Month: June 2020

The Covid-19 crisis has shone a beacon on people’s innate creativity throughout the crisis and one of the post Covid-19 challenges for many of us working in the cultural sector will be how to harness this community buzz and demonstrate how creativity has been a vital part of people’s resilience to the challenges they’ve faced.

Public Art though is still a bit of a conundrum for me.  Every now and then on my travels I encountered odd pieces of public art whose purpose was baffling and whose aesthetics were indisputably challenging. Another cliché but still as true: roadside flora doesn’t need a purpose but just look splendid.  Perhaps we should rethink art in a similar way: there’s no need for art to have an instrumental purpose, but just to be enjoyed, celebrated or castigated for what it is.

Day 26 finally arrived and Janice, Sally, Hania, Tom and Stash made my return home really joyful.  Their celebrations made that final 100m stretch a real pleasure for the first time in 26 days and prevented me from hopping off the bike and ambling home up the hill unnoticed. When Day 26 was done and dusted a story of several numbers emerged:

Over 405km cycled…

Over 2170m climbed…

Over 46 hrs en route…

Over 75 ‘A-Ha’ moments of discovery…

I’m especially thankful to all my donors who helped make this campaign happen: The 2 Andys, Carl, Chris, the 3 Davids, Eleni, Emrys, Felicity, Janice, Jo, John, Jon, Jordan, Kevin, Kim, Laura, Lew, Marie, The 2 Martins, Nadine, Nick, Nigel, Pam, Paul, Raj, Rajesh, Rav, Roxie, Ryan, Sally, Tom and Vivek: thank you all so much.  And to all you anonymous donors: I couldn’t have done it without you too!

Thank you, Jon, for your advice on how to carry a bike. This was much needed at the 49 Steps of Sycamore Park in St Ann’s which clearly hadn’t had any human visitation since the Ice Age: and thanks to How We Roll for technical expertise on the Tiger Hazard-mobile.

My cycle challenge was part of the wider Mighty Creatives team challenge in which staff, trustees, friends and family all chipping into the team effort. Everything from running, cycling, walking the dog, working out, exercising, crocheting, learning German and lip-synching music theatre on TikTok: our team’s ingenuity knew no bounds!  All in all, we raised over £5,200 for children and young people in care (double our original target!)

If you’d like to know more how the funding has made a difference to their lives, please feel free to get in touch.

I became aware one bright morning riding along the Sneinton Greenway that the blossom that was there that morning, definitely hadn’t been there the day before. There’d clearly been a lot of endeavour over the previous 24 hours to make sure all the blossom all comes out, all together, all at the right time.

I was struck by the same thought later on when passing by BioCity, the supposed home of where Ibuprofen was discovered. One day, it’s not there, the next it is. And I’m wondering whether the people of Nottingham and Sneinton are going to be part of the next big anti-viral discovery for Covid-19. Let’s hope so. After all, it’s not (as far as we can see) here today – but it will be, inshallah, tomorrow.

I was delighted later that week to see how some of the burghers of Colwick were celebrating the NHS.  Many of them had dressed up scarecrows or mannequins in their gardens, all offering messages of support to the NHS or instructions to passers-by to ‘wash their hands’, ‘keep safe’ or ‘stay at home’, the final instruction soon mutating into the more ambiguous governmental advice of ‘Stay Alert’ as Covid-19 pandemic continued to grip the country.

They certainly hadn’t been there the day before either.

You can see an update of the campaign -and still donate if you wish – here.

It’s an old cliché but still true: travelling slower allows you to see familiar objects in a new light or see new things you’ve always missed in the normal daily hullabaloo.

Railway crossing signs are a case in point.  They describe distance in miles and chains. Chains? Since when did we stop using them? And whatever happened to the furlong? Furloughed I expect, given the times we’re in.

I found myself early into day 6 wondering why on earth the city’s called Nottingham and not Notting Hill? The inclines here are never-ending: sometimes innocent, sometimes shrewd, sometimes vicious. All within 5 minutes from home. Tour de France? Pyrenees? My Knees in Sneinton became something to write songs about.

The nooks and crannies of our highways, byways and industrial estates provided me with some arresting sights too: a fleet of London buses, the premises of Harry Potter’s day job and a mysterious tunnel which takes you from the tedium of Maid Marion Way to the Narnia of the Park Estate all provided moments of surprise and delight in the most mundane of settings.

You can see an update of the campaign -and still donate if you wish – here.

On Day 11 I found Colwick Quays. Who knew we had Quays? There was neither ship nor sailor in the rigging anywhere to be found, just logistics parks and container depots, probably the modern equivalent of quays these days so I thought perhaps the sign was a pointer to a bygone invisible past that no-one knew much about.

However, on Day 12 I found them (I think) behind the industrial estate, next to the river (of course) but a shadow of their former selves. There’s a great industrial heritage project here somewhere for someone.

