Let We Forget: West Park Centre

Here's Sue's latest email to the Council.

--- 7 months ago the West Park Centre was closed overnight --- YAMSEN Specially Music was one of the groups based there, working with 100 adults and children with learning disabilities each week. No-one from the council has taken an interest in getting in touch with us to arrange to come and meet the people we work with and let them voice their concerns, despite being invited to choir rehearsals etc. The council should be working for the people and finding out what they want --- especially vulnerable people. It would be good if someone from the council showed a real interest in why we, and many other groups, really need  the council to be looking towards West Park opening again and gave some of their time to come and talk to us. 

Sue Tomassi --- YAMSEN committee member

 

Deputation to Council

What’s the Point of the West Park Centre?

An Unintended City-wide Arts Centre

My Lord Mayor and Fellow Councillors

Even though you are not discussing it today, I would to thank you for giving me the opportunity to present the case for getting the West Park Centre up and running again as soon as possible. I am speaking only on behalf of the charities and community groups.

I’d like to make 5 points:

1. On November 5^th 2012 100 or so of us turned up as usual for work there only to be called into an extra-ordinary meeting.  Here, in the main hall we were told that the Centre’s electrics had been condemned, and we were to pack enough equipment to last 2 months, and leave. The Council groups were immediately given a previously mothballed room in Merrion House.

Then we were asked to pack everything ; pack 20 years worth of bags, filing cabinets, gamelan, resonance boards, cupboardfuls of costumes, and we were given 3 days to do it in. Then we got 3 weeks.

And we were 30 plus displaced organisations amounting to 2000 or so regular users, including of course all the council services and then all the charities, who had bumped along in harmony with each other for decades, and now, who hardly or never meet at all.

It’s fair to say that we were taken aback the manner of the “temporary closure” – One minute the electrics needed fixing; the next minute there was a consultation on the building’s future. Not only were we asked to leave with nowhere, or nowhere suitable to go, but six months later we are still operating from our garages and spare rooms.

2.Numbers and types of people affected, We feel that the numbers of users, and how much the centre was in demand was under-estimated. The last report talks about underuse, not so. The place was buzzing from morning till late evening. What was lovely about West Park, and what made it so special was the combinations of arts and sports, education and leisure, adults and children, disabled and able-bodied. Groups included the Travellers Education Service, children and adults with Special/Additional Needs, unions, self-help groups eg gamblers etc anonymous.  And all day Sunday, every Sunday the Church filled it. Many groups of vulnerable people, And all surrounding the wonderful foyer for all the serependitious meetings.

3.The practical building design – At the end of three spurs,, and in the middle - four good performance spaces [the former gyms, the Rehearsal Room, studio and the Main Hall] the main hall’s acoustics are good, in fact they were recently improved. Many, many toilets, including disabled adapted. YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic and ArtForms Music Service installed multi sensory classroom. [result of ten years planning taken down in a morning] Exceptional and absolutely vital storage – PE equipment, the orchestra’s shared instruments, the Opera’s costume cupboards. Carpark to fit a 100 piece orchestra or a fleet of minibuses for the disabled, with disabled access.

4.West Park serves as a base for city-wide and regional work, a happy accident, but its geography, near Leeds ringroad, on best bus routes [1, 56, 96], Players come from as far away as Scarborough for the orchestras, and from Sheffield for YAMSEN. Has open aspect surrounded by open spaces and playing fields, gives an extra feeling of security, convenient for shops.

5.West Park the Accidental Inclusive Arts Centre didn’t start as a plan. It just grew.– 25 years plus in the making, groups developing links. The Music Service and the Music charities worked together; Northern ballet sent 2 dancers to the YAMSEN singalong; Orchestras shared timpani;  Etc.

The council petition that we ran collected over 500 signatures in the 2 weeks that it was live. There are organisations still unplaced or not satisfactorily placed. There are children and adults with Special Needs who are missing their regular rehearsals; there are orchestras missing the hall, the space, the storage – all the reasons they chose West Park in the first place.

