New Portfolio website coming soon and what I've been up to recently...

I apologise for the lack of content on this blog over the past few months.

After completing my internship at the Guardian I spent a month in South Africa where I helped make this film about my Dad's farm in Mpumalanga:



Since then I have been working as a freelance journalist for publications such as the Guardian producing content such as this film about Roseline Akhalu, a Nigerian kidney transplant patient who is facing deportation to Nigeria:



I am now working on a longer documentary version of the Guardian film about Roseline Akhalu with my partner Joe Bream. We will be submitting this documentary into film festivals such as the Sheffield Doc/Fest.

I am also developing a new version of my Sheffield Unchained website which will be re-launched in the next few months, along with a new portfolio website about my work and projects.

Look out for all this exciting new work coming soon!

A second detainee threatens to jump from detention centre rooftop

(Published in the Guardian Northerner on 25th July 2012)

Long delays in asylum cases and conditions at Morton Hall in Lincolnshire prompt unrest, according to detainees and the centre's visitor group 

   

Entrance to Morton Hall Detention Centre

A Malaysian man is the second detainee in less than 24 hours to protest against the 'harsh' treatment of detainees at Morton Hall detention centre in Swinderby, Lincolnshire.

He climbed the nine-meter high Fry building at 11.30am yesterday morning, Tuesday 24 July, and refused to come down even though temperatures reached around 29°C in Lincolnshire.

The Malaysian said he was protesting at the injustice in this country and could be heard shouting for water and saying that he thought he was going to faint. He said the officers refused to bring him water and he threatened to jump off the roof in frustration at the way they were treating him. He said in a telephone call from the rooftop:

They're not human, how can they treat me like this. There is no point anymore.

A UK Border Agency (UKBA) statement said that they sent trained staff to negotiate with the detainee and that they convinced him to come down shortly after 5pm yesterday afternoon. The UKBA said he was placed in a separate unit at Morton Hall where staff could talk to him.

The Malaysian is allegedly only one of a group of detainees who have threatened to climb the buildings of Morton Hall in protest at the 'disrespect' and 'inhumane' treatment they claim to be experiencing.

One of the rooftops of a building inside Morton Hall

The protest began on Monday night, when a Palestinian detainee climbed onto the roof of the Library building at Morton Hall at 5pm and refused to come down.

Detainees said they woke up yesterday morning to find that the Palestinian had disappeared from the roof of the building. A UKBA spokesperson said that the Palestinian was talked down during the early hours of Tuesday morning and is safe and well.

The Palestinian, around 25 years old, climbed on to the roof in protest at being detained for eighteen months. He had recently been unsuccessful in a bail application and had been on hunger strike for a couple of days.

Morton Hall, previously a female prison, is surrounded by 5m high razor wired fences

An Iraqi Kurdish detainee at Morton Hall, who helped to translate for the Palestinian, said:

People are generally angry with the UKBA, they are fed up with the removal policy.

In an interview yesterday, he said that he couldn't believe how bad the situation was for many of the detainees.

Some people are in a really bad situation here, they have been here for years, but they are innocent, they haven't done anything wrong.

The Iraqi Kurd said that there is an atmosphere of revolt in the detention centre, with many detainees planning to climb to the roofs of the buildings. He said that around six detainees had been taken to prison for protesting and that staff had subsequently locked detainees in their rooms.

Geoamey, a prisoner escort service, removes detainees from Morton Hall

Nottingham Indymedia has reported that many of the detainees are protesting because of the centre's disrespect of their Muslim faith during Ramadan. They published a statement by the detainees who say they are on strike:

Sir we are here in detention centre Morton Hall. We are with fasting in the last four days but management not supply proper food for it. We demand proper food at the proper time. Today they don't give food at all and guys are on the roof. We are on strike. Why they don't treat us as human?

Dave Hewitt from Morton Hall Visitors Group said:

We fully support the detainees inside the detention prison Morton Hall in their hunger strike and protests. Having to live under the intolerable conditions they are forced into, often for years on end, being moved around the country from one detention prison to another, in many cases having no contact with the outside world, it's no surprise they have had enough. We will continue to support those detained in any way we can whilst doing all we can to end the inhumane system that puts them there.

