Love at First Site

DSC_4156 Wish tower, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.

I'm currently quite obsessed.

About 18months ago S took me to Eastbourne, the place he was brought up, to see an exhbition of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs.

I'd never been there before - in fact my knowledge of the South East is woefully lacking. The only thing I thought I knew was that it was pensioner central. In the light of that an exhibition by Mapplethorpe looked like a weird sort of euthanasia experiment.

It was a whistle-stop day trip so little time (and rather too much wind and rain) to explore everything the town had to offer but we did wander past a Martello tower smack bang in the middle of the sea front.

Now, for some reason I'm a bit of a sucker for Martellos. When I asked whether it was possible to get inside to take a peek, S informed me it had been mostly disused for ten years or more.

Then a tiny thought hatched in my brain. A thought, it has to be said, that S has encouraged and TD has raised his eyebrows a bit but indulged.

You see the company that TD and I started was supposed to breathe live into under-used land and buildings. True enough, we were hoping that commercial developers would hire us to deal with their building sites but more recently we'd worked out that if we worked with community groups we could help them bring projects to life.
The extension - or maybe the starting place - for this could be for us to come up with community project ideas and then work with the community to deliver them.

The idea is maturing to the point we have people in Eastbourne listening to us and willing to get involved. We have actors, comedians, dancers and scientists eager to bring their skills from Cambridge, Hitchin, and Bristol to work with local folk - and with ExtraVerte - to make this a building the community can see and learn to love all over again.

I've told loads of people about our hopes and I've now had quite a few meetings with the great and the good in Eastbourne craving their indulgence and all along I've been waiting for someone to say "It's a stupid idea, now go away"...but no one has.

Quite the contrary.

Now we've got ourselves involved with a local community organization who have set themselves up to improve the town they live in. There are clearly parallels in our aims we've identified possibilities for working together.

I've been bowled over at the "go get 'em" attitude of the people I've been speaking to and suddenly, our madcap scheme to reuse a Martello tower for the benefit of the community and to train local young adults in work skills seems entirely fitting and at one with the prevailing spirit of the town.

I'd worked out a while ago that if this scheme comes off, then I'd be spending an awful lot of time here. Holiday type accommodation is fine but I know that the nomadic lifestyle really isn't for me. Living out of a rucksack is an overrated pastime and at over fours hours, the journey doesn't really lend itself to commuting.

Although the funding isn't secure yet, we're getting a little closer so I'm looking at the possibility of making a part time home there.

I've never lived anywhere but Bristol so the prospect of relocating to a completely different part of the country is everso slightly terrifying.

But it's clearly a place that's starting to wake out of a period of a sort of hibernation and what better place to practice our craft of innovative regeneration.

...and the other day I watched a TV programme which made a flypast of the Seven Sisters and Beachy Head taking in a view across the South Downs...and I have to say I felt a definite yearning.

So to everyone I have bored rigid on the subject...and to everyone I plan to bore rigid in future..thank you...but wish us luck.

...and to those people who think of Eastbourne as God's waiting room...just you watch us prove otherwise!