Suffolk actor to hike around the coast of Pembrokshire to get to Edinburgh.

Bramfield born actor Martin Bonger has been garnering rave reviews in his play ‘Keepers’ lately. Devised with fellow performer Fionn Gill and director Simon Day, the play is based on the infamous events at the Smalls Lighthouse that occurred two hundred years ago.

“Enchanting… physical… powerful beguiling theatre, a veritable tour de force…” The British Theatre Guide.

The legend of the Smalls Lighthouse has always captivated audiences. With little more than a trapdoor and a ladder, Martin, Fionn and Simon bring the fireside tale alive and conjure up a stormy narrative of companionship and loss that unfolds between the swelling tides and in the sweeping flashes of the lamp that the keepers tend every night.

In 1801 two keepers Thomas Howell and Thomas Griffith were wintering on the lighthouse 22 miles off the Welsh coast when Griffith died in mysterious circumstances. Howell kept the body for four months in a makeshift coffin strapped to the side of the lighthouse but it was smashed up by the waves, leaving the dead keeper’s arm to move back and forth in the wind appearing as if to beckon the other into the ocean. When a relief team finally arrived, Howell was found to have gone mad and with “a shock of white hair”.  The rules were then changed so that lighthouses had to be staffed by three keepers to prevent a similar event reoccurring.

The hour-long play’s small first tour was a resounding success, delighting audiences at The Brighton Fringe, PULSE and Bristol’s Mayfest and recently ‘coming home’ to The Cut in Halesworth and the New Wolsey Theatre.

Now Martin and his theatre collective, The Plasticine Men, need to raise £3000 to cover the costs of taking Keepers to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the run of the performances at the Pleasance Courtyard, 4-30 August 2010.

So over the weekend of 3-4 July, the trio will undertake a sponsored walk between the lighthouses on the Pembrokeshire coast carrying their own supplies and finishing with a boat trip out to the Smalls Lighthouse itself.

25 year old Martin Bonger grew up in Suffolk amongst a creative family and he first gained notices as a teenager for performances with the semi-professional company Circle 67 in fully staged productions of Nicholas Nicklebly and their ‘strolling players’ productions of Hamlet. He joined the National Youth Theatre while still at school and after a gap-year with a circus in Berlin, studied theatre at Leeds. Martin also wrote and directed ‘Tomas Pape’ a deeply affecting piece about childhood suffering staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2007.

The Plasticine Men have set up a web page where you can sponsor their grueling journey to Edinburgh at www.theplasticinemen.co.uk  Alternatively you can send cheques to The Plasticine Men, Flat 2, 11 Cambridge Gardens, Hastings, TN34 1EH. 

You can also join their Facebook page and twitter feed to see photographs of the production and keep up with the latest news. The collective promise donors will receive a report of the trip and Edinburgh run with photos and press clippings. All donors will also receive a big ‘thank you’ on the website.

Take Part In Bike Aid

TAKE PART IN BIKE AID

Halesworth Town Plan Cycling Group have devised the ‘Halesworth Wheel’, a 20 mile cycle route around the town taking in the sights, pubs, historic buildings and so on with a variety of routes to suit every kind of cyclist. They are now producing a printed guide and a website. This will support tourism jobs and promote healthy lifestyles in East Anglia.

To support the Wheel, Halesworth In Transition (HinT) will provide 'cycle aid’ boxes along the route and elsewhere in Suffolk created from recycled unwanted tools to assist passing cyclists with emergency repairs whenever they’re needed.

Every cyclist (and many non-cyclists) has spare tools, pumps and bike bits they never use but can’t throw away "in case it’s useful". Now they can put them to a good use for their community.

On July 10th 2010 from 10 am to 1 pm, bring your unwanted tools and bike bits to Halesworth Thoroughfare for recycling into Cycle Aid boxes. These boxes will be placed in pubs, shops, theatres and other public places that have already joined the scheme in Suffolk.