A UKBA spokesperson said:

A one man protest at Morton Hall in which a detainee scaled the roof of the centre has been resolved. The man is safe and well.

The identities of the detainees have been withheld for their protection.

Photographs by www.joebream.com 

Palestinian detainee threatens suicide whilst staging a protest on detention centre roof

Morton Hall detention centre, which is surreounded by 5m high razor wired fence

A Palestinian detainee has allegedly been on the roof of the Library building at Morton Hall Immigration Removal centre in Lincolnshire since 5pm this evening.

An Iraqi Kurdish detainee who came to the UK after living as a refugee in Germany during the first Gulf War, said that the Palestinian was around 25 years old and that he climbed onto the roof in protest at being detained for eighteen months.

The Iraqi Kurd said that the Palestinian had recently been unsuccessful in a bail application and that he had been on hunger strike for a couple of days. He said that two or three detainees tried to help each other climb up to the roof, but that the Palestinian was the only one who managed to climb onto the roof.

He described how there were a lot of detainees standing outside watching and shouting and that some of them refused to go back to their rooms. “The detention centre was out of control for a while, but eventually people started going back to their rooms.”

“People are generally angry with the UK Border Agency (UKBA), they are fed up with the removal policy.” The Iraqi Kurd said that the detention guards asked the Palestinian to come down from the roof but he threatened to jump off every time they came near.

“He wants to kill himself now, if anybody comes near he wants to jump. He’s standing on the roof and he wants to jump soon, if anyone comes near him” The Iraqi Kurd, who has been in Morton Hall for two months, said he helped to translate for the Palestinian a couple of times.

He expressed shock at the things he had seen since being at Morton Hall Immigration centre:

England is a country that says it believes in human rights, but not in this detention centre. They need help somehow, all the cases I have seen, some really sad stories, people who are here for no reason, they haven’t committed any crimes, they are in detention for nothing.

He believes that this is the beginning of a revolt in the detention centre, “There will be more, I can see how people are reacting to the situation, there is tension amongst the groups who have been here for a long time.”

Having lived in the UK for twelve years, The Iraqi Kurd claims that after he was given temporary leave to remain, the UKBA delayed granting him indefinite leave to remain for five years and then detained him.

“They are trying to deport me to Iraq, even though I spent my childhood growing up as a European.” The Iraqi Kurd fled Iraq with his family during the first Gulf War, when the Kurdish population suffered an 'ethnic cleansing' campaign by Saddam Hussein's regime. He arrived in Germany with his family when he was ten years old. He is now waiting for a response from the European Court of Human Rights, and hopes to be able to return to Germany.

The Iraqi Kurd believes that the Palestinian is not the only detainee who will revolt. He said there are ten or fifteen detainees currently on hunger strike and that one has tried to kill himself through self harm. “Something is going to happen soon, because there is no help from outside at all and if we ask for help the guards say it is not their problem.”

The Palestinian will stay there all night and he will eventually jump and there are others like him, there are over one hundred of them who want to do something like this

The identities of the detainees have been withheld for their protection.

Photograph by www.joebream.com 

Political asylum seeker fears torture and detention if deported

(As published in the Guardian Northerner 15 July 2012)

Sheffield journalist married local charity worker two years ago, but must return to apply for spouse's visa in Cameroon where he faces persecution.

 

An emergency protest has been held outside Sheffield Town Hall in support of Bernard Mboueyeu, who fears persecution and jail if he is deported to Cameroon first thing tomorrow, Monday 16 July.

Mboueyeu, who is currently being detained at Pennine House in Manchester, was arrested by the UK Border Agency on Tuesday morning. This is the second time he has been held, after being released and allowed to return to Sheffield just six weeks ago.

Mboueyeu fled his homeland of Cameroon in 2007 after he was allegedly beaten up and tortured by the ruling regime for supporting opposition groups. The treatment followed his arrest by President Paul Biya's security forces for taking photographs of students being attacked during protests in 2006. Biya has been in power since 1982.

Supporters say that the journalist, who was working for a newspaper in southern Cameroon at the time, was stripped naked, beaten up and kept in jail for forty days. Mboueyeu's wife Sharon, who lives in Wincobank, Sheffield, said:

They cut his feet with machetes - he's still got the scars on his legs.

