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I remember sitting in a drafty church hall in 1994, watching a perfectly good neighbourhood initiative crumble into nothing because the chairperson had left, and her “system” was nothing more than a handful of loose, coffee-stained scraps of paper. It… Continue reading

I remember sitting in a drafty church hall back in ’94, staring at a stack of dusty, handwritten parish minutes that told me more about our neighborhood’s true needs than any glossy council report ever could. People today think they… Continue reading

People often think that learning how to volunteer in an archive requires a PhD in History or a lifetime of dusting leather-bound ledgers in a silent, temperature-controlled vault. They see these institutions as gated communities for academics, which is a… Continue reading

People often think that figuring out how to work with a museum requires a massive grant, a team of academics, or at the very least, a very expensive suit. I spent thirty-one years in local government, and if there is… Continue reading

I remember sitting in a drafty village hall back in ’94, watching a lovely lady nearly burst into tears because she’d found an old Roman coin in her allotment but had no idea what to do with it. She’d spent… Continue reading

I remember standing on the edge of a damp meadow in North Yorkshire, clutching a clipboard and feeling completely foolish because I was looking for something that wasn’t there. Everyone tells you that you need expensive ground-penetrating radar or a… Continue reading

I remember sitting in a drafty community hall back in ’98, surrounded by thirty shouting neighbors, all of us arguing about where a new playground should actually go. We were looking at blurry, printed maps that showed nothing but grey… Continue reading

I remember standing in a muddy ditch in Lower Highfield back in ’94, clutching a damp, illegible map and realizing that all the official council reports in the world wouldn’t tell me where the actual overflow went during a heavy… Continue reading

I remember sitting in a drafty community hall back in ’94, watching a consultant in a sharp suit charge the council three thousand pounds just to tell us that a proposed freight line would “impact local connectivity.” It was all… Continue reading

I remember sitting in a drafty community hall in 1994, staring at a pile of glossy, expensive-looking reports that told us absolutely nothing about why the footbridge on Miller Lane was crumbling. The council had spent thousands on “consultants” to… Continue reading