Hello all! Matt here from the SCENE Project, the environmental project of the Miles Platting, Ancoats and Collyhurst Community Network. (mpac).

SCENE was set up just over a year ago, to support effort locally to improve the community and environment. It’s all about grassroots activity, keeping things relevant to the local community and helping to give people new skills, confidence and raising awareness of community and environmental matters.

So, as the project has just passed its first birthday, I thought I’d let Have Your Say readers know what I’ve been up to. Well, it has been a busy twelve months! As I’m new to the area, some time was spent initially getting to know the people, and organisations I would be working with. I wanted to hold a launch event for the project, so in May 2003 the Big Green Fun Day was held at Victoria Mill Park, and turned into a brilliant day, with around 200 people attending, and a whole host of activities and information on offer.

Soon after, preparations for entering Manchester In Bloom got going. This was where the SCENE Project came from in a way, and I spent a good portion of my first five months involved with this, helping groups get involved, liasing with the council and getting my hands dirty doing planting events. I worked with roughly a dozen groups and encouraged people to plant not just flowers but strawberries
and herbs.

Since then, I worked with local centres to help them get their own activities and projects off the ground, and to provide environmentally themed
sessions and workshops, around twenty four in all, covering everything from gardening and woodwork to environmental art and craft skills.

Two SCENE projects I am now working on, is to create a garden for a local nursery and an outdoor classroom/garden for a local primary school – I will have more info and pictures on these next time. The projects are particularly exciting as they have been designed and are being built with help from local people, and provide a way for adults to get involved with the project and learn useful new skills like woodwork, paving and landscaping!

Finally, SCENE is planning to hold ‘big weekend community events’ on a monthly basis, in Ancoats, Miles Platting and Collyhurst, over the next nine months, to provide a regular place for people to come along, have fun, learn new things, and get involved with local environmental activity. I’m hoping these events will regularly feature plant sales and gardening workshops, film showings, stalls, information, music and food! Do you have any ideas of what we could include? Things you’d like to sell? Do you have skills and experience doing useful things that other people might benefit from knowing – how to mend a bike, grow some veg’, make or repair things with craft techniques? If so, let me know!

Please call Matt on 0161 203 6390, or write to HYS, or email: mpaccn@btconnect.com also, if you can access the Internet, check out: www.mpaccn.info for details and dates of what is happening locally. Thank you!