Jobs Fair in Muirhouse

Muirhouse Library and Shopping Centre will host an Employment and Learning Fair between 10.30am and 1.30pm this Thursday (14 May).

The event is aimed at both adult jobseekers and young people looking for advice and support to get into work or learning in North Edinburgh. Organisations attending the event will include employability providers from the local area as well as employers with vacancies to fill.

Community Renewal is one of the organisations involved in the jobs fair, and emplyment adviser Diana said: “Previous events have resulted in jobseekers securing interviews on the spot so jobseekers are advised to come prepared with CVs and dressed to impress!”

Woman assaulted and robbed on B&M steps

Police seek three men following West Granton Road incident

Police are appealing for witnesses following an assault and robbery on West Granton Road around 1pm yesterday (Saturday). A 41-year-old woman was walking down the steps near the B&M store (the former Gala Bingo) when she was assaulted and robbed by three men who stole a two-figure sum.

The victim sustained minor facial injuries, but did not require medical treatment.

The first suspect is described as a white man, aged 28-30, with shaved fair hair, and a Polish accent. He was wearing a white t-shirt, grey joggers and white footwear.

The second suspect is also a white man, aged 28-30, with a Polish accent. He had short dark hair and was wearing a dark-coloured jumper.

The third is a white man, also aged 28-30, with dark hair.

The three men were last seen heading towards Granton Road.

Detective Constable Mark Seymour said: “This was a shocking attack in broad daylight and we’re confident that there will have been people in the area at the time who can help us to identify these men.

“Anyone who can help with our enquiries is urged to come forward and we’d like to reassure the community that there will be additional patrols in the local area over the coming days as part of our enquiries to trace them.”

Anyone with information is asked to contact Police Scotland on 101 or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

A message from Mark Lazarowicz

I would like to thank all those who gave me their support in the general election held on 7 May. I was proud of the way we took our message to every street in every part of Edinburgh North & Leith, and although we were unsuccessful, I am sure that the efforts of our team were one of the reasons why I received more votes in 2015 than in the 2010 election.

I have been extremely privileged to have been able to serve the people of Edinburgh North & Leith as their representative in Parliament since 2001, and I thank them for giving me that opportunity.

I congratulate the successful candidate Deidre Brock on her victory. Like all MPs, she can be contacted at the House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA, switchboard 0207 219 3000.

My constituency office will now close down, and as I am no longer an MP I will not be able to deal with any constituency work. However, Malcolm Chisholm MSP continues to have his constituency office at 5 Croall Place, Leith Walk and can be contacted for any Scottish Parliament matters in the Edinburgh Northern & Leith constituency.

Cutting edge: demonstration is Out of this World!

Hair and beauty professionals blast off with sci-fi special at Edinburgh College!

Hair, beauty and make-up experts beamed into Edinburgh College to demonstrate their stellar make-over talents as they transformed a model into a science fiction star!

The Out of this World event gave hair and beauty lecturers from colleges across Scotland the chance to learn about the latest techniques from the cutting edge of special effects make-up, using a sci-fi theme to showcase them.

Representatives from Habia (Hair and Beauty Industry Authority) led the professional development session, hosted at the college in partnership with VTCT (Vocational Training Charitable Trust), the awarding organisation for the college’s further education hair and beauty qualifications.Out of this World was presented by Jennifer Lenard and Mark Izzard from the Habia Skills Team, who showed the colleges’ lecturers a range of skills using bald caps, prosthetics and a frame for hair to create an alien look on their model.

Frances Bain, curriculum manager for hair, beauty and complementary therapies at Edinburgh College, said: “It was incredible to see the creativity on show at this event. The techniques demonstrated by the experts from Habia were from the leading edge of the industry, and gave teaching staff from the college and across Scotland a prized insight into how to use these skills and pass them onto students. This event was part of the college’s continuing relationship with VTCT, our sole awarding organisation for our further education courses.”

