relieving the few remaining home owners of their properties. As always, all most of them want is a fair financial settlement which would allow them to find an equivalent home at now cost to themselves, but as has so often been the case they have been dragged through an expensive and protracted public hearing they have little to no chance of winning. Plus ca change.

If you can face learning more about HMR, I’ve been documenting the process in words, images and multimedia for four years and it can all be found here.

equality

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A few of my images are going to be used to decorate the website of Equality, a new but admirable charity which aims to uphold the rights of new Roma migrants to the UK. Equality does lots of consultation and produces briefings on various issues facing these new central and eastern European communities, with the aim of educating those who work in statutory agencies, local authorities and other support groups. I’m very happy to share my work with them in this way.

Tony’s

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Tony’s is an Italian barbers shop around the corner from my house which I’ve always found fascinating. I’ve been dropping in and shooting there sporadically all year and was meaning to do some audio and turn it into a photofilm, possibly for my course multimedia module if my preferred options went wrong.  I’ve been scooped by one of duckrabbit’s recent students though, who has done a project in a similar barber’s shop in Birmingham, and done a very nice job at that, and I don’t see the point of covering the same ground. I guess the different angles with Tony’s are that he is standing firm against pressure from would-be regenerators who have bulldozed around him, and the fact his back room is an impromptu social club for old Italians from across south Manchester. hmmmm.

sinking ship

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I’ve had a whirlwind few days in the Big Smoke, mainly for work but I managed to squash in catching up with a couple of good friends and meeting a few new ones…including one of just four weeks old. Pretty randomly as well, I bumped into an old journalist mate on the tube – during rush hour – yesterday, when she happened to squeeze into my carriage. It just goes to show what a small place the UK actually is. I was sad to hear that she has joined the swelling ranks of former friends/colleagues of mine who are jumping ship and training in other industries which will hopefully provide both a living wage and a safer future than the print media. I have to admit that I’m now wondering about my own future in journalism almost daily. Anyway I now have a couple of days to write up the story that I went down for – featuring the lovely Scott, above. Mtf, as we say in newspapers.

onwards and upwards

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It’s been a rollercoaster couple of weeks where I have felt overwhelmed, frustrated, fobbed off, paranoid, stressed, enthused, excited and many other emotions – all because of work, photography, study and the rather bleak broader realities of my industry today. It’s not a great state to be in mentally but as tends to happen, lots of different things started to suddenly go much better this week and I once again feel as if I have some kind of balance and momentum. It’s calm right now but I sense that life is going to get very frantic over the coming weeks, starting with a whistle-stop work trip to London on Monday in which I’m cramming catching up separately with two friends, meeting a couple of MA colleagues for the first time, and a work assignment into less than 48 hours…yep, it’s going to be busy.