Research by the RAC found that fear of breakdowns or punctures is a major reason that people don’t take part in recreational cycling or hire bikes on holiday. Research into the barriers for people cycling to work made the same conclusion. The availability of these boxes will overcome that worry. Of course, a serious cyclist might always carry tools but the scheme’s inspiration is the frequent requests for assistance many premises reported. Providing boxes is a simple no-cost way of supporting cycling as a viable transport system and showing that cyclists are welcome wherever there is a sign for a box.

The box locations and cycle shops offering repairs will be put on the Wheel guide and on Google™ maps. Participation in this scheme for hosts and users is entirely free. Maintenance of the scheme is by volunteers. Local tourism and economic development initiatives will publicise the boxes.

Anyone can join the scheme anytime, anywhere. Just provide a box and register the location and display the cycle aid sign supplied. The provision of boxes can take off virally around the country from Halesworth's lead.

Bring any cycling tools, pumps & puncture repair kits you can donate to

Halesworth Thoroughfare  Saturday July 10^th  10am – 1 pm.

Visit the HinT page on Facebook for more info and updates and register to take part here.

       


Read the story in the Beccles & Bungay Journal:


http://www.becclesandbungayjournal.co.uk/content/bbjournal/news/story.aspx?brand=BBJOnline&category=NEWS&tBrand=BBJOnline&tCategory=news&itemid=NOED03%20Jun%202010%2015:34:57:910

Good Neighbours

Why you need a good neighbour scheme.

By Nat Bocking

Everyone realises sometime that the outcome of our ambitions often depends on small, trivial factors. One of life’s rules is something’s significance does not follow the effort needed to create it; otherwise the world would become a better place just by working harder and not smarter. Being able to park your car without getting a fine depends more on remembering to have enough coins with you than finding a parking space and you sleep safe at night thanks to the batteries in your smoke detector.

Another of life’s rules is that we cannot go through life without ever needing help from somebody. Tasks that only take a second to complete with two people are nearly impossible singled-handed. And have you ever tried to change a duvet cover with one arm in a sling? All the world’s religions and philosophies try to reconcile that it is human nature for people to band together for mutual support and protection while other influences try to force us apart.

To make our lives more comfortable, we need to recognise what small actions can make a big difference while working together is better than going it alone.

When we need a hand with something, people usually call on their neighbours, friends or family who are willing to help. That willingness is a resource sociologists call ‘social capital’ and the more social capital a person or a community has; the happier and healthier it is.

But people in many communities don’t have much social capital and may be unwilling to use it when their needs might be thought trivial, but we know trivial things may be very important our well being.

An old stereotype joke goes: Q: how many Jewish grandmothers does it take to change a light bulb? A: No, it’s O.K, I like sitting in the dark.

That kind of denial crosses all cultures and ages.  And whether it’s not knowing someone to ask or pride about needing help; great numbers of people, especially older ones, suffer because very simple things don’t get attended to which leads to much bigger problems and eventually greater dependency. A too often scenario is where an older person can’t change a light bulb and so then falls over in the dark and breaks a hip. They lose their confidence and their reduced mobility leads to a decline in their health.

Instead of going on about these gloomy outcomes, I can tell you what can be done about it. In Suffolk there are twenty one good neighbour schemes affiliated with Suffolk ACRE and another eighteen in the pipeline and there are other volunteer-run projects offering help with small tasks.

What good neighbour schemes do is offer a telephone number advertised in the community that anyone can call and ask if someone can lend a hand to do a small task.

The schemes in Suffolk are all different according to the needs of their particular community but the basic idea is to give assistance with simple domestic tasks that anyone could do but the person asking can’t do for themselves at the moment.

When there is a lack of public transport, many of the schemes run a volunteer car service to take people to hospitals or doctors’ appointments. All the schemes offer help with shopping or doing errands like collecting prescriptions, small repairs like tap washers, changing light bulbs, putting batteries in smoke detectors, gardening and also befriending and helping the recently bereaved.

All of the schemes have both older people and young people as clients and as volunteers too.

What these schemes offer the volunteers is a way to make a difference by giving their charity to benefit their community, with their time instead of money, by doing the everyday things they can do in their local area, when it’s convenient.