Bernard and Sharon Mboueyeu

Mboueyeu married charity worker Sharon in 2010 but the Home Office is insisting that he returns to Cameroon to apply for a spouse's visa. His supporters say that if he is returned as planned early tomorrow morning, he could be arrested, face torture, or be locked up indefinitely.

Bernard and Sharon getting married in 2010

Shaffaq Mohammed, Sheffield's Liberal Democrat Leader, who was at the Town Hall protest, said:

Mboueyeu has offered to return voluntarily to Cameroon if the Home Office guarantees his safety but the Home Office have refused to make that guarantee.

We think Bernard's safety is at grave risk, if not his life. All because a bureaucrat would like a piece of paper to be sent from a foreign country.

Commenting on a 2009 Amnesty Report on Cameroon, Tawanda Hondora, Amnesty International's deputy director for Africa said:

Cameroon has a horrendous record of gross human rights violations, including torture and killings, against dissidents and members of opposition. Political opposition is not tolerated in Cameroon. Any dissent is suppressed through either violence or abuse of the legal system to silence critics.

A UK Border Agency spokesperson said:

Our rules are very clear, when someone has no right to be in the UK we expect them to leave voluntarily. If they fail to do so, we will seek to remove them.

Cllr Mohammed said that whilst in Sheffield, Bernard was making a great contribution to the city. 

He volunteered with the Royal Society for the Blind and another charity called Aspire. Two years ago, when the devastating floods hit Pakistan, one of the first people outside the Town Hall was Bernard. He helped to highlight the plight and to raise thousands of pounds.

Bernard Mboueyeu with his grandchildren

Bernard’s wife Sharon said:

He’s my husband, he’s a step-dad, he’s a granddad and its so annoying that they’re quite happy to take him away from us and not allow him to have a family life.

Sheffield asylum seeker deportation halted - for now

(Published in the Guardian Northerner on 25th June 2012)

Plea for elderly and disabled refugee from Eritrea will be put to the Home Office by MP and Bishop of Sheffield tomorrow.

Lemlem Hussein Abdu

People power in Sheffield has helped to delay the planned rapid deportation of an elderly and disabled asylum seeker whose future now hinges on a meeting tomorrow, Tuesday 26 June.

The Home Office has agreed to halt action against Lemlem Hussein Abdu, 62, who was arrested last Tuesday when she visited the UK Border Agency at Vulcan House in Sheffield to begin a new asylum claim.

Lemlem originally sought asylum in the UK in 2007 but was refused, and after her arrest last week she was taken straight to Yarl's Wood detention centre, ready for a flight to Ethiopia yesterday, Sunday 24 June. But a march and demonstration in Sheffield last week, addressed by both the Labour MP for Sheffield Central, Paul Blomfield, and the city's Liberal Democrat leader Shaffaq Mohammed, was followed by a temporary official change of heart.

Home Office minister Damian Green cancelled the Sunday flight and agreed to delay further action until after the meeting in London tomorrow with Blomfield and the Bishop of Sheffield, Rt Rev Steven Croft. Blomfield says:

We will be highlighting the support that Lemlem has within Sheffield, and that her deportation would shame the UK.

Earlier he posted on the Lemlem Must Stay Facebook group page:

I've written to Theresa May seeking an urgent meeting and calling on her to halt the deportation. I've pointed out the huge support for Lemlem in Sheffield and that the decision to remove an elderly, disabled woman to a country where she does not speak the language, where she has never lived and to which she has no affiliation is a gross error [and] will be quite rightly viewed by many as scandalous.

Last week's demonstration saw a procession to the UK Borders Agency at Vulcan House where a delegation met staff to put the case against the decision to deport Lemlem. A petition was also handed in, with over 1000 signatures asking for Lemlem to be given the right to remain in the UK.

The demonstration and interviews with Paul Blomfield and Gina Clayton. Filming and reporting by Marishka Van Steenbergen

A spokesperson for the agency said that the case had been considered carefully by the department and an immigration judge when Lemlem appealed against an original asylum refusal. He said:

Both concluded that this lady does not have grounds to remain in the United Kingdom.
The UK has a proud tradition of providing protection to those who genuinely need it, but those individuals with no right to be here must leave and if they choose not to, we will remove them.

