Community Art Showcase Unveiled at Halfway House on The Wrekin

Transcript

00:00Well I'm Laura Holly and I work for Yellow Ribbon and I'm the Community Development Lead

00:05up here at Halfway House on the Reekin, actually near on Halfway up the Reekin.

00:11So I just wanted to tell you today that we were very fortunate to have been able to purchase the

00:16house with a contribution of HM Government funding and that's enabled us to encourage

00:22people back into the pavilion and in October we did a piece where people just came along with

00:28their contributions and connections to the Reekin and Halfway House and depicted that

00:33into an art form that was supported by Carys Jackson who's with me today.

00:38Hi so I'm Carys Jackson, I live locally, I live in Wellington, I'm an artist,

00:43I work with collage as my own media so cutting things up and reassembling them.

00:48So I was asked by Laura to come and do some participatory workshops with people to come

00:53and share their stories about the Reekin, their connections to the Reekin,

00:57and made individual artworks which have been assembled together to make one piece

01:02which we're going to showcase today.

01:04But it's about making sure that the encouragement of the visibility of Halfway House and people

01:10know that we're here and to celebrate some of the local artists like Carys and I know some of

01:16her collective are here today as well as people that actually took part in making the pictures

01:22so they'll be able to come up and see it.

01:24Is this what helped create?

01:27It is, so I'm sharing the original artwork so people came, we asked people to share a story,

01:32a memory about the Reekin, so all kinds of things, some really funny stories about

01:38lost dogs turning up and you know somebody having a row with their wife and then they

01:42lost the dog and then couldn't go home without the dog. We had people coming up as children on

01:47school trips, we've had some really poignant memories of people scattering family members

01:51ashes on the Reekin, so all these stories were collected and shared

01:56as I say they've been assembled and put on display.

02:01And then what we've done to promote more community events, we've had the

02:04superb funding by Severn Trent in terms of their community fund to provide future amenities here,

02:12just the basics really of a beautiful public toilet and that kind of thing

02:16and making sure that we'll be able to produce more events as we go forward.

02:21you