The schemes are an opportunity for volunteers to use their own life skills for the benefit of their community. You’ll find hospital administrators helping people with forms or a structural engineer putting up absolutely brilliant shelves and I would encourage anyone looking to enhance their CV to get involved in running a scheme.

The minimal costs of running these schemes are supported by their funders because they do many other things, they build social capital and also build a sense of pride and sense of belonging in the community.

Of course, it’s not only good neighbour schemes that can build social capital, the WI, the garden club or the church can do the same, but the good neighbour schemes also help sustain communities. People’s needs vary. Everyone needs a hand sometimes. A bit of timely assistance can help older people remain independent longer or working people don’t have to lose a day’s wages to wait in for a repairman.

I have seen over and over again the benefit of people being brought together by good neighbour schemes. Knowing that there is a safety net gives people the confidence to participate and makes them able to contribute to society. I’ve seen older people enabled by schemes to remain productive such as helping out with reading at schools and young people developing pride in their community, all because of the work done with good neighbour schemes.

Amongst older people and communities that have more transient populations, such as in popular retirement villages, there is a natural attrition in people’s social networks. Neighbours who helped each informally for years might have one move away or pass on and the neighbour left behind might not know anyone else to ask and nobody notices. Our British reserve can cause a lot of unnecessary suffering. A good neighbour scheme enables people to ask for help with the minimum of embarrassment or stigma.

How the schemes work is basically a time-bank format: there is a rota where a volunteer holds a mobile phone with a number that is widely publicised in the area. The holder doesn’t have to on-call all day and night, they can let the phone take a message outside of the publicised hours. When someone needs help, they call the number and the current phone holder takes the details and depending on the task, selects the most appropriate volunteer who said when they joined the scheme what tasks they can do and the general times of their availability. If the need is life-threatening, then of course the emergency services would be alerted but the most urgent calls tend to be putting out the wheelie bins because someone’s gone away and forgotten.

The phone holder rings a suitable volunteer and advises them of the task needed. If the volunteer can do it, they take the contact details and then take it from there. If they can’t, then they say so – volunteers are free to refuse – and the phone holder would call another name on the list. When someone willing is found, the client is told who will be coming to help. When the volunteer has completed the job, they call the phone holder and report it completed and pass on any useful information. This is in case the problem reoccurs and so that over a year or so, a picture of the profile of needs in the community can be built up. If needs would be better served another way, then that can be addressed. These schemes are also an excellent way to refer people to services who are able to help people with ongoing needs beyond the remit of the good neighbour schemes.

People might assume these schemes are inundated with people wanting jobs done for nothing or too lazy to do it themselves but in fact all of the schemes find this doesn’t happen very often, there is very little need for regulation and the people management skills required are only fairness and common sense.

It might sound onerous to be a volunteer but actually it isn’t. The most active scheme is in Wickham Market where they take 600 calls per year but nobody is complaining because they have around 25 very active volunteers and in practice, nobody minds helping out as they see the benefits. Other schemes might find they only have two calls a month for a dozen volunteers but it’s not the quantity that matters, but the quality.

Recently at a parish meeting I went to a woman came especially to say how she had moved into the community on retirement and didn’t know anyone but when her husband became ill, the good neighbour scheme had saved her sanity by taking her to the hospital and generally looking after her at a time of desperate need. Although her husband had since passed away, she was going to stay in the community as she had made friends through the scheme. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room afterwards and it is hearing stories like that that makes me want promote these schemes.

So far I have given examples of older people but the schemes have helped everyone. One client was a young man who had broken his leg playing rugby and needed someone to walk his dog. A young mother needed help putting together flat-pack furniture. And not only can people be helped by the scheme but other community organisations can. A village fete organiser might use the scheme to raise extra helpers and people who have regular voluntary arrangements such as tending the churchyard can share the load if they’re unable to sometimes by asking the scheme to cover for them.

The schemes are very inexpensive to establish and run. The biggest outlay is the required insurance which is £300 per year. To CRB check everyone costs £7.50 per volunteer. Most schemes have been set up for around £500. Schemes can serve just a road, an estate, a village or a whole town and schemes can start small and grow bigger as they find their feet.

