Ragged Optimist
It's Going To Be A Good Week 5
I’ve renamed the newsletter, but it’s still all about good news stories, inspiring things happening, and general optimism to start your week the right way. Like, comment, share, tell your friends to subscribe and all that. Thank you!
This week’s soundtrack is the weird folk-music hall noise of Lunatraktors, named after a bit of a fairground ride that used to sit in a reclamation yard in Margate where I sometimes worked (and where we threw some epic parties, before The Libertines turned up and ruined everything). They’re playing various dates across the UK this year.
Bamboo is brilliant, and Brilliant Bamboo are going to show you why. Founded by my friend Gemma, who I lived with back in 2014-15 when I was working in Stoke.
Next to Coventry Canal, The Nest is the home base and shared workspace for Talking Birds, a theatre company producing thoughtful, playful, mischievous and transformative work about people and place. The Nest is a place for people to come together to imagine better ways of doing things, and I wish there was something as good closer to where I live.
Obviously, being a Useful Man (listen to the Sussex anthem for more on this) I’d like to build a Nest of my own. But I live in rented accommodation, the UK’s housing ‘market’ is in collapse, and it’s hard to commit to a local community when you know you’ll be moved out soon. The Pushback Talks podcast explains why this isn’t inevitable, and explores the options for a better housing future.
Personally, I think some kind of self-build cohousing community is the future. Anyone in Ramsgate, Margate, Broadstairs, Worthing, or Littlehampton like to explore this?
Hangers of London - who have desks at Marine Studios in Margate, where my studio is - are making biodegradable coat-hangers from a sugar-based plastic alternative called Candee and from mycelium. And while they’re just making hangers and mannequins, the material might have lots of other uses.
Greenpeace is uniting the British public to push the next government – whoever it is – to take climate change seriously with their Project Climate Vote. They’re setting up local groups in key constituencies - the Ramsgate group meets on 25th May, Leeds on 1st June. Thanks to my son Ed for spotting this one.
The Crafts Council are also looking towards the election, with a programme of work that promises to explore the role of craft in creating English identity.
Which takes me to my carefully-crafted poetry collection, Your England, made after I travelled across the country to try and find out what Englishness really was. I wrote 100 poems about places from the northern borders to the south coast, and made an exhibition at the Margate Gallery to go with the poems.
This little video went viral in 2008, if that was a thing then. It still brings me joy whenever I watch it.