tenantspin made a triumphant return to the annual TPAS conference in sunny Birmingham.  TPAS stands for the Tenant Participation Advisory Service, and we’ve been attending for years.  Depsite the lack of a disco this year , the event seemed to be a success which coach loads of social housing tenants arriving from all over the country.

We presented a breakout session titled GET SWITCHED ON TO TENANT TV alongside our colleagues from LMH .  The session was about how tenants and housing associations are increasingly using Digital Media and the Internet as a means of communication and service improvement.  Being the social media evangalists that we are we guided our breakout session through a history of the Internet, and tenantspin itself and talked about some of the ways we use technology in our daily practice.

We met some nice folks, and look forward to attending again.

Alan Kelly is a member of tenantspin, in particular our North Liverpool Digital Stories Group. We recently held a webcast to celebrate the launch of Kevin Casey’s recent publication ‘Closing Time’ which documents the decline of the Liverpool Pub over the last 3 years.

As a response to the book Alan has written the below review from the perspective of a citizen who has seen the decline of the pub over his life.

“A picture speaks a thousand words. The saying could not be more appropriate to explain the subject matter of this book. The photography is a stunning reminder of days long gone.

Read on…

tenantspin got together with Kevin Casey last week to help with the launch of his new book Closing Time. The book, which chronicles 3 years in the demise of the public house in Liverpool (2007-2010) tells a harrowing and poignant story about the speed at which this is happening and the absolute volume of pubs effected by the rot/demolition/bad planning.

We got on the coach with kevin to talk about the book and share the thoughts of the room about the effect of the closures all suitably well-oiled by the free booze on offer from all of the amazing micro-breweries of Liverpool.

The webcast can be watched here.

The book can be purchased from the shop at FACT and Waterstones for a small fee you can have a piece of Liverpool Public House History!

More pictures after the jump!

Read on…

We have been webcasting for the past couple of weeks as part of the gallery show currently taking place at FACT until May 31st – Climate for Change.

This gallery show could be confused with yet another attempt to meet the question of our changing climate (if you believe that this is actually what is happening…thats another story) but, in actual fact it isn’t all to do with climate change. Of course, this has been a pretty important aspect of the show the very title lets the cat out of the bag a bit. However, this was also a show about action, re-action, debate, discussion, event, workshop, happening – to coin a few generic terms.

On our part, tenantspin wanted to reinvent our weekly forum for debate tried out in tate Liverpool end of last year, beginning of this year. We took the ‘change’ topic and talked through protest (should we? Shouldn’t we? Does it do anything?) bread (slow, fast, fat, thin) web 2.0 (what does it mean to be an armchair protester? Does the internet promote cause or promote slouchy debate) the last cultural commentators (does culture have legs after 08 – what is it anyway?) local environmental debate, community money, oil and finishing 26th May 12.30 – 1.30 with a look at Jean Grant and the Pool project’s ‘The Settlement’ before join artist Nina Edge for a game to change.

We have been on the couch with Mandy ‘Queen’ of Culture, Trine Hughes, Simon Snowdon, Erik Buchard, local artists, performers, Stan ‘the harp’ Ambrose, Kenny, David, Jon, Tracey, Jennifer, John, Dolly, Sid ‘The Greek’ Jay, Steve, Sandi, Gaby, Anna, St Francis of Assisi, John O’Shea, amongst many others.

To watch our programmes back you can visit the home page of the tenantspin website and have a look in the ‘on demand’ section of our mogulus channel. Or via www.mogulus.com/tenantspin.

A big thank-you to everyone who helped us to debate the issues and subjects of change in our Tuesday sessions.

tenantspin ON TOUR is an exhibition and collaboration space created for “The Fifth Floor Ideas Taking Space” at Tate Liverpool. The Fifth Floor refers to a floor that does not physically exist within Tate Liverpool’s four-storey building, but invites the visitor to reconsider the Gallery as a place of imagination and invention.

For The Fifth Floor, tenantspin has set up a fully-equipped interactive TV studio to capture stories, and opinions, and where live discussions, readings and performances will be recorded and streamed online throughout the exhibition. Tate asked one thousand people across the city what kind of exhibition they would like to experience, and in response to what they suggested; leading international artists will be there creating major works. tenantspin has been invited to take part and our major new work is ‘tenantspin ON TOUR’ bringing community TV to the Tate.

The Tate is housed in Liverpool’s Albert Dock; which was also the original home of daytime TV show This Morning. For many years Richard and Judy broadcast from the beautiful Albert Dock; and now it’s our turn

Until 1st February we’ll be working at Tate Liverpool and broadcasting live from there every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. More info on the project is over at http://www.tenantspinontour.com

tenantspin’s first community film night (25th November) went down really well with all invited.

Our idea for this film evening came from feedback we received from other screenings of this ilk including Love Lane Lives (Leon Seth/Ron Noon) and Gardens of Stone (Paul Sudbury) which both have a very local focus but looked outward toward national schemes which changed the lives of people living in areas effected by mass demolition and redevelopment of social housing as well as the closure of huge, historical firms like Tate and Lyle who at one time employed 80% of the people living in the Vauxhall area of Liverpool.

This commuity film night featured the work of Ray Walsh local filmmaker and resident and the now famous documentarist Nick Broomfield. The first, Ray’s film Disappearing Communities was an 1989 production which documented the changing face of inner-city Liverpool and the social housing around the Bronlow Hill, London Road, Scotland Road and Byron Street areas. In someways, it provided a classically scouse nostaligic look at the importance of these commnities in the development of a city but with such a rounded outlook it was hard to stick on the side either of the goverment or the people.

The second, Nick Broomfield’s Behind the Rent Strike saw a very young Broomfield exposed to a world of socialism, ideology and strength of the masses that was pretty prevelant in some parts of Liverpool in the 70’s. The film documents a period of 12 months during which a group of residents from the overspill town Kirkby fight back against a rent increase and pay freeze which was part of a controversial government bill eventually scrapped in the early 80’s.

Some of the comments:

‘Hopefully this will be the 1st of many more screenings and understanding’

‘I loved the subject matter (of the film night) and the honest and open way it was portrayed’

‘Keep it coming’

‘Very impressed. More of these’

‘Good format – relaxed atmosphere’

‘Just hope more people can get involved – love the community aspect’

‘good. film lengths were ideal’

‘good split between inner city and subhurbs’

‘this is a fantastic idea – I hope to see a lot more community film nights’