017: Good News for Stoke & Staffordshire
Arts-led Regeneration, Staffordshire's Wild Swimming Scene, Reddit/Stoke-on-Trent, My Apology and how we fund proper journalism.
Good News 🎉
“For hope there, look to the arts” Charlotte Higgins, Chief Culture Writer for The Guardian is a Stoke alumni and writes this well-rounded piece on levelling up in Stoke-on-Trent. Refreshingly, she examines the energy around Stoke art and creative projects that are capturing people’s hearts and our collective imagination. Portland Inn Project gets lots of well deserved attention, alongside Claybody Theatre, the creative community at Spode and BCB.
The movement in the arts and creative scene is something for us all to be excited about. Compared to the millions claimed for levelling up that will be spent on buildings and town centre development. The arts-led approach is more ground up than top-down, championed by people and their communities, rather than given to them. This article left me wondering how artists and creatives could be empowered to do the levelling up and what they’d do with more cash?
Staffordshire’s Wild Swimming Scene. This good weather lends itself to a cooling swim. Being about as far as you can get from the beach though, we’re not always graced with the opportunity. There’s been an underground wild swimming scene in Staffordshire for years, convening in hard-to-find Facebook groups, sharing tips about spots to dip in where you won’t get caught. Now, the Wild Swimming scene in Staffordshire is coming together to legitimise a past-time that’s more popular than ever. Fervent wild swimmers have been travelling for miles to submerge themselves. Many take the trip to Alderford Lake or hush-hush spots like Kynpersley or Essex Bridge. If, just to feel the cold water, Three Shires Head isn’t a swim spot, more of a natural plunge pool.
Whitmore Lakes Now though, Whitmore Lakes, Dost Hill Quarry, Pillaton, Chasewater and Carsington Water are all offering, or starting to offer, official sessions. Staffordshire Wild Swimmers can now safely don their wetsuits for a swim without fear of being un-safe or getting caught.
A new comment section. Many readers find the comments online from other Stoke and Staffordshire residents severely clashing with their values. Some online comments seen on Facebook, SOT Live articles or X (Twitter) are abusive and racist. These types of comments have begun to dominate the online Stoke sphere. Even though they may be written by a minority (and in my view not representative of the whole) they stain our perceptions.
A different online forum for Stoke-on-Trent (and often covering wider Staffordshire) is Reddit. The Reddit Stoke-on-Trent sub-forum is a new world of online chatter about Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire. The forum can still be home to unfair, rude or nasty conversation, yet there is less of it and more opposition to it. In general, regional Redditters are helpful, supportive and kind. They help people find clubs, support people looking to make new friends, give tourists tips, provide gym recommendations and share views on best areas to move to.
KNOT HAVING IT ❌
Time to call myself out this week. Last week I wrote an open apology to The Sentinel and SOT Live Journalists. I’ve been doing what I see many people doing and I don’t like it. Blaming others. When starting something new, you shouldn’t take a pop at what’s gone before you and that’s what I’ve been doing. The Sentinel has an incredible history and still provides a valuable service to people today. Thousands of us are sad at what local news is becoming (and we’re not alone), yet blaming one part of the system for our region’s issues doesn’t help and creates more division. I’ll be putting all my energy into building The Knot, I’ll collaborate with the journalists based in this area too, I won’t spend more energy criticising something else. Then, we all win. SOT Live has a huge reach, it’d be better to work alongside them than fight against them. We’ll have more impact that way.
Editor’s Note
Linking this article again, which I came across thanks to Andy Jackson from Daily Focus (and his words around it), really hits home why I’ve become passionate about regional news and media. It’s fundamental to community and society.
The missing piece of the puzzle is money. The truth is, if we want proper journalism. Which to me means; experienced journalists, based in Staffordshire, who spend time in real life, talking to real people, investigating, scrutinising and writing news stories - someone has to pay for that.
I can get people to write blogs and contributions for The Knot for free, because they want to. If I want journalists to properly do their job on behalf of The Knot, we need to pay them.
That means I either get businesses to sponsor that effort paying to reach our readers, or we pay a contribution for journalism ourselves. 100 people who pay £10 a month would support journalists writing 1-2 proper additional news stories a week. This is where I need your help, support and comment. I’d like to know what you think about the right business model for The Knot to support our journalism, please comment or email me directly. This is the next level.
Cheers,
James
p.s the best way you can support The Knot is by sharing it with anyone you know, on social media or in any group or community that you are part of.
FRIENDS OF THE KNOT 👋🏼
Thank you to support from our friends.
I think having a core of people who fund the journalism initially is vital to get the momentum going, but I wonder also if making supporting The Knot through Substack an option would also be worth doing?