What does the word community mean to you?

At the start of the workshops we did some writing exercises around the concept of community. We were asked to write 50 words about what the word community meant to us. We then shortened this to 25 words and finally to 140 characters. Today was our last workshop and we looked over these texts again. We think that these thoughts are still relevant and encompass many elements of what a community can be so we decided to share them with you.  

Our Craigmillar Word Map

This is our Craigmillar word map. The map comes from a booklet called 'Craigmillar Trail. Art, Culture and Heritage in the footsteps of time' by Helen Crummy. The booklet gives information on a trail you can go on to see interesting places in Craigmillar. We visited some of the places on the trail and came up words and phrases we thought best described them.

All around us

Today we walked around our community. We were asked to walk in silence and think about what we saw. It was a bit boring at first because it was wet and everything looked miserable. But it got better. We said afterwards that because we weren’t talking we were able to notice more things that we hadn’t noticed before. When we got back we did some writing and discussed what we had seen and heard. We were asked to think about all our senses and come up with five sentences to describe our walk.

The sentences we came up with are:

Rain makes the tarmac smell.

All around is nothingness. 

Craigmillar makes me fed up and I can’t wait to get out.

Some of the shop fronts are shabby but there are actually nice trees around.

I like the old man who walks his dog in the park everyday.

What is interesting about Craigmillar?

Today we walked around the local Community of Craigmillar. We wandered around the main street and by the local schools and community centres. It was rainy and cold even though it is meant to be Summer!
We tried to decide what it is we think about our community and what we like and dislike.


We also tried to get inspiration as to what our community would like to read about and what type of audience from our community would like to read our blog. Does the community want to know about local news or does it want to know about our interests and what we do in the community?


We decided that if we're not interested in something then our community wouldn't be either. This will be the starting point for our future blog posts.....

Vox Pop: Community Thoughts

Mrs Baird has lived in this community for 46 years. We asked her a few questions about how the community has changed and this is what she has to say......

“Everything is gone, nothing is the same, even the schools are different.”

She also doesn’t think that things have changed in a good way, we asked her why she thought this and she said “it’s a terrible impact, there is nowhere to go, no shops, no nothing really anymore.”

She shared with us that she, in her opinion, doesn’t really think there is a community anymore, “you used to know everyone in the community but now it is just really your neighbours you know.”

The Unknown Species

There are over 1,000,000 species of animals that are known and there are millions more that are unknown. The known species are known because they are seen almost every day; people who go on rural walks see them. People go out looking for these species because they want to know how big the animal species is. The majority of these animals are invertebrates (species such as bugs) and micro organisms (species seen under a microscope).

The reason millions of species are unknown is because people want to keep them hidden from people, such as poachers, who would hurt them for money. There are millions of species which people have successfully kept hidden throughout the past years.

However some people and places have not been able to keep some of their native creatures hidden and they are now either extinct or on the verge or being extinct because people from other countries have been poaching or hunting them for money. This is why there are still so many species unknown and hidden. Even people who live with animals and study them wouldn’t be able to find them or know that there are animals nearby because they are so well hidden from outsiders.

Mass Effect

When I played Mass Effect 3 there were multiple decisions to make but the hardest were: to save a race of aliens from a genetic plague; let the aliens die to get a bigger army for the end mission; whether to destroy the bad guys control over them; or sacrifice myself in order to bring peace during the war.

For the first one I chose to save the aliens from dying out but it cost me a lot of resources from the allies that could have made the progress move a lot quicker.  I thought “why should I let them die out, they could help a lot more than the others because they were physically strong and could help as ground forces in the final fight.”

The second decision I chose to make was to sacrifice myself so the people could live a better life than if I controlled them or if I destroyed them.  By sacrificing myself I made sure that it would never happen again and the people would never fight again.  I thought it was unfair that my character had to die but it would help in the long run so I sacrificed my character.  I made things a whole lot better for the people.