And on the very next day, Day 13, I went out to Colwick again to look for the Netherfield Lagoons. I hadn’t known until recently that we had lagoons in the UK, never mind in Netherfield. But what a sight they were: the remnants of industrial riverside heritage, banks of pink and white hawthorn, broom, lupins and teasels, all a stone’s throw from the anonymous retail site that is the Victoria Retail Park. You could go to that retail park every day and not have a clue what’s on the other side of those warehouses and bulk buying emporiums.

One of the final ‘a-ha’ moments was finding the source of the Grantham Canal at the Trent, down by Lady Bay Bridge. I’d been perplexed over how the Beeston Canal could just disappear at the River Trent by the football stadia, only to turn up again in Gamston before it turned into the Grantham Canal.  But then one morning, I found it, quietly innocuous at the side of Lady Bay Bridge, all silted up and neglected by the looks of it but that hadn’t put the local wildlife off.

It is of course sited ironically enough right next to the Trentside Environment Agency.

You can see an update of the campaign -and still donate if you wish – here.

I acquired my bright white Tiger Hazard-mobile at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown, unaware at the time that the 2.6 Challenge beckoned.  Whilst the bike started the challenge without a whimper, by day 6 the effects were beginning to tell on the handlebars which had developed a mind of their own. The brakes shockingly disappeared on the descent from the Sneinton Windmill down to the Hermitage too.

So I rapidly decided that I should invest in several small pieces of cycling technologies (spanners, puncture repair, first aid) as well as a pair of reinforced, padded underwear to protect myself in times of trouble.  Unfortunately, they hadn’t arrived by the time day 1 of the 2.6 Challenge dawned.

Whilst I soon learned to avoid the hills by tracking the river and the canals, one day I decided to track the tram rather than the river in the mistaken belief that 1) tram routes had nothing to do with the river and 2) that trams don’t ‘do’ uphill.

Mistaken belief number 1 was soon jettisoned when you realise that tram and river are so closely intertwined that before you know it, you’re riverside again, encountering Nature Reserves and Trent tributaries you weren’t aware of before. Mistaken Belief Number 2 was jettisoned when I attempted the route from the City Centre to the Arboretum which, if you don’t know it, is approached by one sly incline after another.

On day 21, Janice accompanied me to Attenborough Nature Reserve. The traffic on the cycle lanes had noticeably increased at this point and I was reminded of the TomTom advert of a few years ago which said, ‘You’re not stuck in traffic: you are traffic’.

The reinforced, padded underwear purchased online before the campaign needless to say still hadn’t arrived. Saddle sore doesn’t even begin to describe it.

You can see an update of the campaign -and still donate if you wish – here.

I started my journeys from Sneinton with a visit to the proud Sneinton Windmill. It’s like a magnet for so much local history of international impact: George Green, William Booth and D.H. Lawrence all have ley line connections via the windmill, and it wears its significance modestly.

I headed out to the Arboretum, Attenborough Nature Reserve, Bassingfield, Burton Joyce, Clifton, Colwick, Commonwealth War Graves, Forest Fields, Gamston, Holme Pierrepoint, King’s Meadow Nature Reserve, Lady Bay, Netherfield, Nottingham Airport, Nottingham Castle Marina, Nottingham Race Course, Skylarks Nature Reserve, St. Ann’s, and Stoke Bardolph taking in the Beeston and Grantham Canals, the River Trent, the A52 (big mistake) and several smaller side roads of disputable pleasure and definite physical challenge.

You can see the routes I’ve taken on this post.  Just get in touch if you’d like some more detail.

But if you’re just starting out on your own voyage of discovery, you could do a lot worse than head down to the Beeston Canal or along the River Trent.  You’ll find some of the loveliest tracks near the City Centre which stretch on and on, and make you feel like you could ride forever – knees, uncertain balance and unreliable handlebars notwithstanding.

You can see an update of the campaign -and still donate if you wish – here.

The UK’s mass participation event industry came together with the crowd funding website, JustGiving, in April 2020 to launch The 2.6 Challenge, a nationwide fundraising campaign intended to Save the UK’s Charities.  The onset of Covid-19 in early 2020 had seen the income of many charities plummet, so The 2.6 Challenge was an attempt to repair some of that damage.

The Mighty Creatives supported the campaign by helping some of the most vulnerable children and young people across the East Midlands: young people who are leaving care and who need help to make the transition from care to independent living. This is a huge step at any time for these young people:  navigating independence alongside the isolation of the Covid-19 crisis gave them additional challenges and pressures which were unimaginable just a few months previously.

My contribution to the campaign started on 26th April by deciding to cycle at least 2.6km per day in 1km increments so that I would be cycling at least 26km after 26 days. By donating to the campaign, donors would be able to help our young people in care navigate their futures by helping me navigate my rickety way around Sneinton and beyond into the bargain.

As well raising invaluable funds for the campaign, I experienced several journeys of discovery in their own right and this blog marks those journeys.  It charts the geography, the ‘A-Ha’ moments, what it was like to get back on a bike after so many years, discovering the unfamiliar of the familiar, the transience of life and some thoughts on our new horizons and what’s next for all of us.

You can see and update of the campaign – and donate if you wish – here.