Sheffield's campaigners say that Lemlem, who left her home country of Eritrea in 1978, will be left destitute if she is sent to Ethiopia. She fled after her family was murdered during an attack by Ethiopian forces. Allegedly targeted due to their support for the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), which was fighting for independence from Ethiopia.

Gina Clayton, trustee of Sheffield's City of Sanctuary says:

Lemlem is absolutely terrified to the core of being taken to Ethiopia. She has no family and no connections in that culture and no physical ability to work. She doesn't speak the language and she probably would be reduced to begging. The chances are she would simply die of starvation.


There will be a vigil in London tomorrow morning, supported by friends and supporters of Lemlem and faith leaders from Sheffield.

'Getting lost is essential': The Quay brothers on their city-wide Leeds art project

From 18 to 20 May, theatrical artists the Quay brothers will turn the whole of Leeds into a stage, as part of the Cultural Olympiad. The artists promise that every person strolling through the city will contribute to the choreography. Prepare for a labyrinth to get lost in.

Film by Joe Bream and Marishka Van Steenbergen

The Quay Brothers re-imagine Leeds for 2012 Cultural Olympiad

(Published in the Guardian Northerner on 17 May 2012) 

Yorkshire's swishest shopping streets, and the mysterious Dark Arches, will turn into strange and different places for the next three days.

Leeds Canvas and the Quay Brothers. The Dark Arches are one of the most atmospheric corners of the city centre, hidden below the train station and above the river Aire Photograph: Tom Arber

Residents of Leeds have woken up to find a boat lodged in a tree in the middle of Briggate, the handsome pedestrian-only street at the heart of the city's shopping district. The unexpected shipwreck, 14 metres across and four tall, is the first major public installation to mark the beginning of the Overworlds and Underworlds event.

The internationally acclaimed artist filmmakers, the Quay Brothers, have designed this temporary installation as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Overworlds and Underworlds, happening from tomorrow, Friday 18 May until Sunday night, will see the pair, plus a group of carefully selected fellow-artists, using the city centre of Leeds as their canvas.

This is the first project by Leeds Canvas, an arts consortium chosen three years ago as the Yorkshire region winner of a commission for Artists Taking the Lead. The commission is one of 12 across the UK which are celebrating the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics.

Steve Dearden, associate producer for Leeds Canvas, explained:

Initially the arts council invited proposals for a large piece of public art in all the English regions. That's when the consortium came together and made a very basic invitation. We would say to an artist, here's our city, our people, our buildings, make a piece of art which explores and celebrates that.

The free event will include three days of public performances and installations involving light, live music, dance and film. However, specific details of the event are being kept secret until closer to the weekend. Dearden said:

What we want is for people to suddenly be surprised by happenings in their own city or visitors seeing things in the city that have never been seen before. All along with the brothers what we want to make is a piece of art based on the city. Based on themes in city life, the flow and movement of people and of water around the city. So the day-to-day activities in the city suddenly becoming strange with strange interventions being made, whether by physical objects or moving objects or people.

The Quay Brothers are working in collaboration with eight of the city's key arts organisations; Northern Ballet, the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Opera North, Yorkshire Dance, Phoenix Dance, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds Met Studio Theatre and Leeds Art Gallery.

Leeds Canvas said they chose the Quay Brothers because of their previous work in Leeds creating art installations for Leeds Art Gallery. They also knew that the brothers had always had a fascination for the Dark Arches under the city's main train station.

Dearden explained why Canvas is hosting a fleeting public art event rather than a lasting installation.

By choosing the Quay Brothers we always knew we weren't going to get a monumental sculpture. They work with light; they work in that ephemeral way. We knew it would be an amazing thing that came out of the city that would be there for a period and then disappear again. But hopefully it is one of those interventions where it is something that becomes part of peoples' memories or the way they talk about the city.

Overworlds and Underworlds will begin on Briggate in Leeds city centre, including the illustrious late 19th century arcades and leading down to the mysterious underworld of the Dark Arches. Dominic Gray, projects director at Opera North said:

The idea of Overworlds and Underworlds is that we've got these very mysterious atmospheric worlds, one underneath and one above. There are subterranean movements going on underneath our feet that are historical as well as physical, the movements of people over hundreds of years. Overworlds is the angels and the things we aspire to, the things that are in the air that we glimpse out of the corner of our eye. The project is about how us, the living people, walk between one or the other and negotiate our map through a city where those things are going on.