Applications are open now for a range of hair, beauty and complementary therapy courses and make-up artistry courses starting in August at Edinburgh College. To find out more about these courses, and 900 other courses at the college, visit www.edinburghcollege.ac.uk/courses

Appointments are available for a range of hair treatments and spa therapies at Edinburgh College’s training academy salons at Sighthill, Milton Road and Granton campuses. The academies offer the latest treatments using Elemis, Dermalogica and Wella products, with accessible prices which reflect the different levels of study and expertise of the students who work under the expert guidance of industry professionals.

Visit http://www.edinburghcollege.ac.uk/salons for more details.

For more information about VTCT visit www.vtct.org.uk

Electrifying talent on show in Let’s Glow festival

Let’s Glow festival shines a light on Edinburgh College’s creative talent

Edinburgh College’s dazzling creative students are about to light up the city with a two-month celebration of their luminous talents.

The Let’s Glow festival gives Edinburgh the chance to enjoy performances and exhibitions from college students covering everything from music, theatre and dance to photography, film, art, animation, textiles and design. The programme of events will showcase the skills and talents of the students, demonstrating the work they have undertaken at Edinburgh College over the last year.

Let’s Glow runs from 4 May to 22 June, with events taking place at venues across the city – including the college’s campuses, Summerhall, The King’s Theatre, The Traverse Theatre, The Edinburgh Filmhouse and The Queen’s Hall. Photography students are also taking their work to exhibit at Brick Lane in London.

The festival will feature students from all the college’s creative industries study programmes: Art and Design; Broadcast Media and Photography; Computing; Music and Sound Production; and Performing Arts.

The programme includes large-scale end-of-year shows by music, arts, photography, film and animation students; the PASS Cross Currents dance event choreographed by college staff and performed by students; an exhibition of make-up artistry; a graphic design exhibition; performances of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and contemporary Scottish play My Romantic History; the PASS Out showcase for final-year Acting and Performance students; a musical theatre revue; and the premier of an original musical about Scotland’s most revered and most controversial instrument – the bagpipes!

The festival launched last night with sneak peek performances at the city’s La Belle Angele.

Jon Buglass, head of the Centre for Creative Industries at Edinburgh College, said: “Following the success of the first Let’s Glow festival last year, we’re delighted to showcase the incredible talents of our current crop of students. The events at this year’s festival allow us to celebrate and share the remarkable work our students have been producing over the last year. We are constantly blown away by the quality of their work and the time, effort and dedication they put into its production.

“The diversity in the programme means there really is something for everyone on offer. So if you want to be inspired by the talents of our students, get along to one of our Let’s Glow events.”

The full programme of events – some of which are free – and details of where to buy tickets can be found at www.edinburghcollege.ac.uk/letsglow.

Keep up to date with Let’s Glow events on Facebook and Twitter.

#letsglow15

Local learners on a high!

Local young people short-listed for learners award

Late last year I spent time with a bright and enthusiastic group of young adults at Royston Wardieburn Community Centre to plan a piece of work. Their mission? To choose a subject of relevance to young people, research and then write an article on that subject for North Edinburgh News.

The group has now produced their article (see below) – and all their hard work is to be recognised too!

Community Learning & Development tutor Karen Riddell, who supported the group during the project, explained: “They really were a vibrant group of young people with strong opinions and it was great to see them engage with the topic and undertake the various activities related to building their skills and putting the article together.

“The group was nominated for an Edinburgh Adult Learners Achievement Award and I’m delighted to say that they have been short-listed for an award in the Young Adults Category.”

The Tomorrow’s People team will learn their fate at an event at the City Chambers on 20 May. Fingers crossed for you, guys – and here’s your article …

LEGAL HIGHS: Is It Worth It?

Local young people speak out against ‘legal highs’

We are a group of young people from Pilton who have just spent 16 weeks on the Tomorrow’s People employability programme. Part of our course helped us brush up on our literacy and critical thinking skills through a weekly CLD Practical Journalism course held at Royston Wardieburn Community Centre.

Dave Pickering, the editor at the North Edinburgh News, very kindly gave us the opportunity to write an article for his paper, so after much debate we decided to research and write about Legal Highs.

