Introducing..... Horse and Bamboo
It all started with a funding bid –how boring is that! The East Lancashire Health and Wellbeing board
– which used to be a PCT – had money for work with the armed forces community in Pennine/
Lancashire, Rossendale in particular.
We have a show “Angus, Weaver of Grass” which deals with the story of a weaver and veteran. He
was a very happy child on a croft in the Hebedrian islands who went off to war in the Faroe islands
and was struck by schizophrenia. He was incarcerated for 50 years of his life in an asylum and
received ECT whilst he was there; during that time he learnt to weave amazing things out of grass –
this came from when he was a child and people used grass to make ropes. He took this practical skill
and turned it on its head and made incredible trousers and coats. A lot of the things he made
weren’t found because they were burned.
Returning veterans is a very real issue for Rossendale; it is a place of very high unemployment and
relatively low educational standards and there is a historically high regard for the Accrington Powells
and Lancashire regimental so young men and women choose the armed forces as a career.
This fund came along and as it wasn’t an area we knew anything about I started to research and
went on along learning curve – I discovered that a veteran is someone who has served a minimum of
one day in the armed forces; I found that people talked about the whole community and the impact
the news had on everyone. It made me realise it would have an impact on schools even in the area.
During the research I came across an organisation called Veterans in Communities based in Bacup.
We put in a bid to invite veterans and groups of the armed forces to see the Angus show and have a
discussion afterwards about the real consequences on Rossendale. Our bid was unsuccessful and all
the funding was given to Veterans in Communities so we than talked to them about our idea and
asked them to come along to see the show.
During this process I met a guy called Darren whose experiences are from the Falklands and yet he
related to the issues Angus faced; the problems they are dealing with now are from the wars in Iran
(the first time), the Falklands and Yugoslavia which weren’t dealt with when they returned from the
war.
We plan to make a short film for use by ViC so the veteran doesn’t have to keep re-telling the story
as each time they do that it takes a little bit from them. We plan to use Darren’s voice and some
animation. It is difficult to plan the work because Darren isn’t always well enough to come along and
work with us; a recent anniversary of the Falklands war affected him and meant he wasn’t able to
come along as arranged.
Darren runs an art group through ViC; he is completely self-taught; he really needs to have the
process of art, just as Angus did; the end product isn’t the important thing.
He started with art therapy and now has a website where he can sell his art; it’s been exciting for
him.
A lot of the real learning was about the people left behind, not just those who went off to war. It
was interesting to look at the impact in schools - on a class, or even a whole year group, if one of
their brothers or sisters was killed.
Hopefully the film will be available on youtube after the 19th August when ViC has an event.
We feel this is a starting point for us as we work with families with young children; we feel that all
these families should feel just as welcome here spending time with their children and talk about
what they have done when they get home. They are quite a closed community and give each other
support; they see themselves as different as we also see them as different.
We hope this might lead to future funding for us to do more work in this area; we could use the film
as an advocacy tool.
In say five years time I would like to think families from this community would be feeling welcome in
this place and that it was somewhere they could come and partake as everyone does. We would
hope the word of mouth would work in this community once they start to come here.
It would be interesting to follow this up in 12 months time!