Posted by editor on June 22, 2010 under Community, Education and health, Environment
Well known for their recycling, east Manchester’s EMERGE is progressively launching new local initiatives that encourage sustainable living. Here Len Grant meets newest recruit, Ben Lear, their Growing Foods Project Leader.
Ben Lear: "Growing and cooking our own food... these are skills we could lose."
Ben’s new job seems easy enough: encourage local people to start growing their own food. On a sunny day in June with the first pea pods appearing in the EMERGE teaching garden, it is surely an idyllic task.
But, even with the increasing popularity of growing your own, the odds are stacked against him. On the main road opposite the newly created garden the construction of two new fast food outlets highlights our preference for instant, unhealthy food. Many of the lorries driving into the New Smithfield Market – where EMERGE are based – bring more fruit and vegetables from around the world and, says Ben, serve as a constant reminder of the importance of locally grown food.
Food containers, tyres... you can grow food in anything
Since arriving in April Ben has coordinated the construction of EMERGE’s teaching garden. There are now raised vegetable plots with courgettes, squash, leeks, spinach and lettuce all making a tentative appearance. Discarded tyres act as pots for potatoes; specially bred worms munch their way through food waste to make ‘the very best compost’, and a large ‘poly tunnel’ has been built as a classroom for Ben’s new project.
“We’re starting a four week course here on July 8th,” he says. “It’s aimed specifically at beginners to give people the confidence to start growing their own food. We’ll start by talking about soils; how to plant things and how to water them; which containers to use. Maybe later we’ll talk a little about garden design and crop rotation but we’ll see how we get on.”
Ben has already set up a Saturday gardening drop-in club down at the wholesale market. “There’s lots to do here and I’m hopeful local people will just pop along and get involved. We’ve built some beds but need more and there’s always lots of maintenance needed at this time of year.”
Keen to take his project out to the community, Ben has already forged linked with some local groups. “With the African Francophone Integration Project in Beswick we are creating a community garden and we might even try and grow some native African vegetables. But I’d like to hear from other groups or individuals who have a plot, however small, that they’d like to cultivate.”
Ben’s job at EMERGE – the social enterprise that spearheaded recycling in Manchester long before it become mainstream – is funded by the Manchester Carbon Innovation Fund. Manchester City Council has invested £1 million in local projects that tackle climate change.
Trucks bringing fruit and veg from around the world are a constant reminder
There are beehives in urban allotments, ‘green roofs’ on community buildings and, in the Northern Quarter, the first ‘smart energy business district’ where offices and homes can monitor and reduce their energy use.
“Following the Growing Foods Project we hoping to open a cookery centre here,” says Ben, “it’s the logical next step after you’ve grown your own local, nutritious food. My granddad is a great gardener and my grandma is a great cook and it’s those skills that we are in danger of losing.”
Like to know more about growing your own food?
Contact Ben Lear at EMERGE on 0161 223 8200 or ben@emergemanchester.co.uk
See EMERGE’s website
Read more about the Manchester Carbon Innovation Fund
Posted by editor on May 4, 2010 under Art, sport and leisure, Community
FC United of Manchester, the anti-Glazer protest club, are set to move back to their spiritual roots.
The Ten Acre Lane Sports Complex: a homecoming for FC United
Back in 1878, the year that football referees first started using whistles, the workers of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway would play their home matches on North Road, opposite the carriage and wagon works where the players toiled together during the day.
Their team – Newton Heath (L and YR) Football Club – played in a strip of gold and green and subsequently joined the newly-formed football league in 1892 and, a decade later, were renamed Manchester United.
The rest, you might say, is history and to continue the clichés, history does have a habit of repeating itself. So, only last month, FC United of Manchester, the anti-Glazer club set up in 2005, announced its intention to move back to its ancestral home in Newton Heath. Backed by Manchester City Council and New East Manchester the supporter-owned club plans to develop a rundown sports centre into a 5000-capacity stadium with community sports facilities alongside.
See FC United of Manchester’s website
Posted by editor on March 31, 2010 under Community
Today is the end of an era. East Manchester’s New Deal for Communities programme is now officially over. For more than ten years millions have been spent on transforming the ‘broken’ neighbourhoods of Beswick, Openshaw and Clayton, with residents at the forefront of change. Len Grant tells of his new book, Reclaiming East Manchester: Ten Years of Resident-led Regeneration which charts the successes and frustrations of the last decade.
"It's a story of how mistrust and apathy gave way to co-operation and mutual respect."
I’ve been following east Manchester’s regeneration since about 2005 and was commissioned at the end of 2008 to produce a ‘legacy’ book to mark the completion of the New Deal programme.
Sean McGonigle, NDC’s Co-ordinator, said the book should show how New Deal had changed east Manchester socially and physically, but, more importantly, demonstrate how the regeneration effort had helped individuals improve their lives.
Some might think that was a tall order: having to recount how lives had been positively changed through regeneration. Does it really happen? Well, there are plenty of people in east Manchester who would give an emphatic ‘yes’ to that and I have included some of their stories in this book.