We compiled a local survey and found out that most of the young people who responded to the survey had either used Legal Highs or knew someone who had. The main reasons cited were: they were easy to get, friends were trying them, they’re cheap – at least half the price of illegal drugs, they give you a really good high, taking them gives you something to do, boredom and peer pressure.

Even although a high percentage of young people surveyed had used them without any serious long term consequences, we did find out that at least 68 people died last year as a direct result of using them, so they are not quite as harmless as some people think.

We found that their name made them quite misleading and people thought it meant they were pretty safe to use. The truth is that drugs councilors now advise their clients to stick to their heroin as legal highs are even more dangerous, burning the skin as it is injected and causing blistering and serious infection.

Most people who completed the questionnaire had also tried illegal drugs and strongly felt that these were safer than Legal highs. As a group, we definitely agreed with that.

We also feel that the government are failing to make drug taking safer. No matter what you might feel about drugs, a lot of people from literally all walks of life use them and are going to continue to do so. David Cameron dodges the issue for fear of losing votes and insists that ‘What is in place is working’ despite the fact that over 2500 people died from drugs-related causes last year in the UK.

Is it not time to follow Portugal and make drugs a health issue rather than a criminal one so that people are offered more protection? In Portugal they found that de-criminalising it didn’t bring about any increase in the level of drug use by people and also that millions was saved on the essentially ineffectual enforcement of drug laws.

Across Europe clubs have drug-testing facilities so that people can test substances before they take them – surely that must offer people more protection than kidding on that ‘what is in place is working’!

A recent Home Office report that we looked at said that having tough drugs laws didn’t make any difference to the level of drug use but Home Secretary Teresa May had this part of the report removed and it was only found out about when Norman Baker revealed the findings after he resigned! This just goes to show that governments make useless drug laws to kid on they are in control of the problem when they’re really just doing it as a vote catcher.

Present policy bears no relation to the reality of people’s recreational drug use and it’s time for the government to introduce some new policies to protect its citizens and not put their own vote-catching first.

We need much better drug education to help us keep ourselves safe, and the obvious place for this to take place is in schools. We felt strongly that a peer to peer support programme in schools would help young people make informed choices about drug use and help keep them safer.

Our research found that young people felt there needed to be far more opportunities for young people in the work-place and much better affordable or subsidised recreational facilities to offer them the chance to experience other kinds of ‘legal highs’, their own ‘natural highs’ like ski-ing, skating, abseiling, snow-boarding, canoeing, dirt-biking, go-karting etc. Risk-taking is part of brain-development for young people and we need to offer them the opportunity to explore this in a safer environment.

Drugs become a problem when there is little else in the drug users lives. We found out that in an experiment, mice which were separated from other mice kept going back to drink the drug-laced water whereas mice that lived in groups didn’t. The experiment showed that lack of strong emotional bonds in your life can drive you to bond with legal highs or drugs instead.

They say it takes a community to bring up a child so that’s why it’s very important for us to work together to stop the reckless experimentation that can lead to addiction, to value the young people of Pilton and provide them with the support they need to keep their use of drugs and alcohol to an acceptable level and help them realise their potential.

It seems to us that one of the worst thing about legal highs is the hypocrisy of supposedly ‘respectable’ shop-keepers who are prepared to stock them in the full knowledge that people, especially young people, buy them to consume them. We feel a local campaign should be set up to stop these shops from selling them.

Good websites:

(1)Anyone’s Child; Families for Safer Drug Control – www.anyoneschild.org

(2) Release.org

A new future for historic Madelvic House?

Open Day: Saturday 9 May @11am.

Madelvic House, Granton Park Avenue,

Edinburgh, EH5 1HS

OPEN DAY POSTER 9TH MAY

We are a community group in Granton looking for people to attend an open day in Madelvic House.

The building dates back to 1898 as the offices of the Madelvic Motor company; the first custom built car factory in Britain. We are developing ideas for the building to offer the local community somewhere to relax and come together.

The current plan is to develop a creative hub with resident artists on the upper and gallery/event space on the ground as well as a café and craft area where we can offer activities for the community.