The Dark Arches. Photograph: Tom Arber

Dearden hopes that the event will leave a lasting legacy of collaboration between the artists.

It's important to mention that it has not just been about the core team of chief executives or artistic directors. People from different levels have been working together, including the education and marketing teams who have collaborated for the first time. So hopefully the legacy of this, apart from the artistic legacy, will be a much closer relationship between those key organisations in the future.

He also enjoyed his time with the Quay Brothers:

It's been fantastic working with them, it's been wonderful to go and meet them in their studio. In this very unique working space, you knock on door in the south of London, open it up and suddenly you are in this junk room of a Russian monastery, lots of icons, books, decanters, you could spend years in there exploring. And at the other end there is this high-tech editing suite where they are making films with the newest equipment.

Leeds Canvas expects Overworlds and Underworlds to be an event that will be remembered for years to come. Dearden said, “I think when people see some of the set pieces there will be a sense of wonder and fun. I expect that on Friday and Saturday night people will be taking photos of themselves in front of these amazing things and it will become part of the photographic record of the city and part of the way people talk about the city in the future."

Here's a clip of Steve Dearden and Dominic Gray talking about the weekend's excitements in Leeds. Film by Joe Bream and Marishka Van Steenbergen. 

Leeds centre prepares for OverWorlds & UnderWorlds

(Published in the Guardian Culture section on 17 May 2012)

Quay Brothers to take over city centre with mysterious mixture of light, dance, music, film – and a boat in a tree

The Boat on Briggate: the free three-day event begins on Friday. Photograph: Yorkshire Dance

The Quay Brothers, acclaimed American artist filmmakers who live and work in England, will be transforming the city of Leeds this weekend as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

The free three-day OverWorlds & UnderWorlds event, which starts on Friday, will involve the identical 64-year-old twins Stephen and Timothy and other artists putting on a series of public performances and installations involving light, live music, dance and film.

Secrecy surrounds the exact content of the shows but a large clue appeared last weekend with the overnight arrival of a boat lodged in a tree in the Briggate shopping district. The installation is 14 metres wide and four metres tall.

Visitors will be invited to explore the city with fresh eyes, following a map that will lead them through the city centre, where they will encounter public performances involving water and music. Venues will include the County Arcades, which will be filled with the sound of children's voices and live music. The map will then lead visitors down into the subterranean Dark Arches, where they will encounter film and performers within the alcoves.

The Quay Brothers have been working in collaboration with eight of the city's arts organisations: Northern Ballet, the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Opera North, Yorkshire Dance, Phoenix Dance, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds Met Studio Theatre and Leeds Art Gallery.

Asked for more details about the events, the Quay brothers, who have a habit of finishing each other's sentences, said:

You have to experience it. We have set all these things in motion that make it unpredictable and that's the whole point. The journey is the essence of this thing, to be in the middle of that journey and [to know] that being lost can be pleasurable.

The Quay Brothers are renowned as original filmmakers who usually work on a small scale, creating stop-motion animation films, often using puppets.

In contrast, the OverWorlds & UnderWorlds event will be on a large-scale, challenging the artists to translate their dreamlike style using puppets into a dreamlike world of dancers, film and public installations. The brothers are best known for the 1986 film Street of Crocodiles, adapted from a short story by Polish writer Bruno Schulz.

Light is also a motif of the artists' stories. In 2000 the Quay Brothers were commissioned by the BBC to make the film In Absentia in collaboration with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. The film combines live action and animation, using relentlessly changing light to convey the thoughts of a woman repeatedly writing a letter.

The Quay Brothers have also created set designs for theatre and opera, which has informed how they approach the OverWorlds & UnderWorlds project. "It's the idea that with the little bit of theatre and opera work we have done, [we're] seeing the city as being a stage so you're staging a large installation piece.

We're hoping there will be a certain choreography of events but that things will overlap or intersect or happen. It is a thing we have to let go, we have to set the parameters, [we] have to wind it up and then off it goes.

The OverWorlds & UnderWorlds event is the first project by Leeds Canvas, an arts consortium, chosen three years ago as the Yorkshire region winner of a commission for Artists Taking the Lead. The commission is one of 12 across the UK celebrating the London Olympics and Paralympics.