The money for starting a scheme comes from a variety of places. Often a fundraising effort accompanies the recruitment of volunteers. Parish councils or local councillor’s locality budgets are a place to start. Suffolk ACRE has a grant-finding service to help you. Many communities have charitable incomes derived from ancient benefactors. Some schemes have raised money by having the volunteers do useful things for local businesses at commercial rates such as delivering leaflets or taking surveys.

If you think you should start a scheme in your community, you’re absolutely right. The best way to start a scheme is to contact Suffolk ACRE. We have a plan book with all the necessary paperwork already such as a draft constitution but you needn’t worry about any of that at first. If you can get about five people together with the same ambition, then you are likely to recruit enough volunteers and raise enough money with only a few hours work per month. You will have the experience of twenty one other schemes in Suffolk to learn from and the support of Suffolk ACRE throughout.  

A good neighbour scheme will bring a community together and make it stronger and be where small actions will have much bigger and better outcomes.

To find out more about good neighbour schemes contact:

Suffolk ACRE

BRIGHTSPACE

160 Hadleigh Road, Ipswich, Suffolk IP2 0HH

info@suffolkacre.org.uk

01473 345300

Lou Reed and the Metal Machine Trio

OK, Lou Reed is a genius. He's so clever I can't understand what two hours of feedback and distortion - ninety minutes in the presence of its master - is trying to say however, my eardrums are so sonically challenged - thanks to his earlier oeuvre - that I couldn't take more than an hour of the Metal Machine Trio at The Cambridge Junction tonight.

For all I know, after I walked out, he got off his chair and stopped hiding behind his monster rack of FX pedals and played 'Vicious' or 'Perfect Day' which most of the audience of 40 to 60 somethings secretly wished he would and he knowingly refused to pander to.

In 1975 this industrial form of music had originality and deducing his motive for revisiting it 35 years later could sustain a Ph.D. BUT I've heard a lot of contemporary music lately (at frequent Faster Than Sound events and Mira Calix et al) and while I discern musicality in many of those performers, with this iteration you might as well be talking about String Theory, it's all a cosmic musical in-joke as far as I can tell.

The opening number of what was billed as a night of 'Deep Noise (No Songs)' was several of Lou's guitars left leaning against the PA system so that the pickups could feed back and after a bit of twiddling by the roadies, a throbbing AC hum built up over 30 minutes (rather like the engines of a ship) whereupon, just as it was getting to be painful, Lou and his entourage discretely wandered into the auditorium behind the audience like some latecomers and stood amongst the assembled pilgrims and considered the effect. 


There at last in front of me was a god, the actual figure of my lengthy veneration in the darkness of bedrooms, my audio accomplice in exploring the mysteries of sexual congress and mind-altering chemicals. This god was dressed in a grey hoodie sweatshirt. If I had encountered him in a pedestrian underpass, my prejudices might have been concerned he was someone with dementia that had wandered away but it was perfect. He was stripped down to the most basic truth; a sweatshirt and some Levis. What you see is what you get. Apparently the impatience of the crowd was insufficient so the enigmatic ignored old man shuffled off backstage for another twenty minutes to change. Then he appeared on stage in an equally proletarian vinyl bomber jacket.

Lou is now 68 but walks like an 80 year old. His jaw seems set by some kind of facial paralysis - or grim resolution not to sing - and appears to have limited upper body strength too. To lift a leg to activate a guitar pedal takes obvious effort. To switch between instruments, a roadie has to run in and lift one off his lap and place another whereas you would expect anyone who was able-bodied could just pick one out of a stand within arm's reach. Perhaps this is why he is now exploring the possibilities of automatic, machine generated music rather than the traditional muscle-powered rock and roll (or classical music). His sidemen pounding their keyboard or blowing a sax was the only human activity you couldn't capture with a pinhole camera. His co-performers Ulrich Krieger's and Sarth Calhoun's own work is likely to reward seeking out and they are people to watch. Krieger transcribed Lou's original album Metal Machine Music into an orchestral work and performed it which impressed Lou Reed enough to hire him for the tour.

