Day #3
It’s day 3 of the residency and the space is pretty quite apart from the odd visitor. Over the past few days I have been located at the front of the space playing what seems to be my profession – front of house. While doing this I have been organising my workshops and working on getting people in to use the space and use the New Ferry Butterfly Park.
The workshops are still in the air a bit. We have no dates, no confirmed groups and no confirmed equipment as of yet, but I guess things are going to take shape very quickly. Monday was a day of lists, Teusday was a day of meetings and today I have been talking to a very friendly and enthusiastic local poet for a good hour while adding another sign to the window in a vain attempt to push the urgency of come-in-and-use-this. Problem is people come into the high street to buy things, not to hang out. And the weather has been quite abysmal too.
Yesterday we met the very kind people from The Wifred Owen Story. This is a museum in Birkenhead set up to commemorate and preserve the life and work of the said local Great War poet. We talked about setting up poetry group locally. And using the Butterfly Park as a place to read and perform. This idea came about after a talk at Metal on Monday, I came away with two very useful words:
START SOMETHING
Well, I’ll try. People are already paying more attention to the space, it will just take time for people to sum up some courage and cross the threshold. In the meantime I am trying to get groups in to bypass this.
Ideas thrown around so far include a performance of Bullets and Daffodils in different places in New Ferry, a poetry group and a talk in the care hostel where I am currently residing. Oh and we talked about making ceramic sculptures! I hope some of these bare fruit but I need people to get together, I need collaborators.
