Posts filed under 'community news'
Once again members of Leith Open Space group are warming up for an energetic night at the Edinburgh Refugee Centre. The annual Winter party is always a great event: good food, vibrant music and a really welcoming atmosphere among people from many different countries. Come and join us if you can on Thursday December 13 from 7.00-10pm.
The Winter Party at St George’s West Church – with a Ceilidh band “Shandrixâ€?, Indian band “Sahaj Dharaâ€?, international food and entertainment for all the family – marks the end of a busy week at the centre beginning on Tuesday December 11 with the Christmas Art Workshop to make decorations for the party. In between there’s a walk through the lights of Princes Street to see the new exhibition at the City Art Centre, “Seeing Dragons in the Clouds”, before finishing with the visit to the German market.
Norman weekly activities continue as usual with an employment workshop on December 13, immigration advice session on December 18 and housing information for refugees on December 20. The centre is closed for Christmas between December 21 and January 2.
For more information contact Edinburgh Refugee Centre manager:
Neil McCulloch St George’s West Church 58 Shandwick Place,
Edinburgh, EH2 4RT
Tel 0131 226 1499
December 5th, 2007
Picture by Nick Gardner
Are you a budding photographer? If so, Jackie Mearns of Leith Community Involvement Project invites you to take part in a photography competition open to anyone with a Leith link. CLOSING DATE 31ST JANUARY.
“My Leithâ€? is the name of the competition run by Jackie in conjunction with “Regenerate” community newsletter. All entries will be featured in an exhibition next year and the best photographs may also be published in the “Regenerateâ€? newsletter and other forthcoming publications produced by the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership.
There are three age categories – Children (up to 12), Young People (13 – 21), and Adult (21 and over). Prizes of a trophy and Ocean Terminal shopping vouchers for each category have been generously donated by Forth Ports PLC.
You are allowed up to three entries and can either email your digital pictures to leithphotos@hotmail.co.uk or send hard copies to Jackie Mearns, Leith Community Involvement Project, 4 Duncan Place, Edinburgh EH6 8HW. Please call Jackie Mearns on 0131 554 9951 if you have any questions. Good Luck!
PS, thanks to Nick for his view of the rapidly changing shore of Leith. You can see lots more of Nick’s news and views on his wide-ranging community website Leith and North News.
November 27th, 2007
Talking of photography, the film of the FEAST event is now up on the FEAST website. Alan Stockdale, Leith photographer and film-maker, fused images of Shanghai and Edinburgh with music inspired by the making of Dim Sum (made at Out of the Blue as we reported back in August).
You can enjoy film and music and read some intriguing stories from Chinese and Scottish communities by visiting the FEAST blog. The event was created by Kimho Ip a musician and composer (he runs intercultural workshops in Leith) who believes food is the vital link between all people no matter what language we speak.
Kimho and the rest of the FEAST team are now working on a multi-media, multicultural event, Dialogues of Wind and Bamboo, which will take place in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh next summer as part of the China Now in Scotland programme for 2008.
November 27th, 2007
Community gardens can be a great way of bringing people together. Just take a look at the Hidden Gardens in Glasgow for inspiration. But there are lots of creative ideas bubbling up much closer to home. Plans for community gardens are quickly spreading across the Leith area.
Some, like Dalmeny Street Park, are already taking shape on the ground. Others, like hopes for a community garden in an area of Leith Links, are still at the planning stage.
Want to get involved?
Community groups like Greener Leith are hoping to encourage volunteers
to make sure plans become reality. If you want to get involved click on the Greener Leith website for a long list of opportunities in local environment projects, including building a data base, designing posters and making videos as well as helping to develop community garden projects such as a ‘berry hedge’ in Pilrig Park.
Leith Open Space is also hoping to support another exciting community garden scheme just about to get off the ground. So keeping watching this ‘open space’.
November 26th, 2007
The campaign for Leith Museum is making good progress. The petition, signed by many Leith Open Space supporters, goes before the Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee at 2 pm on Tuesday November 6. If you are free, this is always an interesting meeting to attend as a member of the public – and perhaps you can persuade your MSP to support the cause too.