Victoria and Mavis waiting to be called into the Council Chamber

I am here on behalf all the groups, and on behalf of people who can’t speak for themselves. We need the £170,000 or whatever it takes spending on the electrics, and we need to get back into the building, which, until this year, never suffered from the regular petty vandalism that is beginning to appear.

The important thing is for the basic repairs to be done in order to enable us to get back into the West Park Centre, and then we can start to plan for the future and then have the debate whether to be a CIC, or remain inside the council.

The Blah Blah Blahs say Yeah

great carpark

Hi [YAMSEN]

Just to say hello and tell you that I have signed the petition. It was terrible how we all got evacuated from the building and at the Blahs we are still feeling the repercussions from that experience. The work you do is fantastic and I always admired the way you organized the day events in the hall which showed how many skills you have in participation, design, storytelling and of course music. Whatever the outcome of West Park, you deserve a new home where your fantastic work can continue.

getting out

 Best wishes,

Anthony

Anthony Haddon
Artistic Director
Theatre Co Blah Blah Blah

The Irreplaceable West Park Centre.

West Park Centre

Time marches on and it is now half a year since West Park Centre was ‘temporarily’ closed overnight – with no warning to the many organisations and groups using the premises.

another Greggs' donation to YAMSEN:SM

West Park Centre has been the heart of Yorkshire Association for Music and Special Educational Needs (YAMSEN) for the past 16 years.  Children and adults arrived there for all the regular specialised activities, educational and social, and came to depend on the Centre’s friendly and supportive atmosphere, where they were made to feel welcome, accepted and at ease.

As a charity, so many of our Special Needs activities rely heavily on our local team of invaluable volunteers, without whose willing support our many music activities could not be run.  Most of our volunteers and ‘customers’ would not be able to travel to other areas of the city so easily. West Park Centre is ideally located,  being close to the Ring Road and with ample parking facilities.  It is convenient for the mini-buses transporting our groups.

100% of our YAMSEN of our musical instruments, equipment and materials were hastily ‘temporarily’ relocated in early November 2012 to different storage facilities where they cannot be readily accessed, limiting the scope and range of our ‘temporarily’ re-located activities.

As the grandparent of a boy with Autistic Spectrum Disorder I’m very aware of the adverse effect of the sudden and unexpected disruption to a settled and accepted routine. Fortunately, my grandson lives in Newcastle where the facilities for such children are excellent – there the Tim Lamb Centre at the Rising Sun Park is run by volunteers. Certainly the ‘closure’ of West Park Centre caused considerable distress to several members of ‘Off by Heart’, our choir for adults with special needs, which had practised fortnightly there for the past 14 years.

yes, it's a music library, nowhere useful now

One would like to believe that most Councils make sensible decisions. However in such a case of the West Park Centre, the Leeds Council are failing the people of Leeds. It is people not buildings that matter. If ever the Council set out to provide a Centre such as the one at West Park, they would be hard-pressed to choose anywhere else in Leeds where 2000/3000 people would be able to attend each week. The majority of 2000/3000 adults and children using the Centre appreciate its internal layout and would want the current building made safe and watertight – not new, modern and expensive.

Please spend tax payers’ money wisely, as if that money were your own.

Anne Gilliam 

West Park Centre - the Petition

props for multi-sensory etc days

The The West Park Centre lies empty, uncared for, and inevitably will decline in health. Twenty years of hard work devasted by one thoughtless act.

gamelan [some of it]  in boxes

YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic for years worked in tandem with ArtForms Music Service, sharing rooms, personnel and equipment, and providing more than the statutory requirements for children with Special Additional Needs, not just round all of Leeds but also all round Yorkshire.