Come support us to make this happen! Or if you can’t make the event but would like to know more about what we are trying to do, please contact Wendy Wager, chair of the group at

email: madelviccommunity@gmail.com

Local project’s films to premiere at Filmhouse

Films produced by local young people screening at the Filmhouse this Saturday

Screen Education Edinburgh has announced that five short films -produced by an innovative new North Edinburgh partnership and made entirely by young people – will receive their premieres at the Edinburgh Filmhouse this Saturday (2 May).

The films will be shown with ten other shorts from their wider BFI Film Academy and CashBack for Creativity projects.

The North Edinburgh partnership, a joint initiative involving Screen Education Edinburgh and Total Craigroyston, with funding from CashBack for Creativity, encourages young people to get involved in filmmaking rather than crime. Five of the films to be shown during the special two hour event were made by young people who are at risk of offending or reoffending.

Irvine Welsh, Patron of Screen Education Edinburgh, said: “If you come from a disadvantaged area, the world can often seem to conspire against you, constraining your vision to the streets around you and the urgent here and now of simply getting by. Cinema is a wonderful tool in combating that horrible malaise, opening up windows into different worlds, and helping us to understand our own ones better through the broadening of our horizons. The skills you learn through being part of a committed team, working on a task that can create a little bit of magic are transferable to other areas of our life.”

The partnership works with groups of 11-19 year olds from the city’s Pilton and Muirhouse area – currently ranked the worst for crime in the whole south east of Scotland – teaching young people film making skills in the evenings. The initiative was set up to improve the lives of families living around Craigroyston Community High School and is a co-ordinated effort to encourage and stimulate young people’s interest in film when they might otherwise be out on the streets.

The short films were all written, directed, filmed and acted in by the youngsters. These films explore issues through drama and music videos including motorcycle theft, the feeling of being alienated, first love and peer pressure.

Graham Fitzpatrick, Creative Manager at Screen Education Edinburgh, said: “The Pilton and Muirhouse area experienced serious issues of crime involving youths, and sometimes children, throughout 2014.

“The aim of this scheme is to help young people engage and deal with their offending issues, whilst giving them positive activities throughout the week, particularly late evenings.”

James Riordan, Lead Youth Development Worker with the Alternative to Crime Project added; “Through being involved in diversionary activities and projects such as the film programme with Screen Education Edinburgh, Young People, who have been involved in anti-social/offending behaviour in North Edinburgh, have the opportunity to be part of something positive and to get a taste of new activities and skills they wouldn’t normally have access to.

“Through working with Screen Education Edinburgh the Group have learned to adapt to different scenarios which in turn has led to them increasing their levels of self-esteem, allowing them to develop as confident Young People”.

Screen Education Edinburgh (formerly Pilton Video) was founded in 2010 to help young people develop and express themselves through film making. Edinburgh born novelist, playwright, storyteller and screenwriter, Irvine Welsh became patron of Screen Education Edinburgh in March last year.

Screen Education Edinburgh is currently running three separate local projects. One, based at FACE North (Focussing on Alternative’s to Crime Edinburgh North) and POP (Preventative Opportunities Programme), is making film drama with groups of 14 to 19 year old males, whilst another focuses on music video production with 10-12 years olds in four local primary schools.

The third supports children and youth workers based out of the Muirhouse Millennium Centre, providing film skills training to the workers, helping them to support large groups of young people in their first forays into film production.

This partnership was funded through the CashBack for Creativity scheme, part of a wider £45 million Scottish Government initiative which reinvests the proceeds recovered from criminals for the benefit of young people.

Saturday’s event at the Filmhouse will showcase the films to parents, friends, the community, councillors and guests.

The screening will also incorporate films from all Screen Education Edinburgh’s CashBack for Creativity projects, including; Score Scotland, Panmure School, MYPAS Dalkeith, Bridges Project Musselburgh, Edinburgh Young Carers and from the advanced BFI Film Academy South East of Scotland initiative.

Mums know best – two awards for A-Star Sports!

