Today Leicester Market is the lively venue for the second
Our Leicester Day. Voluntary and Community Sector organisations from the city and county (Leicester Council of Faiths among them) are promoting themselves and showing what they get up to, so as many people as possible can get involved in their activities. Our Leicester Day is a showcase of what goes on in and around our neighbourhood. A real diversity of activities, cultures and interests is on display, including street performers, musicians and singers among the dozens of stalls promoting organisations from all across Leicester and Leicestershire.
Last year, Our Leicester Day was plagued by Hurricane Katia. Even at a distance, Katia wreaked havoc on the displays, blowing stuff over exhibitions, ripping banners, uprooting displays and scattering literature. Never were "fliers" so appropriately named! The weather today starts milder (and warmer) than last year, which emboldens me to bring down our whole exhibition with all ten pop-up banners. But by the time I get half of them up, it's clear that even without a hurricane, the wind is going to be too strong again. The banners come back down and back into the drums. I keep the two "generic" banners up, with their feet anchored under the drums, but that doesn't work very well, so I do the best I can by tying them together. The wind is still too strong and they blow over (together) several times. They really do seem to be indestructible, thank goodness. It's inconvenient and annoying, but on other stalls it's downright dangerous. Once again, it's a minor miracle that no one gets hurt as some heavy gear goes tumbling down.
Our display is hardly excitement on stilts. I had hoped to put up something nicer, but discretion is the better part of valour, as they say! I wasn't going to run the risk of having our exhibition ruined by falling one too many times - or of it falling on someone. I was too optimistic in thinking we could do this without encountering any difficulty. It's not an outdoor exhibition and I shouldn't expect it to be like one. At least this time we have nice coverings for the tables. We share the stall today with members of the local Brahma Kumaris group (the chaps in white shirts in the photo above). Thanks to them for coming to the aid of our display whenever the wind whipped up. They have a very solid, chunky set of boards themselves, which gets blown over a couple of times before they decide to play safe and pack it away.
Our Leicester Day is certainly a nice opportunity to meet friends and colleagues active in the Voluntary and Community Sector, to make new contacts and to collect details of people who'd like to come to our future activities. But there are far fewer people here today than there were last year and I wouldn't be surprised if many of these absentees have stayed away because of concerns over health and safety issues. I brought Harry and Grace here last year and felt queasy about their safety more than once. Although today started nicely enough, I decided that I wouldn't take that risk with them this time. There was a debrief shortly after the first Our Leicester Day last year at which I raised the matter of health and safety, that it wasn't a secure environment, but it was dismissed with little discussion, from what seemed to be an ideological standpoint. I think it would be tempting fate to have this event in the same place again next year.
Major props, though, to John, Tina, Holly, Will et al, without whom there would be very little here! More power to Somewhere_to, Citizens' Eye and (as I discovered today) Citizens' Ear. Yes indeed but that's still to come!
At Leicester Market for Our Leicester Day. This is an opportunity for Voluntary and Community Sector organisations (and a few others) in the city (some from the county too) to present themselves to the general public, to the media - and to each other.
There are more than 110 organisations listed as taking part (described as "Promoters"), but it doesn't look to me as if all of them have turned up. The wind is probably a big factor in that. No one reckoned with the effects of the tail-end of Hurricane Katia. Some groups have had their display material virtually wrecked by the wind. There are leaflets flying everywhere, banners blown over and torn from their moorings and so much stuff being tossed backward and forward, it's a wonder no one is injured.
We share our space with Cooke e-learning Foundation and Menphys. Jim Matthews is helping run the Menphys stall. Jim worked as a reporter with the Leicester Mercury for 35 years. I introduce Gracie to Jim and ask her to tell him what she would like as a career. She makes a good impression on Jim, the outcome of which is that she gets a discount on a bunch of jigsaws (that's my girl!)
Today we're getting people to sign up to our forthcoming email newsletter, that we intend to launch during Community Media Week at the beginning of November.
Our Chair, Councillor Manjula Sood, and I get to speak for a few minutes live on BBC Radio Leicester about the Council of Faiths participation in today's event. I think I respond quite well to being asked live on air if I am Welsh.
A variety of media outlets covered the event, including Citizens' Eye Community News Agency and Pukaar News.
There's going to be a follow-up meeting for debriefing purposes at Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre, Thursday 3 November, 1730. I think that there's been a mixed message about this event, because of the date on which it's been held. On the whole, it's not being taken on by the "Promoters" as being about the tenth anniversary of 9/11 but it's been too convenient and easy (for which, read "lazy") for the media to present it as being so, leading to some skewed perspectives about who is here and what the event is for. Certainly, when I got to speak on BBC Radio Leicester, I wanted to say something different. This is not an event about how Christians and Muslims can get along. I reckon that's a bit of a cheap shot, actually. I haven't seen anything on the promotional material for today's event that would warrant that sort of conclusion. A look at the list of Promoters shows that very few indeed have got anything to do with that angle - even the Council of Faiths itself is not about dialogue and relations between just those two sections of the community. Going on the informal chatter to which I've been privy, the inaccurate emphasis on the Christian-Muslim aspect hasn't gone down well in general and led to a number of people who would have benefited from attending (as visitors or as Promoters) staying away from what appeared, to them, to be an event overtly favouring particular groups who actually turned out to be in a tiny minority here today.
I think that today's event was a success, despite the effects of Hurricane Katia and the tenth anniversary of 9/11, which couldn't help but cast a shadow over anything and everything that goes on today. If Our Leicester Day is to be held again, then hopefully neither foul weather nor the hand of history will set the tone as they have today.
Thanks for helping out today to Ajay, Alastair, Clare, Grace, Harry, Manjula and Rosemarie.
In the photo above: Councillor Manjula Sood (Chair of Leicester Council of Faiths) and Ajay Aggarwal (Leicester Council of Faiths Co-ordinator). Note how the the wind is playing havoc with our pop-up banner!