There is the story of Gwen and Steve who bought a house on a Beswick estate in 1995 only to find it had a 96% crime rate. Working with their neighbours, with New Deal and with the police, they turned their neighbourhood around and it now has a crime rate of less than 1%.
Gwen Woolon: "I'd had enough. Something had to be done."
Then there is Shirley, stuck in a rut, who threw herself headlong into computers when the subsidised internet provider Eastserve come on stream in 2001. She started out as a volunteer and is now a full-time computer tutor at The Manchester College.
Or long-term out-of-work Carol who, with NDC support, gradually got herself back into work and now – as an Employment and Training Consultant – helps others do the same.
The book is set out in a timeline. It starts in 1731 when Ashton Old Road is first established and finishes in March 2010. Throughout the book I have sprinkled quotations from New Deal officers and residents, like this one from Clayton resident, Maggie Warburton talking about her area before New Deal: “The houses round here were an absolute bloody shambles. So in my infinite wisdom, I decided to have a go at the housing association… and the Council…and the police, and anybody else I thought needed kicking up the arse. We didn’t deserve this. All we were asking for was a decent street to live in and for them to do the job they were getting paid for.”
This is what resident Andrea Melarkey had to say about the whole ten-year process: “New Deal has made my area friendly. They’ve made it liveable, and people are happier. We chose to stay and I’m glad we did. We could have upped and left but we decided to stick it out and see it through. I feel really quite passionate now about where we live.”
I’ve interviewed dozens of people for the book and could have interviewed dozens more, there has been so much involvement in the project. But, after 186 pages, I’ve had to draw a line on this chapter of east Manchester’s recent history.
New East Manchester Ltd has planned for this moment for more than two years and so, although the New Deal funding draws to a close, the regeneration effort continues seamlessly and today will feel like any other in the area’s ongoing success story.
Congratulations to all residents and staff for their resolve and commitment to east Manchester!
Reclaiming East Manchester: Ten Years of Resident-led Regeneration is featured here on the Manchester Evening News website.
It is available to buy online at Cornerhouse Publications for £10.
Posted by editor on March 26, 2010 under Business, training and employment, Community
When New Deal for Communities set up in 1999, few homes had computers and even fewer had access to the internet. Ten years on and, as NDC draws to a close, Len Grant takes a look at the broadband legacy left by the regeneration programme.
Let’s get one thing straight. Eastserve is not what is was. The local internet service provider – set up in 2002 by New Deal for Communities to provide residents with computers, training and broadband connection – is now effectively split in two.
There’s the bit that still provides lots of community information and support for local residents, much of it compiled by local people themselves, which is online at eastserve.com. Then there’s the technical side – Eastserve Broadband – that continues to provide a competitive broadband service to hundreds of east Manchester homes and businesses using an innovative wireless network.
Although separate, both Eastserves are between them offering the same – if not more – than the previously combined service.
Keith Tongue: "No land line, no contract, no worries."
But it’s the broadband side I’m off to investigate for thisiseast.com. It’s twelve months to the day – give or take – that Beverley Hughes MP cut a ribbon outside Eastserve’s Ashton Old Road’s offices to mark the beginning of a partnership between private telecoms company, Symera and Manchester City Council.
It’s all part of what the regeneration people would call an exit strategy: they’ve used public money to set up and run a much-needed service to local residents and once it’s up and running they encourage others to get involved as the original funding comes to an end. At Eastserve it was Symera who saw an opportunity to get in at ground level in east Manchester.
“It’s not been a totally seamless transition,” admits Eastserve’s Keith Tonge. “It’s one thing to operate with ample public funds and another to make the books balance as a going concern.” With a view to the long term, Eastserve has trimmed its overheads – shedding staff and moving to smaller premises – to concentrate on their key business of providing a reliable, cost effective broadband service to residents and small businesses.
Keith, who has years of experience in the telecommunications industry, is now gearing up for a big push for new business. Although broadband operators are falling over each other to get new customers, Keith is confident the wireless hardware installed across east Manchester gives them a big advantage.
“Most other services come down the telephone line,” he explains, “and you can only get so much down it. But in this area we have 75 ‘access points’ on top of key buildings which relay the connection direct to the little square receiver we attach to each home, so we don’t use the local telephone system at all.”
This means customers can get online without the need of an expensive landline. There are no contracts either, but there is a one-off connection fee to cover the cost of installing the hardware. “We can reduce the connection fee depending on how customers pay us,” explains Keith, “and it’s even something the Manchester Credit Union will consider a loan towards if necessary.”
There’s a big marketing campaign starting soon and Keith is confident he’ll add hundreds of new customers over the coming months. “The beauty of Eastserve is we’re local: if there’s a problem there is no faceless call centre to negotiate, customers can talk to us right here in Openshaw.”
Using the same technology Symera can adapt the service for business customers: “We can use the local network to relay security camera pictures and other digital information,” says Keith. “We’re just beginning to take advantage of this state-of-the-art infrastructure that’s only fitted in this part of Manchester.”
More information on the broadband packages and other Symera packages available from Eastserve here, or call them direct on 230 6346.
