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.....