Now the equipment lies in storerooms, and backrooms and bedrooms, and front rooms and garages all round Leeds, difficult to get hold of, by arrangement, impossible on the spur of the moment.

 e.g. "Ah, you've brought Jack* with you. He just loves an ocean drum. I'll just nip to Whinmoor and see if Mavis has one in her garage."

pans at Town Hall concert

YAMSEN had a permanent base at the West Park Centre, storing its extensive music library with everything from specially adapted xylophone beaters [for children with hands that find gripping normally hard to do] to a whole gamelan, bought with a donation and imported from Java. 

pan players at Town Hall concert

We put a brave face on it; have meetings here and there, run the muti-sensory days and the Town Hall concerts and everything else, as if life was normal, because the people for whom we provide extra specialised music education have it tough already, and don't need our problems on top of their own.

marimbas and stuff in the front room

But five months later, the officers who closed us have still not provided any decent even temporary accommodation, and quite frankly our own health is being affected.

So, here's the petition to sign. Let's get the numbers up before the new council date of 8 May. And go onto Twitter, follow and retweet the ShoutOut4WPark tweets. 

http://democracy.leeds.gov.uk/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?id=38

1.* not his real name.

2. only pictured steelpans at Leeds Town Hall - can't picture all the children. Just imagine several hundred on the raisers behind us.

Adults have Special Additional Needs as well, you know

Mavis has written to the leader of the council - again:

To Councillor Keith Wakefield

Leader of Leeds City Council.

Dear Councillor Wakefield

I am writing as Vice President of YAMSEN and as coordinator of YAM (YAMSEN Adult Music) Activities hoping that you are aware how vital decisions that you are to make in the Council meeting this week are to our Association.

 We are a voluntary Charity working with youngsters and adults to promote opportunities for our Special People to develop confidence, competence and experience new ideas through Music and the Arts.

Each Friday morning we have over 60 people with Learning  Disabilities   plus approx. 40 support workers and volunteers attending our Workshops and Choir rehearsals.

We are using West Park United Reform Church and completely fill the church –there is no room for visitors or friends who want to come and share the work and we are limited to which activities we can offer because our equipment is spread all over the city.

We really are desperate to have the storage space and access to a large room under one roof so that our special people have the opportunity to continue with their music making and confidence  and competence. They find it very difficult to understand why we are not able to be planning to move back to a building which has become home to them and frankly YAMSEN members feel very much the same way. We are a dedicated team who want to be allowed to continue the work which the City of Leeds have recognised time and time again over the years.

MW

The Benefits of a Vibrant, Culturally Rich City

Checking through the minutes of the actual council meeting which presented the West Park Centre Options Appraisal I find that the court, I mean the council, did indeed agree with (or rather say yes to] the Report's recommendation to consider two options: partial demolition or total annihilation. So Corporate Property Management (the very name conjures up the antithesis of West Park has been about!) writes up five notional options then dismisses three of them, without debate. Eh! How does that work?

In the situation we find ourselves in i.e. with a thriving council arts centre specialising in

1. music for children and adults with special/additional needs and including [rather a nice role reversal]main stream learners, and with the toilets, hygiene suites, disabled minibus parking and access

2. housing a music service [office, rehearsal and performance areas and storage], and

3. housing four of Leeds main classical ensembles [orchestras, opera and choruses and storage and parking]

in a building needing a makeover (and especially its shoddy electrics putting right), having endured  a "temporary closure", but where finances may be an issue, there should be three simple options:


1. Destroy everything (in the name of health and safety)
2. Keep some of it (in the name of compromise and money saving)
3. Refurbish the lot (after listening to reason)

Now I have not here even touched upon the 30-odd other regular [part-time and full] users of the centre]. They are well documented earlier on in this blog.

But the beauty of the West Park users is that we don't have to go looking for them, for tenants. They all want permanent  offices and storage space, and regular rehearsal and performance space and free parking.

So either you want the Culture and the Arts or you don't. You want to care for your most vulnerable children  and adults. or you don't. You want to care for your minorities [Travellers, Irish Arts, unions, gamblers, weight-watchers] or you don't. And actually I think that Leeds does.

"All people of Leeds will enjoy the benefits of a vibrant, culturally rich city".

So, what we are saying is, if you care for these things, then you won't close down the very building that have given them life all these years, or make it so small that it cannot function.