Though he may appear frail (and that may be an act) Reed is still very much in charge. The body language and scowls and instructions I could lip-read, relayed from his chair by another roadie to his sidemen, clearly show this trio is dominated by his vision. It was an irritable old geezer, an angry wounded lion, barking from his EZ Up chair.

We had a compact. I did not and would not go see someone perform all their old hits just for the sake of hearing them. Here I felt there was some honesty that Reed was an artist continually at work and he had kindly deigned to allow us to come and watch and didn't give a f*ck if we liked it or not.

But Reed is a star and he in the past has cultivated his stardom and an audience and if you are to be successful as a performer, you will let the audience project themselves into the vessel you have made for them. Reed's star power is still magnetic. Onto Reed's craggy lined face and broken body (while the hair remains buoyant) I projected Johnny Cash who just before he died offered the world a work of musical catharsis (although it was a cover of someone else's song). I wondered what Reed could produce, since he has also lived as hard as Cash did, as he possesses an enormous gift for the composition of accessible Tin Pan Alley songs. If Reed could combine his lifetime of experience and his musical gifts, he might still write songs with the appeal of his previous hits that addresses his condition now. Then he would transcend his past appeal rather than ram it into a wall of musique concrete.

If I recall, Reed notoriously becomes combative with any journalist or pundit claiming to understand his motives or ambitions in interviews or profiles. Reviews of this work's previous incarnations seem to fall back on amusing comparison of the experience with life's other challenging but ultimately productive experiences, such as the first time I stayed out too late and had to sleep in a bus shelter when I learned there are people lost in the dark corners of society and the soundtrack of the city is the throbbing of an idling bus engine.


At least I tried to hear him out and understand what he is trying to say. It's lame to say "I don't get it" but I don't and if Reed is pushing the boundary of the known universe of music that begins with the clockwork music box, then I'm happy to wait for the pictures from NASA and the TV pundits to tell me what it is rather than decipher the raw data flowing in.


Reed's music this night might have produced dark and intense feelings if I had stuck it out for another thirty minutes but the ringing in my ears was drowning out any subtle variation in the noise his manipulations could produce. Reed has lived one third longer than I have, I had wondered what his greater experience could teach me but ultimately, tonight at least, I thought life was too short to find out.


Leaving the Junction, I ran a phalanx of insipid chart music blaring from a series of identikit bars and clubs. The parking garage's payment machine ate my ticket and I went in search of a disinterested security guard who opened up the box to reveal that the machine is a bog-standard PC inside (with such possibilities?) and the squeal of tires and clanging of lift doors were muffled in the blanket of the tinnitus in my ears. Only when a random staccato burst of voices on the radio ether punctuated the droning hum of my car tyres on the dark country road did I consider that Lou just might still be a part of the soundtrack of my life.

© Nat Bocking

--

The local paper reviewed this gig too.

Your community and your CV: building both by voluntary work.

I am making appeals in every possible media that young people or people returning to work should consider community work as a way of demonstrating their capabilities to potential employers

It’s a common chicken and egg problem.  Even though you’ve graduated college with good qualifications and have got energy and enthusiasm for any challenge an employer might give you, you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job.

It’s the same for people recovering from a long-term illness or say, women returning to work after raising a family. In these difficult times, having been a successful parent or diligent jobseeker isn’t enough to impress employers with your CV. If you’re in that situation and want to break that log-jam, please hear me out on how to do something about it and if you know anyone living in or near Worlingham or Beccles in Suffolk, you might want to pass the news of an exciting development in their community.

The community of Worlingham has recently completed a lengthy consultation to produce a ‘Parish Plan’ in which they were guided and supported by Suffolk ACRE.

These exercises help determine a community’s priorities for the next ten years or so. The Government has stated that Parish Plans should be used to “identify key facilities and services, set out the problems that need to be tackled and demonstrate how distinctive character and features should be preserved”.

This plan has identified that this community needs and wants a good neighbour scheme. There are more than twenty of these schemes in Suffolk which are supported by Suffolk ACRE and many hundreds of these schemes are operating throughout the country. The BBC ‘One Show’ made a good short film about them which you can find on YouTube.

