A lot of people in Wester Hailes seem to have enjoyed watching the 1985 television documentary, “The Huts – A film from Wester Hailes”. I only heard about the film a couple of weeks ago. It happened while I was talking about the community evaluation process (you can read about the evaluation and my role in a previous Digital Sentinel article and a colleague said, “It’s like The Huts for the 21st Century!”
Well, people have started to get excited about this idea and when the community partners met to confirm the evaluation plan last Friday, they said: Maybe we could make a film like ‘The Huts’ to show how people get involved in the Wester Hailes community today!
So the plan is to show the 1985 Huts film during the WHALE Arts celebrations in early August. There is a big celebration day on Saturday August 2nd and we are thinking we could have a film evening on Tuesday August 5th. We will watch the Huts and then talk about how we could do something similar as part of the community evaluation process. This will also be an opportunity to talk about what you would like the community evaluation to accomplish and how you might get involved.
There are other ways to get involved as well: We are looking for community researchers (and now filmmakers!) and for people to tell their stories. These can be stories about your experiences with particular activities or places, or about your experiences of getting involved in the community for as long as you have lived in Wester Hailes. If you’ve never been involved in anything, that would be interesting to hear about as well. Perhaps you have some ideas for different activities that would appeal to you more? One way or another, I would love to hear from you. I am at WHALE Arts most of the time and you can reach me there at 0131 458 3267 or email me at Janice.Astbury@hw.ac.uk.
Submitted by Janice Astbury
