TASK Newsletter (21)

Welcome to the latest TASK e-news, your regular newsletter from Take Action from Seven Kings sent fortnightly via email. This time we focus on policing, an exciting new play scheme coming our way, the imminent advent of a new trader group in Goodmayes and a live event in our new library.

Our October supporters meeting, open to all our supporters reading this, happens on Monday October 11 from 7-8pm at St.John’s Church, at the junction of St.John’s Road and Aldborough Road South. We will joined on the night by a special guest, Susan Heywood, who is trying to bring Redbridge residents’ and community groups together to share information, and where possible, collaborate as part of one giant co-ordinated effort. Hear what she has to say and catch up on all the local news.

Our autumn walkabout happens the same week, on Friday October 15 from 9am, meeting outside Seven Kings Railway station. It is a brilliant opportunity to join council streetscene staff, ward councillors and the police to take often immediate action on those everyday miseries of graffiti, dumping and anti-social behaviour which can so blight our lives. The route is always flexible and we welcome your suggestions on tackling eyesores and challenges near where you are.

Our local library is now well-established and continues to generate brilliant user figures. On Wednesday October 13 it hosts its first live evening event as part of the Word of Mouth arts festival, when author Orna Ross gives a lively talk on Literary Dublin called Meet the Dubliners. It runs from 7-9pm and tickets are free, although you are asked to reserve a place at the library itself or by phoning 020 8708 2737.

The quality of policing has been one of the constant themes of our TASK campaigning over the last two and a half years, with headline efforts on our part to get police to tackle public boozing and recognise the local fear of crime. On the basis that we do not just criticise but are always willing to take responsibility by getting involved ourselves, we are hoping to contribute to the local Seven Kings police panel - the body which decides local policing priorities - by nominating two TASK supporters as possible panel members for 2010/11. The Annual General Meeting of the panel is scheduled for October 18, at Canon Palmer School, starting at 7pm. It is is open to the public and we urge all interested supporters to attend to raise their policing-related issues.

Our Seven Kings council-sponsored business partnership is already in operation and we hear from councillors in neighbouring Goodmayes of their efforts to organise retailers and companies working there. The first meeting of the Goodmayes Business Partnership is scheduled for October 27, starting at 10am in Royal Sweets, at 58 Goodmayes Road, with a speaker from Business Link on seeking funding in these hard times. We wish them well.

Finally, for now, an update on a long-running story about the disused allotment site between Benton Road and Vicarage Lane, which some locals have been trying hard to develop as a much needed play site. The good news is that the Council’s Area 7 committee recently agreed to fund £2388 towards the cost of producing plans and submitting a full planning application for what is known as the Vicarage Lane Play Park, enjoying cross-party political support. This brings the dream a step closer in an area that has been massively developed as apartment housing over the last decade, but - shockingly - without any specific provision for play, and a long haul to existing open space like Valentines Park.

That’s all folks! Please pass us on to a friend or family member who might want to be part of our growing network, and get involved.

We are back in a fortnight when the first outline of the borough’s cuts will become clearer after the Cabinet meeting this Tuesday.

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Low - (That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace.

@ the Park (2)

I went to see Rodney Bailey's @ the Park exhibition today. Rodney writes that:

"This collection of work summarises an evolution and a virtual marker from faithless to faithful. Here I visualise a spiritual renaissance in myself and my local environment. Having used parks as a short cut to another place, as a setting to pass time or to check out the passing trade.

This exhibition displays an alternative to the way I engage with these same spaces. Documenting these settings I have provided the viewer with an insight to my past activities.

The pictures are of parks in the two mile radius of Camberwell, each have a specific viewpoint depending on the time, the subject and the location. The pictures each aim to take the viewer and allow them to become actively engaged in each picture. On close examination some pictures reveal a fantasy world of witches, faces, fairies and goblins. The views shown encompass light, colour, definition and intensity.

The @ the Park exhibition has cemented me from wishful to faithful in a quote from the writings of Nichiren Daishonin, founder of Nichiren Buddhism: If a tree is deeply rooted, its branches and leaves wil never wither. If the Spring is inexhaustible, the stream will never run dry. Without wood, a fire will burn out. Without earth, plants will not grow. Nichiren is like the plant, and my teacher, the earth."

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Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi.

CompassionArt & Deanery Youth Service

In January 2008 twelve of the best-known writers in the gospel/Christian music scene - Michael W. Smith, Darlene Zschech, Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Paul Baloche, Israel Houghton, Graham Kendrick, Steven Curtis-Chapman, Andy Park, Stu Garrard, Martin Smith – got together in Scotland to spend the week writing songs that could impact on issues of poverty in some of the poorest parts of the world on a long-term basis. They wanted to be people that can make a change rather than just singing about it.

As a result CompassionArt was born, a charity dedicated to seeing works of art generate income for the poorest of the poor. When we sing a song in church it actually makes money. A royalty is paid to CCLI – the global body that oversees the process. They take out a small percentage to cover their administration costs and then pass the remainder of the royalty on to the songwriter's publisher who take a cut themselves and then pass what remains to the writer of the song who then splits it with a management team. But everyone involved in these songs from writers to publishers, managers to the team at CCLI have waived all their rights and allowed CompassionArt to own the copyrights. So the songs that were written in Scotland are now owned by the charity meaning that every penny will come to it and the trust will own these copyrights forever.

Our young people at St Johns Seven Kings heard about CompassionArt during a Youth Group session about Christian music and decided that they wanted to base a Deanery Youth Service on its work and music. They have come up with some great ideas for leading prayer and worship and their service will be held at St John’s on Sunday 5th July at 5.00pm.

By supporting our young people and coming to this service you can help CompassionArt support projects restoring choice and hope to people's lives. CompassionArt is a charity that joins the dots between art and poverty. It raises money to help breathe life into the poorest communities, restoring hope and igniting justice.

They provide funding to projects working with children in Uganda – some of whom have already endured the brutality of life as a child soldier – as well as children of sex workers in Indian slums. There are homeless shelters in the middle of wealthy western cities and orphanages in the middle of developing nations that are helped financially - as a result of the sale of CompassionArt albums, songs and books - all of them breathing hope back into lives that have been conditioned to believe that life may never get any better.

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CompassionArt - Friend Of The Poor.