On March 2^nd  2010 at Worlingham Middle School, I and my colleague Robert Horn from Suffolk ACRE made a presentation about good neighbour schemes hosted by parish councillor Michael Culyer. Afterwards, sixteen people stepped forward prepared to be volunteers in the scheme, which is an impressive start. Four people said they would be on the committee “if they had to”. But I was struck at the meeting that this scheme could, and should, also be an opportunity for young people locally who might be in the job market, to gain some very useful skills. I asked everyone to spread the word. If a committee of six could be recruited and if the committee had at least one person between 18 and 25 or so, that would be fantastic.

What are these schemes?

A good neighbour scheme is a way that communities can work together to provide mutual support in everyday tasks when someone finds that essential task difficult. It often supports elderly or disabled residents but they are open to all. The benefits these schemes create are many; bringing people in contact with each other strengthens community bonds. It enables people to be productive by giving to charity a little bit of their time instead of just their money, doing whatever they are best able to do.

Helping people who have an occasional immediate need (don’t we all sometimes?) can help older people live in their homes longer (so their simple practical needs don’t burden on the NHS or Social Services and your council tax), younger children may not miss school so often, working people might not have to take days off to attend to one of their dependents and so on. By building networks of mutual support, both trust and responsibility towards each other are nurtured in a community.

If you’re sceptical of these ideals, just listen to how older people long for the good old days when everyone knew their neighbours and people helped each other when they needed it, unlike today, they add ruefully. It worked then and it can still work today.

How a scheme basically works is that a telephone number for a mobile phone is advertised in the community and a rota of volunteers takes turns to ‘hold’ the phone. When somebody needs assistance with a task, they call the phone and that day’s holder logs the call and checks a directory of other available volunteers (who have some training and a CRB check done). They match the volunteer to the task and despatch them. When the task is done, the volunteer calls in and the job is logged as completed.

What tasks the scheme does and doesn’t do depends on the needs of the community. No two schemes are alike in terms of the needs they fulfil but all work on the system of a ‘time bank’, a ‘skill directory’ and common phone number to ensure access for all.

Many schemes offer transport with volunteers driving their cars to take people to doctor’s appointments - for which there is normally a small charge to cover petrol - but these schemes can help all kinds of people with all kinds of tasks. A young man who broke his leg once asked a scheme to walk his dog for him.

Generally, a rule of thumb is that help is offered with basic everyday tasks when there is an urgent need for them to be done.  An elderly person might have difficulty changing a light bulb or a battery in their smoke detector which if left undone would put them in danger. Somebody might need help filling in a form or assembling some flat-pack furniture or just a hand at the other end of the wardrobe while preparing a room for a new baby.

People unfamiliar with these schemes wonder how it can actually work?  How do you filter out lazy people or those wanting something done for nothing? Don’t the volunteers burn out quickly with all the jobs that need doing? In practise this rarely happens and by learning from the experience of the many existing schemes, ways of successfully managing these issues if they arise are found. These techniques are straightforward but require the use of judgement and management skills, which most of us possess, while Suffolk ACRE can provide additional support if it is needed.

Their opportunities

That these challenges exist is my point though; the running of a good neighbour scheme is an excellent way for someone to get management experience - in exactly the sort of challenges you would face in business - that can be demonstrated and quantified on a CV.

You would only need to invest a few hours a month to a good neighbour scheme to prove to potential employers that you possess initiative, good judgement, people skills and trustworthiness and that you can handle responsibility.

I believe anyone looking to prove themselves a capable of a well paying job should consider the useful experience they can gain from sitting on a community committee, be it their village hall, their pre-school or their good neighbour scheme.

There’s no need to take a gap-year in an exotic country while there is plenty of really useful community work to be done at home. I wonder why more young people don’t seize their local opportunities to get involved? It may be that they don’t hear about them. Young people and older people, such as the newly-retired who look for such opportunites, move in different orbits. I asked the twenty five apparently mostly middle-aged people who came to the meeting if anyone had a Facebook or Twitter account and none had.