When asked for their views on the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, the Quay Brothers said: "It's too big for us, it's hysteria, we're not good at that. We're closer to rats that stay underground from all of that."

Old Man Pie is crowned as Yorkshire’s finest unsigned band in second round of Yorkshire Unplugged

Yorkshire Unplugged is a search for the region’s finest live, unsigned, & unplugged talent. This free to enter competition takes place every Thursday in March and April at The Forum in Sheffield.

The second round of the regions newest search for raw acoustic talent featured the Twin Bears, Old Man Pie, Don Barrel Gents, Spit N Strings and Andrew Tregoning. Before the competition got under way, we grabbed the bands for an exclusive insight into what they had in store for the night.

Up to six different acts are competing in each of the five rounds, with the audience voting for the winning act from each round. The winners are entered into the grand final, where the audience will crown Yorkshire’s Finest Live Unsigned & Unplugged Performers.

After a night of quality performances, the audience decided that Old Man Pie should enter the grand final, which will be held on 19^th April 2012 at The Forum.

Yorkshire Unplugged is one of a number of events hosted by the Sheffield company BIG LIVE EVENT Limited. The company was recently set up by a group of entrepreneurial event management students with the help of Sheffield Hallam University’s Enterprise Centre.

BIG LIVE EVENT Limited aims to promote upcoming, unsigned artists from Yorkshire and Derbyshire and give them a chance to show their talent. Sam Wherrett, competition co-organiser and Managing Director at BIG LIVE EVENT Limited said;

“By running the Yorkshire Unplugged competition these musicians not only get the opportunity to play in front of audiences at a local musically prestigious venue, but get produced, photographed and paraded in front of local music industry professionals.”

The winners of Yorkshire Unplugged receive £1000 of professional recording and production provided by Dan Worrall Recordings, main stage performance at Limetree Music & Arts Festival, a promotional photographic shoot courtesy of Charlie Barker Photography and the Yorkshire Unplugged Trophy.

Round three of Yorkshire Unplugged is taking place on Thursday 29th at 7pm at the Forum, featuring The Savoy Ballroom, Matt Longden, Martyn Goldsack, Liberty Train, Just Jodi and Ichabod.

The Cucumber Lounge defies the Monday blues

A brand new Sunday event offering a mix of live music, art and DJ’s has come to Sheffield to remedy those end of the weekend blues. Combining art exhibitions, performance and music, The Cucumber Lounge endeavors to conclude our weekend with some pleasurable entertainment and a little bit of culture.

The event is organised by Sheffield Art Forge, a non-for-profit social enterprise offering arts programming and professional artistic development. Every second Sunday of the month artists and musicians will fill the rooms at Creative Arts Development Space with eclectic sounds and thought-provoking art and performance.

Billy Christmas, a Fine Arts student at Sheffield University, runs The Cucumber Lounge for Sheffield Art Forge. Billy said he was inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland in which there is a club called Cucumber Lounge. “It’s playful but surreal and as the event is on a Sunday evening I thought ‘lounge’ was quite appropriate. It’s a chilled out event that is about appreciating a bit of culture rather than getting wasted,” said Billy.

Sheffield Art Forge runs the arts programme for Creative Arts Development Space, a multi-purpose arts complex in Shalesmoor. Dan Butlin, Sheffield Art Forge curator and event organiser said this event is part of their outreach programme. “We’re trying to broaden the appeal to people who aren’t the contemporary art crowd by creating a synthesis between art and music.” Dan said that they are also creating opportunities for artistic development by giving artists like Billy Christmas the opportunity and freedom to run an event with the support of Sheffield Art Forge.

Entertainment at The Cucumber Lounge

The first Cucumber Lounge kicked off last Sunday with music from Meat, Motherfolkers and Loveboat accompanying art exhibitions from Jessica Wong and Stuart Faulkner. There was also free face painting, poetry by Stan Skinny and an art performance by Stephen Milligan.

Jessica Wong’s exhibition featured installation art exploring the idea of things that are beautiful and ugly at the same time. Her work explores items such as the human body, which is both beautiful in the way it works and yet its guts and gory insides are also ugly. Stuart Faulkner’s exhibition included paintings with a subversive pop-cultural reference, including a painting of Harry Potter with the body of an imp. This painting refers to the American Christian reaction to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. 

