 We have worked with the Middlewood Winners over quite a few years and seen them transform the Winn Gardens estate into a great place to live.
It’s always been home to a great bunch of people but had suffered neglect over the years. Looking back its been a matter of the people doing it for themselves. It’s a white working class area near Hillsborough so it passed my mindthat there may be a good angle on the story. For the past 8 years KMP has supported the Winn Gardens community project putting on events for young people, that’s why we were asked to make a video diary of the day. When we got there the weather was not that good, but we had a good turn out. There were different stalls from companies such as Ski Village, The Wild Life Trust stall and various other stalls. The most surprising thing for me was that former home secretary David Blunkett turned up. Blunkett is a Sheffield born BritishLabour Party politician. The Belly Dancers were full on, dancing to greatmusic. The Gospel Choir seemed to be a bit of a family affair, they sang great, all in celebration of the Lord. The variety of stands and entertainment was wide and reflected the wide partnerships that the winners had developed over the years. The Wildlife Trust had a stand to talk about their project called West End Waters. This project has been running for a couple of months and they basically investigate what kind of plants are growing in the valley, some of them are rare and beautiful. The Japanese Knotweed and the Himalaya blossom are a bit of a menace and are invading the valley so they are trying to raise awareness of this. The Housing guy was particularly proud of the fact that 28 kids from the estate came out and collected well over 35 bags of rubbish from the estate. The most dramatic and noisy things on the field was a woman with a chainsaw carving a huge log into the shape of a totem pole for use by local children. Always on the look out for a good interview with some hard questions we found the deputy Lord Mayor, who was happy to speak to us. His advice was for young people to engage more with the planning process and attend some of the long and often boring meetings. Difficult as that may be I think it’s a good idea, maybe we could liven them up with some good questions. The interview of the day has to have been with David Blunkett. I have seen him on a few occasions, he usually travels with a couple of close security guys. He was happy to talk to us even though he is understandably cautious about the press and he obviously cared about the work that’s being done in the community. | 