According to campaigners, the Scottish Parliament is inviting local MSPs who support the petition to speak at the meeting. “This is a good opportunity to publicise the case for a Leith museum,” says Mark Lazarowicz, MP for Edinburgh North and Leith and a keen campaign supporter, “So it would be excellent if there was a good turn-out of Lothian MSPs to support the petition at this meeting.”
Mark is urging anyone who lives in Lothian to ask their MSP to support the museum. “A Leith museum would not just be for Leith, but for Scotland as well!” You can find out details of your local MSPs and how to contact them on the Scottish Parliament website
Find out more on the Leith Museum campaign website
If you are interested in attending the Public Petitions Committee meeting contact:
Visitor Services on 0131 348 5200.
October 7th, 2007
Here’s an invitation to a feast with a difference.
The FEAST celebrates Chinese food through film and music at a free public performance in Castle Street, Edinburgh on August 30 when Edinburgh band FOUND join forces with Chinese composer Kimho Ip to create music inspired by the sounds of preparing and cooking Dim Sum.
The idea comes from Kimho Ip, artistic director of iMAP (intercultural music and arts project) who has supported Leith Open Space events. Kimho uses music performance and workshops to create links between Chinese and Scottish communities. Now he is turning to food. “Food is fundamental to all of us,” he says, “Even if we speak different languages we all have to eat. Sharing a meal together is probably the best way people can begin to understand one another.”
That’s how Kimho came to be playing the traditional Chinese yang-chin alongside the artist/musicians FOUND while Alan Stockdale the drummer and film-maker captured images of Eric the chef cooking up Dim Sum in front of a hungry audience at Out of the Blue in the Old Drill Hall off Leith walk at the end of July.
The musicians were gathering raw material for the FEAST, sampling sounds, sights (and tastes) to turn into a street theatre event at The Eating Place market in Castle Street on August 30 at 6pm when Chinese cooking implements will magically turn into musical instruments. All for free.
FEAST is sponsored by Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothian and supported by Edinburgh City Centre Management Company. For more information see the FEAST website.
Thanks to Michelle from New Media Scotland for use of one of her pictures of the FEAST filming session at Out of the Blue – see more on Flickr
August 19th, 2007
If you want to find out what’s happening in Leith and North Edinburgh, look no further than a new community website celebrating Leith and North.
Congratulations to Nick Gardner, a member of Leith Open Space Group, who designed the website with local news as well as a lively what’s on section and links to the huge range of community groups in our part of town.
“My model is to combine the free newspaper approach and the yellow pages approach.” he says, “I hope we can raise revenue in various ways, but I also want to enjoy the site, myself and create something positive that people will want to be associated with, advertise on, sponsor, have pages on etc.”
Nick will be looking for news and ideas so don’t hesitate to get in touch. Click on the link for Leith and North.
August 15th, 2007
What exactly does democracy mean? The Leith Community Involvement Project has organised a ’summer school’ so local people can take part in a thought-provoking programme to stimulate debate about the connection between democracy and the lives of ordinary people.
The programme begins in August with drama in the Scottish Parliament (the theatrical kind rather than political debate!). A trip to Holyrood provides the chance to see a performance of “The Journey of Jeannie Deansâ€? following Jeannie’s journey from Edinburgh to London in an attempt to win the freedom of her sister who, she believes, has been wrongly accused of murder.
The summer school ends with a showing of Ken Loach’s film “Land and Freedomâ€?, about the questions raised by a young woman’s discovery that her grandfather fought in the Spanish Civil War.
All activities are free of charge. FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT JACKIE MEARNS ON 554 9951 OR 07732471660 – she will be on holiday for two weeks from July 13.
• Friday 24th August 5pm – 6.30pm
“The Journey of Jeannie Deans� performed at the Scottish Parliament. Set in the decades following the Act of Union, this play takes Sir Walter Scott’s “Heart of Midlothian� as its basis, and documents the human drama of sisters Jeannie and Effie Deans, following Jeannie’s journey from Edinburgh to London in an attempt to win the freedom of her sister who, she believes, has been wrongly accused of murder.
• Tuesday 28th August 10am – 3.30pm
A day trip to New Lanark. This trip includes a guided tour around this beautifully restored 18th Century cotton mill village, entry to the visitors centre and a presentation on the life and philosophy of Robert Owen, the mill manager whose ideas were 100 years ahead of their time - abolishing child labour and corporal punishment, providing decent homes, schools, evening classes, free health care and affordable food.