A-Star Sports doubles up in MITK Awards

Over the last two months, local network Mums in the Know has been hosting its awards across the UK. After receiving over 3,000 nominations and 15,000 votes, the network of readers has decided on its favourite local activities for children – and A-Star Sports has won two awards: Best After School Activity Class and Best Class for 2 – 4 Year Olds.

Local organisation TRIM won the MITK Local Star category and Dads Rock was also commended.

The awards have highlighted the talents of Brian Droudge, owner of two A-Star Sports franchises, through a number of parents’ nominations showcased via the Mums in the Know website, which included being a finalist in a third category – MITK Local Star.

Brian said: “It’s so rewarding to have our coaching highlighted in such a positive way and means a great deal that people have taken the time to vote and given such amazing feedback, too. All of us in the Edinburgh team are passionate about what we do and we take a lot of pride in making physical activity and sport as fun, accessible and enjoyable as it can be.”

Having left school at 16, Brian spent the next 15 years working for large life assurance companies. He also played semi-professional football from the age of 18, as well as managed and coached at various clubs. He has now been coaching physical activity and sports to primary aged children for over ten years and has a great pride in seeing their skills and love of sports grow and develop. He explains: “For me, influencing children’s development on a weekly basis gives me a great buzz, job satisfaction and a very positive feeling about the work I do.”

Brian runs A-Star Sports in Edinburgh South & East, Midlothian and East Lothian as well as Edinburgh North, West and surrounding areas, and employs assistant coaches as part of his multi-sports specialist team.

Following the recent merger of A-Star Sports with leading children’s physical activity provider Sports Xtra, Brian and his team will shortly be introducing an additional range of local activities and ‘Xperiences’ for primary aged children.

Award-winning businesses receive a free article in the winners’ section of the MITK website, social media mentions, window stickers, logo and additional advertising offers.

Over 3000 nominations were received and 15,000 votes cast in this year’s Mums in the Know North Edinburgh Awards. The winners were:

Best Soft Play: Clambers at Royal Commonwealth Pool, Edinburgh
with a special mention to Tumbles, Edinburgh Leisure and Tiki Tots who were also nominated.

Best Class for 0 -2 Year Olds: Monkey Music, Comely Bank Murrayfield and Corstorphine
And a special mention to Music with Jackie and Tinies with Daisy Foundation Edinburgh East who were also nominated.

Best Class for 2 – 4 Year Olds: A-Star Sports Edinburgh North, West and Surrounding Areas
And a special mention to Shuffle Dance Edinburgh and Sparkle Arts who were also nominated.

Best After School Activity Class: A-Star Sports Edinburgh North, West and Surrounding Areas
And a special mention to best Step It Up Dance and Zoo Arts Extra who were also nominated.

Best Place to Eat for Families: Pizza Express Stockbridge
And a special mention to Tony Macaroni, Omni Centre and Vittoria Group who were also nominated.

MITK Local Star: Tenants and Residents in Muirhouse (TRIM) ‘this group really go the extra mile to help the residents and local community’.
And a special mention to Brian Droudge, A-Star Sports Edinburgh North, West and Surrounding Areas and to Dads Rock who were also nominated.

Congratulations to you all!

An inconvenience truth

North Edinburgh to loo-se public lavatories?

Toilets at Granton Square and Canonmills are among a dozen public conveniences earmarked for possible closure by the city council. Local residents are being encouraged to take part in a survey to have their say about the closures.

The Council decided in 2011 to reduce the funding of public conveniences in order to make budget savings of £300,000. It’s believed that around ten public toilets must close in order to achieve these savings.

A list of twelve facilities has been identified for closure, based on criteria such as usage, accessibility and condition:

· London Road

· Tollcross

· St John’s Road

· Canaan Lane

· Middle Meadow Walk

· Joppa

· Hawes Pier, South Queensferry

· Granton Square

· Ardmillan

· Currie

· Canonmills

· Juniper Green

Members of the public are being asked for their feedback on how these potential closures would impact on them individually and their communities – this will help the Council to make the final decision about which public conveniences to close.

Residents can now take part in the online survey which will run until Monday 25 May.

There are currently more than 60 publicly accessible toilets across the city and a community toilets scheme is currently under consideration to further improve provision.