Call for Vulcan to be saved as rare greater pink Woopie is spotted…

…propping up bar during end of Adamsdownhere website project celebrations.

Rare greater pink Woopie

 

Glasses went clink as the the Adamsdownhere team polished off the remaining launch wine and pretzels in website HQ, later migrating to the Vulcan, opposite the Atrium.  The threatened pub; a historic jem surrounded by concrete and carpark, had been the subject of many an adamsdownhere.co.uk  website story, so it felt appropriate that the night ended there.

Nick tries to get sense out of the last men (and woman) standing

 

 

 

 

 

Old cardiff photos,  art deco fireplaces, dark wooden floors stained with years of fun and run by a salt of the earth landlady -where else but the Vulcan?  That night was a particularly fine mix of locals in fancy dress celebrating a lady in canary yellow wedding dress’ birthday and a drama lecturer lovey loving the karaoke mic a little too much.

Karaoke man

 

 

As taxi’s were called, the hardcore carried on and I went home.  Goodbye Adamsdownhere, till next year – Hopes are, are that the project is to be revived with fresh ideas in the next academic year.

 

 

Jo

Slow News Day

Well the Adamsdownhere office hasn’t exactly been a hive of activity today. Perhaps as we’re coming to the end of the project and our ‘live time’ it’s a bit more tricky to dig deep for the big stories.

I really want to urge everyone to try our competition. It’s dead easy, well not ‘This Morning’ easy, but to any Adamsdown officionados you shouldn’t have too many problems.  With apologies to David we’ve slimmed it down to just five images of the area.  All you have to do is say where you think they are. You don’t even have to get them all right! Whoever gets most right will win the fabulous £50 prize to be taken in vouchers of your own choice. So get hunting and you could be £50 better off. Good Luck!

As I said earlier we’re coming to the end of the project and we’d really like your feedback on what  you think we’ve acheived as a community website. It’s a shame that we can’t continue, but as you can appreciate it takes a lot of hours to keep a well updated informative site going.  Please make use of the new forum, hopefully this site will run again next year and the students who have the task will be far better equipped than we were!

Anyway, we’re not done and dusted yet . We’re all looking forward to a post project drink (in the wonderful Vulcan of course) and there’s still one or two more items to go up before the month is out, so keep looking.

Nick

A reporter’s day is never done …

As reporter for the day I was out bright and early on the streets of Adamsdown armed with digital recorder. Job – to find out what Adamsdown thinks of Mothering Sunday. It was a real treat to meet a Mum whose first Mothering Sunday it was, and a new Dad too, carrying his little one in a papoose in front of him. Being out and about I bumped into several people I’d already met – this job is making me feel like I really belong as one of the community. (Also armed with camera for more ‘where is this’ photos – you must try out the competition – one of which is today’s photo).

Where's this? Sorry can't give you a clue. Do the competition!

Back in the Atrium David had arrived and we decided it would be best for him to do some designing and I’d edit the audio as well as writing the story. When Shanshan arrived it was good to discover that she’d attended a special Mothering Sunday event over the weekend and filmed it, and Clare thought it would be good for us to combine our pieces. So that’s gone on line, along with Geoffrey the Giraffe.

James poppped his head round the door,  face all made up ready for his part in a play.  He’s really busy with school children in tomorrow for radio AND a television quiz show. So I spent some time finding out what his youngsters will have studied for history (the Victorians and WW2 ) and geography (the local area) and prepared a few questions to help with the show.

Tonight at long last I’ve finished editing the community poem, Old Adamsdown, so look out for that too.

Katy

Joining Multicultural Mother’s Day

Multicultural Mother’s Day, as a wrap-up event of the Colours of Adamsdown Exercise, took place at St German’s Church Hall last Saturday afternoon.

I have promised Patricia from the Resource Centre who organised this event to attend this event as a volunteer. Meanwhile, this will be a great story to light up the homepage on Monday. So I went there with my camera, expecting there wouldn’t be many people although Patricia tried to get as many people as possible to come in. However, to my surprise, when I arrived before the event started, the church hall was already almost full.

It was really wonderful to see our event has attracted so many people from different ethnic backgrounds in Adamsdown. A lot of ladies came to discuss in groups about their life and kids while kids were having good fun at face painting , bouncy castle and art&craft workshop where they could make Mother’s Day cards by themselves with the help of some young volunteers.

I was busy taking pictures but soon I had to take up the duty to help take care of the kids at the bouncy castle. Kids were so excited and active to come to jump in the bouncy castle. One volunteer was definitely not enough since the number of the kids in the castle shouldn’t exceed 8 one time and we had to make sure bigger kids and small ones were seperated in different turns to jump in case of safety. But happy kids were trying to climb into the castle all the time and I had to hold those cute little ones back together with another volunteer while bigger boys were jumping around.

I felt a bit tired after some time but it was great fun. I actually have never dealt with kids before and I knew they could be very naughty and noisy. But that is the way it is. Seeing those happy healthy kids enjoying themselves was absolutely joyful for me as well.

Patricia’s friend, a Chinese lady gave a fantastic performance of Mongolian dance at the event with traditional inner-Mongolian music from China. I shot a video and it seemed people were so intrigued by her exotic performance. For me, it just made me feel so warm to hear music from my homeland. I don’t know how to explain the feeling, I was so happy and proud and also a bit homesick.

It was also amazing to see how creative and talented kids were at the art&craft workshop. They made their own Mother’s Day cards and presented to me proudly. Looking at the lovely cards, somehow I pitied how limited my imagination is compared with the kids!

