#creative nottingham

It’s a simple enough mistake to make in Nottingham. You say to a mate with the faux confidence of someone who hasn’t got a clue what they’re talking about, ‘Meet you at the Left Lion’. Something that people have done for generations it seems. So you turn up at what you think is the Left Lion only to find your mate is conspicuous by his absence. You tap your feet, prowl moodily around the stoic…

“We are the Robin Hood of Europe: we will take your credit cards, your DVDs, your bank details and distribute them to our people.” These were the welcoming words of a friendly burocrat of the Obrenovac Town Council in Serbia when I met him for the first time in 2009 as part of a trilateral cultural exchange project. I was startled and immediately searched my jacket for my credit cards, spare DVDs…

I’m at the top of the Nottingham Wheel in a gently swaying gondola. It’s drizzling outside, my Creative Quarter colleagues are happily immersed in a life drawing class and I peer through the gap in the gondola’s windows. A few doors down there’s a clump of puppeteers waving at the passing birds; further ahead a clump of readers studiously survey all around them and continue with their reading of…