We have officially appointed two members of staff for our new Community Development Roles. Michael Bowdidge (also Street Arts coordinator) has been recruited as Community Development Lead for two days per week and Tiki Muir as Community Development Coordinator for three days per week.

The community Development roles link together a range of strands of our work focused around membership development and engagement. This includes: – Collaborative work on a local community-led regeneration project to create a Local Place Plan for Wester Hailes. – Community and membership conversations aligned with our upcoming community asset transfer – Growth and development of our membership, including introducing a young membership. – Furthering our work on co-production and nurturing new projects and volunteering opportunities locally, based on residents ideas and interests. – Building confidence locally so that people feel empowered to take leadership roles in developing new activities and opportunities with and for the residents of Wester Hailes.

Together, Michael and Tiki will develop a new programme of creative activities and services for WHALE members to take place at WHALE and across the local area. This will support members to improve wellbeing, economic prospects and the physical environment. They will also encourage WHALE members to participate in the conversations around our Asset Transfer (our plan to buy the land underneath WHALE Arts from the local authority.) Additionally, they will be responsible for the creation of a Membership Engagement Plan in order to recruit new members and to support, evaluate and report on their participation and involvement in a wide range of activities.

Michael and Tiki will also do important work with local people on projects based on their ideas, responding to local need in a way that is not linked to specific or pre-defined outputs. They will also work with Wester Hailes Community Trust and other local partners and consultants on local engagement for an upcoming Local Place Plan for Wester Hailes.

Michael Bowdidge is an artist, researcher and educator who has been working in a variety of different roles at WHALE Arts since 2009. After being initially employed as one of our Street Arts artists, Michael went on to work with the Westburn CAN project as one of the three commissioned artists who made work in and for the community garden. He then began running our Street Arts outreach project in 2017 and co-led our recently completed Creative Placemaking Project with Rebecca Green. Michael also works in a variety of other creative, cultural and academic contexts and really enjoys doing so, as he feels that the insights gained whilst working in one sector are usually directly applicable to others.

Michael is unfortunately a lifelong West Ham United supporter, but in his favour he does have a lovely rescue dog called Amber. He lives with his family just outside Glasgow.

Tiki Muir became interested in collaborative and collective working after studying Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art. She returned to Edinburgh in 2020 after living in New Zealand where she worked at The Shift Foundation, a charitable trust working to improve young women’s wellbeing. There Tiki created a youth-led podcast called The Conversation Collective.

Tiki is also a volunteer at the WHALE Arts community garden and the SCOREscotland community fridge. She loves reading, eating tasty food, learning how to grow things, and spending time outdoors. Most of all, Tiki can’t wait to get out of lockdown so that she can start meeting new people and building connections with the Wester Hailes community.

We wish them both the very best of luck with their new roles!

ANIMALS
Edinburgh Zoo Live Webcams;
Panda Cam, Penguin Cam, Koala Cam,
Paigton Zoo Cams with Flamingo’s, Meerkats & Monkey’s

MUSEUMS
National Museum of Scotland has resources HERE including animations, nature trail ideas, arts & crafts & of course you can explore all the treasures of the museum online.

CREATIVE WRITING
Creative writing and reading with Open Book HERE

THEATRE
Online plays and panto with National Theatre online. Watch on YouTube HERE

DANCE
Free online dance classes from Dancebase: Scotland’s National Centre for Dance HERE

ARTIST TALKS/PODCASTS
Photography Down The Line is a series of conversations between artists, photographers and the Director of ‘Stills’, a registered charity and centre for photography based in Edinburgh. Started during the time of the Coronavirus lockdown, this series aims to discuss, celebrate and share the ideas of artists at this challenging time. LISTEN HERE

ONLINE TREASURE HUNT
Escape Room Durham – free online escape room challenge! CLICK HERE

SPACE
Join NASA with a view of the earth from space on their live cameras HERE

WELLBEING & RELAXATION
Lots of great wellbeing and relaxation resources HERE

CALLIGRAPHY
Free online calligraphy resources HERE

MUSIC
Scottish Chamber Orchestra – music for all ages HERE

Although we worked safely to restart some of our face to face groups in our building and the garden in 2020, due to the new lockdown restrictions all face to face activities at WHALE Arts will be paused from for all of January 2021. We will revisit this towards the end of January and plan to restart face to face creative, wellbeing and gardening groups as soon as we can, but only when we are safely able to do so. We will be in touch with participants, volunteers, freelancers and support workers towards the end of January with an update.

We will continue to work with our freelance artists to share creative ideas and activities on social media throughout January. Please keep an eye out for Wellbeing Wednesdays on our social media platforms. All our groups that have been meeting digitally will continue as they have been.

We will continue to prepare the WHALE Arts Community Takeaway every Friday starting back Friday 15^th January 2021. This is a hot take-away meal prepared by our chef and can be collected between 1-2pm every Friday. And we will continue with Friendship Calls throughout January. If you know anyone who would like to collect a delicious meal please share this information with them. Anyone local to Wester Hailes who would appreciate a weekly Friendship Call get in touch with info@whalearts.co.uk.

SCOREscotland’s Community Fridge located at WHALE Arts will continue to operate. This is open on January 7th 2021 and will operate on Mondays and Thursdays between 1:30pm to 3:30pm. If you would like to use the Community Fridge please contact: madhavi@scorescotland.org.uk

Our building will remain open throughout January with minimal staff for essential services only. We are still able to take room bookings for essential face to face services – please get in touch with roombookings@whalearts.co.uk to find out more.

Please take care of yourselves and those around you, this is hopefully the final hurdle in what has been a very challenging 10 months. We continue to be here for the local community in as many ways as we possibly can working with other local groups and organisations. We are well connected to others working locally so please do get in touch if you are looking for some support and if we cannot help directly we can put you in touch with someone else who can.