A few minutes after leaving Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living, where I'd been attending the regular monthly Core Partners meeting of the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership, I stop at the top of King Street, to put on my coat. As I do so, I hear someone calling my name. A few yards down Wellington Street, sitting on the low windowsill outside the old record lending library, Ian Davies and Chris Minter are waving to me. Chris is Head of Leicester Adult Skills and Learning Service (LASALS). Ian is a community activist and photographer whom I got to know through CreativeCoffee Club at Phoenix Square.
As I cross Wellington Street toward them, they stand up and beckon me into the building, through the open fire exit door and up the stairs inside. The old Central Lending Library is in the final stages of conversion into a new venue for community education and cultural use. Its main feature in this new form will be the Leicester Peoples Photographic Gallery. So here I am getting a sneaky peek at the new gallery space and some of the pictures that will feature in the opening exhibit there. Ian's devoted himself to this project over the last several months and his hard work is clearly paying off. It's two weeks till the building opens to the public, but already it's an impressive sight. It's going to be a very attractive and busy venue, I've no doubt about that.
There's an offer of a public display of photographs for Leicester Council of Faiths during National Inter Faith Week in November. This is something I'm hoping to persuade our Board of Directors to get behind as part of the celebration of the Council of Faiths 25th anniversary.
I've joined the Leicester People's Photographic Gallery with a personal subscription of only £5 per year (which brings a number of benefits). Ian thinks I'm member No. 22.
I'd have liked to have stayed longer and had more of a look around, but I'm supposed to be at the Quaker Meeting House in just a quarter of an hour.
I hope that Ian can maker it to CreativeCoffee Club tomorrow morning. If he does, I'll give him the chance to say a bit about the Gallery .
The Leicester People's Photographic Gallery is the beneficiary of generous sponsorship and support from Jon E. Wright & Company, the long-established and well-respected digital printing business. And the Gallery has a well-subscribed Facebook page.
In the photo above, Ian is in the foreground, Chris is in the background.
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