Rae of Light

Once, when I was about 12 or 13 I bemoaned the fact I had no friends.  Around me, my contemporaries seemed to have scores of them.  I felt understandably left out. My mother sat me down and told me she could count her most valued friends on one hand. I disbelieved her. I was at that age when you begin doubting the wisdom of your parents. As you know from  Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend , I’m thrilled to have 5 gems on my bracelet. But with Thanksgiving round the corner, I'm once again celebrating fabulously forged friendships because a good friend is the most priceless gift of all.   As well as the Koh-i-noor diamonds   making up my sparkilicious friendship bracelet, there are other friends who also give me succour in more ways than they might realise. The first group owed acknowledgement this Friendsgiving are the members of my Writing Group in Telegraph Hill.  Without this lot I’d spend a great deal of time writing far too ma...

11 Months ago Ruskin Readers , along with several other community groups, were ousted from Carnegie Library by Lambeth Council.  The council had made little effort to engage with the groups to ensure they would be safely housed and accommodated elsewhere. It was left to the community group leaders to find new premises and endure the agony of how they would do that with limited funding or none at all. As a Ruskin Readers tutor I found myself in the midst of the anxiety faced by our Lead Tutor (Caroline Knapp).  I was angry and astounded at Lambeth for their lack of thought regarding this matter.  And you know from my Private Protest post in January how I went about dealing with my anger.  But the fact still remained that Ruskin Readers was effectively homeless. At The Cambria For a while we had to split the club into two with the Monday night group putting up shop at The Cambria and the Wednesday group parcelled off to Norwood Library.  Our ...

Shortly after Lambeth Council shut Carnegie Library and before I became a trustee with the Carnegie Library Association , I felt such utter helplessness in the face of a government body and its relentless disregard for what local residents actually want and need.  Yes, I’d supported The Occupation.  Yes, I’d gone on the marches.  Yes, I’d inundated my Twitter feed with anything and everything to do with loving my library.  But I didn’t feel it was enough. As a tutor with Ruskin Readers I was in the midst of the plight faced by community groups ousted from Carnegie Library.  While I tried to assist our lead tutor Caroline Knapp as she emailed and made Facebook appeals for us to secure a suitable venue, I quietly seethed within. I wanted to do SOMETHING . Then I got a notification email from my Google Calendar to renew my library books.   I made a sudden resolution.    I would not return any of the library books I c...

It seems a lifetime ago that we were forced out of our beloved Carnegie Library but it’s only been 2½ months.  We’ve more or less settled into The Cambria but it is not ideal for our club as it is first and foremost a pub.  This was made very evident when a session had to be hastily rehomed in lead tutor Caroline’s house (living room, garden and kitchen) as the pub was having its floors re-sanded.  Our residency at the pub is further threatened by the arrival of Euro 2016.  Then of course, once the football is done and dusted Wimbledon will strawberry and cream its way onto the scene. We always knew The Cambria could only ever be a temporary solution and Caroline has been searching out alternative venues.  The best options have been narrowed down to a wonderful room in The Camberwell Bus garage or St Faith’s on Red Post Hill.  So we conducted our very own version of the IN/OUT campaign and voted for one of the venues. Sophisticated voting...

It’s now been almost a full month for Ruskin Readers without the vital support of the librarians and space which is Carnegie Library.  This is how things now stand. As you know, we’re currently housed in The Cambria for our Monday evening sessions.  One of the problems of a literacy club sharing space with pub punters reared its head recently.  The pub had scheduled a charity quiz night which cut across the timings we’d arranged for Ruskin Readers.  Teaching reading and writing amidst crowd buzz, clinking glasses, loud music, kitchen sounds and an MC was nigh on impossible.  I can’t blame the pub for this cross-over.  It is after all… a pub. One of our main problems continues to be access to our valuable resources.  After a lengthy talk with Jim Dickson last week, Caroline Knapp is still no further along with securing us a better interim venue or the reopening of Carnegie.   Now that we have our student folders and note...

Sean Cameron A longstanding student Ruskin Readers had its first session at The Cambria on Monday.  Without the books for loan in Carnegie library, our laptops, student folders and exercise books - we had to improvise.  And improvise we did.  Many tutors bought workbooks for their students, created resources in their own time and downloaded worksheets.  Lead tutor, Caroline Knapp, brought along a selection of Michael Morpurgo books as well as a pile of free newspapers for the reading section of the evening. The current situation for our homeless literacy group is as follows: Tutors getting their read & tweet on during the tea break Currently our Monday evening group are kindly being rehoused by The Cambria.  They reserved several great tables for us and we were able to avail ourselves of tea, coffee and juice from the bar.  One of our generous tutors paid the bar bill. Our Wednesday afternoon session has now moved...

Support into the early hours The #carnegieoccupation has been ongoing for 7 days now.  And it’s trending in 19 th place on Twitter.  Don’t think Lambeth was expecting that. On Monday evening Ruskin Readers went along to the library at our usual time to see if security would let us in to the building to do the vital adult literacy work we’ve been doing for the last 40 years. Unsurprisingly, we were denied entry.  Our stock of books, laptops and folders are trapped in the library and we cannot gain access to any of them (all locks in the building were changed by Lambeth before the planned closure on 31 st March).  Once we do gain access to all of this we will then have to mull over the problem of where to store 2 cupboard’s worth of necessaries. After joining in the vigil on the steps of the library, interviews by London Live and photo opportunities, students and tutors headed to the Cambria Pub for a pow wow.  We’ve still had very little ...

So, Lambeth Council have gone ahead with their plan to shut Carnegie library so they can turn it into a gym.  But they weren’t counting on members of the community fighting back in a style of protest Mahatma Gandhi would be proud of.  Approximately 30 people, including two babies and several teenagers are occupying the library as of this moment.  They have been doing so since Thursday evening with the support of the community. Several Labour councillors have hit back with very personal and cavalier comments about the occupiers.  The most inappropriate of these being the cat tweets by the councillor Alex Bigham.  You can see his full twitter response on Brixton Buzz . Another complained that the occupiers were quaffing wine during their occupation and had scant feeling for homeless children.  As someone who has personally  housed a homeless person through a project with Centrepoint and donated one of those bottles of wine, ...

  Adult Literacy at Carnegie Library is on the eve of its 41st Birthday in May 2016.  Despite this astounding legacy, Lambeth Council’s decision to close Carnegie Library on 31 st March now threatens this heritage.  Ruskin Readers provides one to one tuition for adults with special learning difficulties using trained volunteers, under the guidance of a Supervising Tutor.  It operates out of Carnegie Library free of charge (nor does the club charge for its services).  Carnegie’s friendly and supportive atmosphere, its complex of rooms, large and small has been the ideal location for the club’s needs.  Over the years, it has been a venue which has generated considerable affection from tutor and volunteer alike; an affection which has been sustained and nurtured to this day. Founded as Amity Reading Clubs in 1977, the Adult Literacy club became Ruskin Readers in 2006.  While it is independent of its founder members, Ru...