Meetings meetings meetings, Go&Sees go&sees go&sees!

Today was spent cramming as many meetings as humanly possible into a day in Bristol.  I met with Circomedia, Heritage and Community, and The Station.  Circomedia and The Station have been earmarked since very early stages of the project as potential Go&Sees to take our group of young people on and meet people from nearby exemplar projects, so these meetings were crucial to get right! (and there was no Melita this time to ask all the experienced and informed questions!)

These Go&Sees will be undertaken by two groups of people (the first being Melita and myself, the second being Melita, myself and the young people), and fit into three categories (Heritage, Community, and Youth), a lot of which overlap.  We aim to provide the project with as wide a range of research and inspirational visits as is viable, so these Go&Sees are undergoing some fairly extensive research!

I've already written about The Station here.  Circomedia is a Circus School that is celebrating its 25th birthday this year.  It recently started using St Paul's church (the first Regeneration Taskforce project) as one of its venues and training spaces.  This soon became the Regeneration Taskforce's flagship project, fulfilling its' roles of securing and maintaining the building, and making steps to regenerate the surrounding community.

Whilst this picture does look great, it doesn't really do justice to the experience of watching a performance with trapeze artists swinging between pillars, people climbing 30m high ropes to the ceiling, and generally using the whole space so creatively.  At today's meeting I managed to convince Circomedia that they wanted our young people looking round during one of their BTEC classes, which is fantastic because that huge space is going to be a hive of activity.  This will undoubtedly get some creative juices flowing around ideas for All Saints'! Hooray.

The meeting at The Station had the same good conclusion - they were happy for us to bring our young people to see the site and talk to the people involved in planning their project (which includes some Bristolian young people, ooooh).  The difference with this Go&See is that The Station is currently derelict, and when we visit it, it'll be an enormous building site.  We're going to make the most of this opportunity to see a restoration and regeneration project mid-development (rather than see shiny pictures of one that's yet to commence, or a shiny building thats already been completed), so this summer/autumn our young people are going there!

John from Heritage and Community is no stranger to the CCT and its' exploits, having covered posts during maternity leave in the past, so it was very useful to have an informed but external point of view on the project.  He also recommended another local project for a Go&See, that he worked on - Tyntesfield is a National Trust property, which utilises young volunteers in similar (and different) ways to our project, so that's definitely one to keep fresh in our minds.  It was certainly good to pick John's brains about his experience of that project - what we should watch out for and what we don't need to be panicking about just yet!

A very long day, but very very useful, and with some great outcomes!