Transcriptions | Madeleine Snowdon

A Frog Jumps In

When I first started walking along the canal, maybe 30 years ago, no, not that much, but, you know, 25... there was a wonderful image of a kingfisher up on there, and something that I think you would only see in South Leamington as a graffiti - a haiku - the most famous haiku of all, which says:

The old pond,

A frog jumps in,

Splash.

And somehow, I just loved it because the fact that it's graffiti captures the sort of anarchic quality of South Leamington, and the fact that it's a haiku captures the, um, intelligentsia aspect of South Leamington, because it is a very arty area.

A Garden By The Canal

Speakers:

SP: Sophia Pilbeam

JB: Jill Barker

DMW: Dennis McWilliams

MS: Madeleine Snowdon

Okay, I'll tell you how it started off. I basically didn't have a car at the time, and I used to come down here and sit on the bench, which used to be over there in the corner, but it kept being vandalised and burnt and broken. And it just got to the stage where you couldn't really sit on it. And I thought, this space could be really lovely. And I just didn't know what to do. Because the Green Party kept posting things through the door about how they helped the community, I thought, well, I'll ring the Green Party because it's a green thing, isn't it? So I rang Will at the Green Party and just said, is there anything we can do about the bench issue? And he said, what bench issue? So I explained to him what was going on. And he said, well, do you want to meet with me there? And I said, well, yeah, there's nowhere to sit. So we met here and And I was just saying that it could be lovely, this space. There's graffiti everywhere and there's needles. It was just not pleasant. And it could be a really lovely place to sit in the sun for locals. They said, well, why don't you write a letter? We'll print it for you. And we'll post it to all the locals and try and get lots of people involved because I said it needs to be a community thing so people take ownership. of the land and take care, care of it, basically. they take, not ownership, because obviously it's council land, but they kind of feel responsible.

I'm sorry. It is what we call council land. Everything that the council believes it owns is actually public land that belongs to all of us.

Thank you, Jill. Thank you, Jill. Yeah, public! So I just thought, well, it needs to be a community thing where everybody has a say and everybody gets involved and takes care and So we wrote a letter. I wrote it and he distributed it. And they had a first meeting, I think. Did you go to the first meeting, Denny?

DMW

I don't think so. I probably didn't get the letter, actually.

Didn't you? It went to everybody. It went to everybody. But the first meeting, there was about 10, it was during lockdown. It was about 10 or 15 people. And Will gave me, I couldn't make the first meeting. Will made a list of all the names and numbers and I phoned everybody and said, would you like to be involved in a community group whereby we regenerate this whole area? And the people that said yes, I formed a WhatsApp group. And it just went from there really. And we do little events every now and then. And this is Dennis. I met Dennis through the Canal Side group. He helps with the garden. He just lives very locally.

DMW

I mainly do weeding actually, on account of my bad back you see.

Ella from another county councillor from the Green Party. She's a special needs teacher. And we were going to get a graffiti artist, but he backed out. and the walls were atrocious, there was all sorts of horrible slang on there. And so she came down with Will and said, well, why don't I get, it was her idea, she said, why don't I get the schools involved, the local schools, which was great because she then got a contact to have the wall, the paint donated for the background white, painted over all the graffiti. and then got all the schools involved to paint their art. It's an ongoing thing. I mean, that still needs to, I mean, there's still schools. It started to rain basically, so only if certain schools could actually finish the project. But this year we're hoping to do some more, or next year we're hoping to do some more. So we might win a competition or something like that to finish off.

I really like that big. The large scale ones that Campion School did. It seems to work with the size of the space really there.

Yeah, the juniors and infant schools did the other one.

That's really cute little separate bricks.

Absolutely. They're like 3, three and four year olds. And if you look at each one, it's really, really clever. But they had a visit from Sarah Hearn, the artist, botanical artist, and she inspired them to try and create something that was similar, not different, but a theme basically. So it's themed with botanicals and natural and flowers and stuff like that.