Stuart Faulkner's exhibition 

The music included a mixture of folk, punk and an eclectic mix of everything in between. Performance poet Stan Skinny, who ensured the atmosphere remained light-hearted and relaxed, entertained the audience between bands.

Stan Skinny

Billy has many ideas for future events. “I want to have people walking around with platters of cucumber sandwiches and I also wanted to have a poet selling custom poems for shrapnel, but he couldn’t make it this time.” Billy also hopes to incorporate The Cucumber Lounge into other Sheffield arts and music events like the SKINN festival and Tramlines or Peace in the Park.

If any bands or artists would like to get involved in future events you can email Billy Christmas at cucumberlounge@gmail.com

Photos by www.joebream.com 

Heeley City Farm offers hope to Sheffield youths

(footage by Joe Bream)

Heeley City Farm, an oasis in the heart of Sheffield, is fighting to prevent young people from entering a life of crime. In response to devastating budget cuts to Sheffield’s youth services, the charity is determined to offer young people an alternative to the void left by diminishing provision.

The city farm, in the urban district of Heeley, Sheffield, is a community based and led training, employment and youth enterprise. Along with facilities such as a café and children’s playground for the community, the charity also teaches and supports young people and adults with learning difficulties.

Young people bringing in horses for the night 

Sam Bennett, from the human resources and finance team at Heeley City Farm, said that cuts to council spending on youth services has left only a few community centres and youth groups in the area. He said that the farm offers practical work, team building and confidence boosting activities. “They come and they’re allowed a bit of responsibility, so it’s their responsibility to bring the animals in at night or clean their living areas.”

Young people can volunteer or attend work placements at the farm, and adults with learning difficulties are offered supported placements. Participants learn life and vocational skills through looking after the animals and garden centre. There is also a farm kitchen where participants can learn catering and hospitality skills, as well as classrooms to teach a range of vocational courses.

Mr Bennett, aged 24, epitomises the benefit of the charity; he left university without a degree and was unemployed for a while. He then started working at Heeley City Farm as an office assistant and 18 months later he has worked his way up the ladder.

Cuts ‘hit hard’

The government’s recent austerity measures have hit young people hard. They have scrapped the Future Jobs fund, tripled student fees and caused local councils to cut spending on youth services. Sheffield City Council has cut spending this year by £80 million out of an annual budget of 1.5 billion. This has led to £17 million being cut from services for children, young people and families.

Mr Bennett said that Heeley City Farm relies on many sources of funding, but they have still been affected; “With council funding gone for youth work, we’re having to rely more on private donations and to be more inventive and diversify in order to find the money to help fund everything.”

Sheffield Futures is a council-funded charity which runs the Connexions careers services for young people in Sheffield. The charity funds the ‘Young Rangers Course’ for NEET’s (young people not in employment, education or training) at Heeley City Farm. However, they have had to cut 95 jobs out of their 368 staff, whilst £2.4 million has been cut from Connexions this year.

Emma Taylor, information and marketing team leader at Sheffield Futures said; “We have been hit hard, its been awful and we’ve lost a lot of highly skilled workers, it’s not right that we had to cut as many as we did for a service that is so valuable.” Sheffield Futures said that they worked hard to make sure young people aren’t affected by the cuts, but Mrs Taylor admitted, “It’s been very tough.”

Destined for a life of crime

Mr Bennett believes that when less money is spent on youth services, more is needed for addressing the crime that results from young people being left without provision. “A lot of the young people we work with aren’t at school, so having them come here and help look after animals means they aren’t up the road mugging somebody, breaking into houses or getting involved in drugs and gangs, it gives them something to do that means something, that means they aren’t then destined for a life of crime.”

Mrs Taylor said that cutting youth services will have a knock on effect on crime; “NEET figures have been terrible for the city, we are working to lower these as we speak, but there will still be somebody out there who might not have had any intervention from us.”

An Oasis in the middle of the city

Despite the funding cuts, Mr Bennett believes that Heeley City Farm can be an oasis for the community and its young people; “This is quite a novel environment to teach people, everybody likes looking after animals so we’re teaching them the very basic things, like maths, that they might struggle to learn at school, but in a different way that is fun.”