Face painting was so popular with kids. The long queue never ended. The lady who did this was working there for 3 hours almost without a pause. Again I was amazed she could paint different patterns on a kid’s face rapidly. It was fun for kids to run around as spider man or African tribal man.

The last but not least, food was served at 2:30 and it was just terrific! The food was sponsored by Central African Cuisine Association in Broadway and another restaurant in Heath(forgive me I forgot the name). I really loved the exotic flavour of the food, infused with the scent of curry. I tried all kinds of food at present there, African, Arabic and Indian style. Multicultural food is excellent especially African bananas, I still haven’t figured out what special way they used to make bananas like vegetable. Anyway, it is just delicious and beyond my description, you’ve got to give a try.

The event ended with Flow’s percussion performance and kids were so enthusiastic taking part to try on the drums and sing together with Flow. It was a nice day for me. As a journalist, I could really participate in the local community activity as a volunteer. This kind of experience is really valuable. I always believe being part of your object and really getting to know them can give journalists more sources and inspiration to produce good journalism.

As an international person myself, I do feel close to people from ethnic minorities in Adamsdown. I understand their problems quite well. I know most of the time they are just isolated in their own small communities. However, this event is a great example to show how local community should do to get more people from different backgrounds involved and make them feel at home. We need more attention, more care and more warmth.

By Shanshan

20/03/09

The post today is a bit late I’m afraid; I feel I have slightly neglected my reporter’s duties due to dissertation deadlines and imminent essays.

I dashed off early yesterday to the computer classes at the Adamsdown Resource Centre with the idea of writing a piece about it. Instead I ended up giving a short talk to the class about the project, then joining them for posh biscuits and eclectic conversation. As well as the website we discussed politics, ghosts, history and the nature of the human mind. I really enjoyed myself and learnt a lot – not least about the pros and cons of Adamsdownhere.co.uk.

The group might read this, so thank you all for letting me come, I wish I could have been more useful but I hope what we talked about was of some interest (it was to me anyway!).

Otherwise I created a short slide-show about Adamsdown Play Centre – as we are now using YouTube I can include it here.

Chris

As simple as ABC…

A is for Art

There’s an exhibition of student artwork under way in the Atrium, in fact we can see it just underneath our office windows!  I went to have a  look, and we’ll have a brand new video up of it before much longer.  Other than that, we’re keeping busy by making the website easier to use, as well as putting up loads more new content.  There’s some rather interesting stuff about Adamsdown’s resident author and an item on the newly-refurbished Anderson Fields. There are also a couple of brand new pieces about the campaign to save the Vulcan.  That’s before we even get onto the huge back-log of stories that are ready and waiting to go online, and there’s more in the wings too!

B is for brain-numbed

There’s a certain point in this where you begin to wonder: is it all worth it?  We’re a small team trying to cover events in a small area, which you’d think is relatively simple.  Not so.  Sometimes it seems like we’re spending too much time wrestling with the computers and not enough time actually story-gathering.  That said, we still manage to get a new set of stories on the site every day, so who’s worrying?

C is for Controversy

Controversy is not something we wanted to have.  Reporting on it, yes.  However, we’ve realised that our reporting of one particular controversy might seem a little… controversial.  What I mean is that the really big story in Adamsdown, at least according to us, is the battle/debate over what should be done with the Vulcan Hotel, the pub across the road from us.  It’s due to be demolished to make way for new flats and shops, but there’s a large number of people who want to keep it going.  Now, what might be controversial is that we’ve run so many pages on it – are we really just a publicity machine for the Vulcan preservation people?

Well, no.  It so happens that the action to demolish the Vulcan is opposed by a very large number of people, and we have not published a story without there being  something new to say.  Also, we do try to ensure our reporting contains a balance of views and opinions.

That said, we are aware that this is a site for the whole community, so we can’t just focus on the Vulcan.  Besides, it could look a bit lazy…

D is for David

I’m now off duty until next week, but I’ll leave you in the tender care of Chris.  After a day slaving over a computer keyboard to keep the site up-to-date, tomorrow he’s the primary reporter.  I’ll be back on Monday, but there’s still a few more things to do today, not to mention some stories I’d like to have ready by then…

David

The early bird …

… catches the worm as the saying goes. I was that early bird this morning leaving the house at a time that rarely sees me up and about. Leaving the house at 6.30am was necessary in order to beat the traffic, find the Welsh Assembly and perhaps more challenging still,  somewhere to park.

Being reporter for the day I’d decided to follow up the latest on the campaign to ‘Save the Vulcan’. For anyone who’s missed what this is about the Vulcan is a Victorian pub that is due to be demolished in June.

The Senedd (Welsh Assembly to English speakers like me) was scheduled to discuss the petition that had been presented to them, hence it being vital that I found the Senedd. Actually found it very easily – it’s a very impressive building down at Cardiff Bay. With the sun glistening on it and its reflection in the Bay I was probably seeing it at its best so of course photos were in order.

Senedd at Cardiff Bay

Impressive - isn't it?

It was an interesting meeting, with the petitioners speaking passionately about the need to keep the pub, and the Petitions Committee asking some very challenging questions.  I interviewed the petitioners after the meeting – see the report on the adamsdownhere website later – see the photo of the people I interviewed now.

Save the Vulcan Campaigners

The reporting day was rather interrupted by 3 hours of lectures but working together David and I got a report together complete with audio and photos. David and I are on again tomorrow but the reporter’s blog will be David as we’re reversing roles.

I finished the day by joining the new public library (that’s a great new building too) to borrow some Adamsdown books with old photos, and then off to see John Sennett (the history man) again.

Katy