• Friday 31st August 6.30pm – 9pm :
A showing of Land and Freedom directed by Ken Loach. A young women discovers her newly deceased grandfather, David, fought in the Spanish Civil War. But his idealism was tested as comrades were killed and the alliance disintegrated. The old man is buried. Was his struggle in vain?
The Leith Community Involvement project is funded by the Community Voices Fund and City of Edinburgh Council, Community Learning and Development.
Further events are in the pipeline, including an introduction to the Scottish Parliament and how to lobby MSPs, a women’s event and a European themed evening. Further information about these will be sent out soon. Jackie will be on annual leave from Friday 13th for two weeks,
July 14th, 2007
During Refugee Week Fay Young of Leith Open Space Group joined an information session organised by Edinburgh Refugee Centre. This is the first part of her report.
We sat at tables in small groups grappling with questions. What exactly is an asylum seeker? Where do most refugees come from? What is a migrant worker? Can there be an illegal asylum seeker?
The words matter. Dispelling myths was one of the aims of the Information session organised by Edinburgh Refugee Centre with the Scottish Refugee Council during Refugee Week. There is a lot of fear and confusion surrounding words like asylum seeker and refugee.
We were a mixed bunch – from voluntary organisations and public bodies, including two uniformed police officers – who met in St Georges West Church in Edinburgh to gain accurate information about rights and entitlements of asylum seekers.
But first the definitions. Across the table from me is a young man who turns out to be a psychologist. He spends much of his time treating traumatised asylum seekers, many of them suffering from the added anxiety of HIV plus the uncertainty of not knowing whether they can stay in Scotland. Perhaps not surprisingly his definition of asylum seeker is pretty much spot on: ’someone who has arrived in the country, made themselves known to the authorities and exercised the legal right to claim asylum’.
A refugee, therefore, is a successful asylum seeker – someone who has been granted the right to stay either first time round or – since 80% of applications are refused at first – after appeal. A migrant is someone who has come to this country on a visa to work. And, as Jamie Spurway of the Scottish Refugee Council name makes clear, there can never be any such thing as an ‘illegal asylum seeker’ – when he sees that term in a newspaper he knows the rest of the story is not worth reading.
Many of the people at today’s workshop are refugees. I am sitting next to a woman from Palestine who helps me name the countries on the map where most refugees come from (to name but five: Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Iran and Iraq). And why. Civil war, rape, religious persecution, ethnic oppression, political repression, tribal conflict, government corruption – these are the main causes why people are forced to flee their native land.
In such a complicated world it is increasingly difficult to fit 21st Century refugees into the definition laid down by the United Nations in 1951 – a refugee is someone unable to return to their country because of a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. Rape as a weapon of war is not included.
A morning’s workshop doesn’t answer all questions but the interest and concern in an Edinburgh church hall is heartwarming. We leave with news of many more information sessions to come.
For more information about future workshops and training courses visit the Scottish Refugee Council website.
July 5th, 2007
Let’s join the campaign for Leith Museum. Mark Lazarowicz, MP for Edinburgh North and Leith, is inviting Leithers near and far to sign a petition to support local groups campaigning for a museum celebrating the history of one of the fastest changing parts of the Capital.
Celebrating Leith’s history, the mural in North Junction Street was created by Tim Chalk and Paul Grime using material collected by Leith Local History Project in 1986. Thanks to Peter Stubbs for use of this photograph © Peter Stubbs www.edinphoto.org.uk
This not a new campaign – local groups such as Leith History Society have been calling for a museum for years – but as Mark told the Evening News
the case is now stronger than ever: “Leith deserves a museum which will strengthen community links at a time of rapid social change, and will highlight Leith’s important role in the history of Scotland as a whole.”
Exactly where the museum will be has yet to be decided (the spotlight falls on possible buildings like Lambs House and the old Customs House). But wherever it is there will be no shortage of exhibits: Leith’s diverse history stretches from seafaring to Trainspotting and celebrity connections include Mary Queen of Scots, Eduardo Paolozzi and Irvine Welsh.
Living memories of local people (recently captured by [murmur] who are returning to Edinburgh in June for a second phase of the oral history project ) are another rich resource for a museum aiming to appeal to people of all ages with family connections across the world.
So lets sign the petition – and pass it on!
May 15th, 2007
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