The Happening @ Halton - with a few of us immortalised in clay

Part of the Halton pebble mosaic

Last weekend was The Happening @ Halton - a celebration at our soon-to-be local community centre to mark the official opening of its new state-of-the art skate park, Multi Use Games Area (MUGA), children’s play area and other facilities. The weather was fantastic, and a whole range of events, activities and competitions had the Centre buzzing all weekend.

Friday 8th July was the official opening of the facilities by David Morris MP. This included the formal unveiling of a beautiful pebble mosaic, created by local residents, including a few future Forge Bank cohousers, during a workshop with local artist Maggy Howarth back in February.

The mosaic illustrates the history of the River Lune and the people who have used it and occupied its banks over the ages, from Romans to current day. All of us who took part had a great time, and it's fantastic to see the end result in all its glory!

www.lancastercohousing.org.uk

Halton Skate Park Open

The new skatepark at The Centre@Halton is now open, much to the delight of local kids and teenagers. Fergal and his friends think it is awesome. The Halton Community Centre has been very successful in obtaining grants for both a new playground, new skatepark and significant refurbishment of the building itself. The Centre is only a few hundred metres up the road from our site.

At our last General Meeting held at The Centre, there were literally queues forming around the skate park with kids wanting to use their BMX, scooter or skateboards. I am in awe of some of the tricks I saw - not for the faint hearted!

The playground is also progressing well - new equipment appears every time I visit the site. There is nothing of this size or quality in Lancaster, so kids of Halton are very lucky.

Luke.

www.lancastercohousing.org.uk

Cohousers at Halton Mosaic workshop

It is a while since 13th February when some of us took a break from a weekend of cohousing general meeting. That morning we went to Halton Community Centre to take part in a workshop led by Maggie Howarth, making clay figures of local people past and present, to be placed in a mosaic at the Centre.

Some of us made ourselves or other cohousers, such as a wheelbarrow load of the 2 youngest members, Martha and Polly, while I made Colonel Benirski (right), who, after the second World War, founded the engineering works on what is now our site.

We expected to enjoy chatting to each other but were completely engrossed in the making, and were companionably silent for most of the morning.

I hope that we can spend more time together like this, a foretaste of how it may be when we live together, rather than the current endless round of meetings...

Kate

www.lancastercohousing.org.uk