On many community organisations, such as the village hall or a parish council, you will find their committees already have on them highly qualified people who might want to put a lifetime’s experience to good use in their community.

While this is a good thing, often there is some deference to them. People, especially those without experience or many qualifications, might feel it’s not their place. However, such people are often influential locally, which if you’re looking for a job, they can be useful contacts. And it’s not really a conspiracy that every parish organisation has the ‘usual suspects’ but a symptom of that those who are prepared to give their time to the community tend to be in short supply.

In some communities though, there not enough retired business people willing to give their time, but there is just as much, if not more, need for things to be done. Addressing that imbalance is part of the remit of Suffolk ACRE.

So in the way the good neighbour schemes operate, the tasks and roles of the committee are often structured so that you don’t need highly qualified people to run them. It would be great if you were one but there is always room for people to grow within these schemes. The schemes start with doing only what it is capable of and then grows its capacity, if it wishes to, to do more. And as far as good neighbour schemes in Suffolk go, these opportunities are plentiful and all its volunteers can be supported by the resources of Suffolk ACRE.

My own story

Can doing community work really make a difference to your CV? I say it does with the benefit of personal experience. 

In 1999 I came to live in Suffolk after working abroad for eighteen years as a film technician where I started working in London as a news photographer, often going overseas on assignments and only coming home in-between. Then in 2003 I was made redundant. In a sense that blow to my long held ambition was a relief as by then my children needed me to be at home like a normal father but I struggled to find local employment, and so I scratched a living going hand to mouth doing anything I could find. 

You see I was basically unemployable in a traditional context as twenty five years previously I had left school without any O-levels. In the world of film-making and photo-journalism, that meant nothing as examples of my work were in your multiplex and my last news splash was my CV but in the real world, where freelance photo-journalism doesn’t pay a mortgage, I found that employers looking at my CV saw someone without any qualifications and didn’t understand how my wide experience could be relevant to their business. 

Despite creating every kind of movie magic and talking my way in to interview and photograph countless famous people for newspapers, however dependable I was, my career choices were characteristic of a sole-trader without management responsibilities. People said they just didn’t know what to make of me.

In the meantime my young children were going to pre-school and I was begged to be on its committee. After a while we became frustrated with all the problems it had with substandard premises and we thought the best solution would be to raise the money for a new building. Over the next two years, the fundraising chairman and I, as the treasurer, had to overcome many challenges to raise £147,000 to build and equip a new school and open it on time but we did it.

It took many, many, nights of poring over budgets and leases and building contracts as well as persuading recalcitrant contractors, inspectors and funders to deliver what we wanted from them. In the meantime, I went back to college part-time and in 2009 I got an MA in combined business and arts management.

Although those qualifications might have opened more doors than before, when I graduated I now had to compete with thousands of other graduates also looking for jobs. I noticed though, that in every job interview I’ve had since then, I was always asked about my role in the pre-school; how many people I had supervised and how much money I had managed.  It gave me enormous satisfaction that I could show I had responsibility for all financial, personnel and employment matters for five staff for three years and had successfully project-managed something within their terms of reference.

The interesting thing is my colleague on the pre-school project says exactly the same thing. During the project she was an at-home mum with young children and when they went to middle-school and she went job hunting she found “they always ask me about running the pre-school”.

I don’t think running a good neighbour scheme would be as challenging as that building project was and I wish I had had someone like Suffolk ACRE who I now work for to support us. When I am supporting good neighbour schemes in Suffolk Coastal and Waveney districts, I constantly refer to this experience - especially when someone thinks there is an insolvable crisis - as proof that people with a common purpose in a community can pull together and that it sometimes takes lateral thinking and a bit of initiative to get what you want out of life.

So, if you want to get involved in helping in your community by participating in a good neighbour scheme as a volunteer in any capacity, or you think your community needs a good neighbour scheme, please get in touch and I can tell you more. You could be benefitting yourself as well as someone else by creating a better community for yourself, which would be the most satisfactory outcome for all concerned.

Nat Bocking

Community Development Researcher

Suffolk ACRE

nat.bocking@suffolkacre.org.uk

Reception           01473 345300

Mobile                07787 258137