‘Wise Medicine Men’ and the role of the artist?

The best bits!

On Saturday there was a celebratory opening of the garden with food and drinks and circus entertainment all laid on by the commissioner.

To end this section of the blog I am going to do a big brother type 'here's your best bits'.

1) The sheme was finished off with a community planting session.

2) There are plans to begin a garden club.

3) A residents association forming was talked about.

4) The kids on the estate have guarded the garden from outsiders spoiling it.

5) I have seen groups of neighbours talking over garden fences and on the street.

6)The commissioner told me (Southern Housing Association) that the 'Them and us' attitude which had prevailed, had relaxed and tennants thought the housing association was now listening to them and reacting to requirements and generally more approchable.

7) Children run up and hug me in the street, they want their photo taken with me and they chase my car waving goodby. I felt like a celeb for the whole day.

8) The commissioner said it had exceeded expectations.

So well done The Anne Peaker Centre, Karin and then Liz Knowles who made it happen.

Three cheers for:

Andy Evans, Siobhaun Timothey, Kate Richardson, Martin Brockman and part time volunteer Dan who were my collegues in Nam. All of them artists from various disciplines with either shamanistic powers or the wisdom of medicine men.

This probably wont be my last day as it rained very hard. What I made turned into a paddling pool under a bench! unable to finish.

As for the wise men I mentioned earlier, I am now a little closer to being one. I dont think its about art particularly, but it is about change. My grandmother was a victorian and I dimly remember her. The values and codes of behaviour in her time were much more austere than today. Things change and I could start sounding like my dad ' if only the kids today blah had blah more blahdy blah'. But my world is different from his and my son's different from mine. How stale would a monopoly of victorian values in todays world be?

Perhaps the outsiders need to shake the core alittle as it will go stale. Teddy boys (before my time) are probably pretty mellow now and say 'if only the kids today blahdy blah.

Society is a pretty organic thing and will shift around and art/culture is a major part of that. I am not sure that art is allways the root cause of the shifts but I am sure it highlights and reinforces them so that new rules become the stable core.

So if St. Radigans is a measure of the the future then!……its pretty free-form. And the purchase order for Middleport arrived today so as one job draws to a close another begins. As my old mum used to say 'out with the old and in with the new'!

This is probabably the penultimate post on this project, one last story from the last day on the path before turfing the whole area.

We are starting to pack away the days eqipment at the end of a full on day,

'Come the F*****G HELL round here now and just have a look at this mess'. SEE what the ******* kids have done this ******88& little ****3£ & **$!&*********// mess!

This is the woman who lives adjacent to the site we are working on addressing me very loudly and trying to get my attention.

'Oh er will I need a brush or a bucket of water or something like that'? I replied.

'Bring what the **^%"""1$ you like, but I have had enough of this and I am NOT putting up with it any MORE. See what has happened now'.

The front of this womans house looks like the Bosnian Serbs dug in on the ridge yonder have shelled the front of her house. Only they used cement instead of shells. It is peppered in blobs. Front door, brickwork, the UPVC windows the front path, the plastic white gas meter box at the front and the garden fence.

'I have been pushing for this project, raising money, attending meetings for 2 and a half years to make this happen. AND this is the thanks I get. No respect from these kids they are wild'!

There a silent pause …..'I think this woman has a point' I said to the 15 kids standing in the road watching this drama 'and you should appologise and clear this up. Can we have a bucket of hot water please'.

The response is a barrage of verbal abuse, the main point being, it was not us and how dare she swear at us like that. Two children help us clear this mess up. The rest pace and swagger protesting innocence watching us use hot water, brooms, brushes, J cloths etc.

I am begining to feel like a Nam Veterain, 'Would you go back to Nam?' I will be there on Friday to finish.