ABCD

Not my homework for the day, but a very interesting concept which I intend to explore further.  Asset Based Community Development is a way of identifying the strengths of a community and then using them to develop the community.  It was just one of the many topics which came up in conversation at tonight's annual "Town and Gown" dinner - a chance to cement further the relationships between the Borough Council and the University.  As always when the borough hosts the dinner Tees Cuisine produced an excellent meal, the silver was beautifully polished and the Town Hall really came into its own.  A photo can't capture the wide ranging conversation of course, but does show off a bit of the silver.
One topic of course was the cuts to spending and the impact on both the borough and the university.  Both were fairly upbeat about meeting the challenge and not letting the cuts ruin everything, difficult though that will be.
There was some discussion of the Tees Valley Music Service, inevitably given the amount of press coverage generated in the last few days.  This is one of those precious services which do so much for so many children and young people that it's hard to imagine life without it.  Unfortunately the government hasn't yet announced whether we'll get any funding towards it and if so how much so the resultant uncertainty is causing real problems.  I'll wirte about it all at some point, but enough to say that it had great support round the dinner table tonight.  If fine words paid the bills the music service wouldn't have any problems at all!