Brilliant. It's lovely to meet you both. What a lovely coincidence.

There's no coincidences. I've come to realise everything works out that's meant to. I really do think that. It just things happen that are meant to.

It often does.

Yeah. if it doesn't work out to your will, it's because it's not meant to. That's what I see.

DMW

Serendipity, is that it?

It was serendipity. The whole thing has been serendipity, really, hasn't it?

The Eagle Rec

I'm Romy Dixon and I am a member of the Friends of the Eagle Rec, and the Eagle Rec is situated pretty close to Rangemaster, which has a fantastic history as it used to be the Flavels Factory. And before that the Eagle Foundry. And the park was built on the land donated by the Eagle Foundry and the Flavels Factory to the people of Leamington as a football ground, and it's situated right next to the canal.

And there's plenty to see here…

Lots of artwork along the canal leading in, which is another connection for Brink Arts Cooperative - They've done some fantastic work, putting up some amazing pieces of artwork along the way.

And we've just developed the park as time's gone by.

So we're walking around the park now and when I got involved with the Eagle Rec, we decided we needed to get a Friends group together and we put a lot of funding bids in to improve it because it was just a playing ground with just grass and a few swings but nothing much more.

And so we consulted with the local community and that took quite a long time - people wanted all sorts of things to improve the area.

And we ended up improving the playground, putting bow top fencing to keep dogs out and we've got a path all the way round so that people can access the edges all the way round to walk dogs.

We've got football - lots of sports activities - football and an outdoor gym that you can go and try all the different bits of equipment as you go round.

But basically, it's quite… it's developing into a really nice sort of nature conservancy project as well.

And so right around the edges of the park are some very mature lime trees that are, were here, have been here for at least 70, 80 years. And then amongst that we've planted natural British sort of shrubbery around the area. And we've got squirrels now, which we didn't used to have about 20 years ago - they've started to come and live here - There's one there!

And yeah, it's just a really great space now.

I think the people use it for lots of different reasons.

And we've got a little garden as well in the children's play area, because we're trying to do a project that links the garden, with sort of… children understanding where their food comes from. And that's been nice, pulling the local community together and getting volunteers to participate in that project too.

Yeah, so we've been doing quite a lot of work with the local council and they are obviously looking after the trees and keeping the paths nice and clean and everything.

And we do try to... make sure that it stays accessible to everybody.

So we're always working on sort of new ideas to sort of get people involved or also happy to be here feeling safe as well.

It was around about 2008, that's when we started consultation and that involved asking everyone who lives around here and the children in the schools and the people at the local community centres and if they are happy, to sort of, give their ideas. And so they helped actually design all the artwork and stuff - so the arches that you can see dotted well are at each of the main sort of areas, as you enter the park and stuff. They're all designed by local people.

Yes, so we've got loads of lovely ideas from people and it's sort of, but the artwork in the park represents people's ideas, what they do with the area.

So there's one that's sort of at the entrance near the canal that's got some sort of filigree images of bikes jumping over because there's lots of kids that wanted to do sort of BMX bikes down here and that sort of thing.

And there's a rainbow bridge at one entrance because that's the sort of coming in, that's sort of welcoming everybody coming in from the Shrubland Street side of the park - there's different themes at different corners of the park, so yeah…

The Correct Way to Greet a Swan

And this is where the lady lived, who was very, very old, and it was before this hedge stuff was here, but it was still, not that long ago. She was in her 90s, and she was very proud of having lived in one of the workers' cottages. She was born in one of those, and her father was a canal worker, and she said, they used to swim the canal up to Radford-Semele and back. He would swim with the kids, and the water was clear… clear and pure. And I thought, how extraordinary.

And she was also the person who said - and there used to be… there are regularly swans here, not as many as there used to be. And she said: There is a right way to greet a swan - and you imagine that you are a swan and you bend your head over like a swan and then up again and then the swan will know that you're a friend.

As far as I know, she's right! I do still greet swans like that, and they seem to understand it.

Ah, adventures by the canal…