Alison Stenning

Not my bike! I walked🚶🏻‍♀️‍➡️

More North Tyneside youth music, the brass ensemble at North Shields Christmas market in the rain.

Quartier populaire 🏗️ cité moderne HLM 🏙️ des pays de l'est, avec playground vers 1978

#treebybike is back on the tree

I did wonder if there was a secret cut through somewhere! Sounds like it wouldn’t allow you to get straight across though.

Crowd of people at christmas market. In the background against a bright blue sky is a ferris wheel.

North Shields Christmas Market returns this weekend! 🎄 Open Sat 6 Dec 10–5 and Sun 7 Dec 10–4. Explore 70+ stalls, enjoy street food, mulled wine, choirs, funfair rides, and family activities including free crafts, games and a children’s treasure-hunt. Don’t miss it!

I’m guessing this was the height of “secure by design” and defensible space, but it means that a 5-minute crow flies distance doubles, or more, making lots of our everyday, on foot journeys much longer than they need to be.

The house we live in and the one we hope to move to are on opposite sides of this site - formerly a workhouse-turned-hospital and a reservoir. When they were developed as two estates in the 1990s there was no pedestrian permeability designed in, so you can’t get between or across the developments.

Shoppers on Bedford St, looking down towards the river Tyne.

Shoppers on Bedford St, with some of the new benches and beds in the foreground.

Nice to see the renewed Bedford St busy too, lots of shoppers, folk using the new benches and bike racks, a roaring trade in Christmas trees at the top end.

Info about the exhibition - see https://www.rememberingthepast.co.uk/north-shields-voices/

A poster with few thumbnails of portraits.

Some of the photos of the exhibition, of Shields residents in their favourite places.

Popped into North Shields to catch the North Shields Voices exhibition from Remembering the Past (www.rememberingthepast.co.uk/north-shield...). It’s a nice collection of favourite places in Shields, lots focused around the river but also green spaces and gardens.

subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz351bs

And the defunding of space for play, play work, and the youth sector!

Genuine LOL.

We always had it in the house as a child. It never made it to my adult homes, though Marmite is still a staple.

The advert is definitely the best thing about it!

Ha! I did think that might not help. Basically a thick intensely flavoured paste made from beef (who knows how!) that can be used as a spread in sandwiches or on toast, but can also be diluted with hot water for a thin soup/drink. It’s disgusting though so you can just ignore and avoid!

It’s like Marmite (or Vegemite) but beefy, so can just be used as a spread but can also be made with hot water for a (disgusting) drink. Hope that helps!!

The single-parent penalty: why do they get such a poor deal on family tickets? Major attractions often don’t take lone-parent families into account in their pricing structures, making days out more expensive

This used to drive me mad. As a single parent with an only child, we almost never got a discount on entry to events, museums etc and staff generally appeared baffled when I tried to explain that, even if the total was cheaper for us, we were paying significantly more per person than bigger families.

Why the £18 million for playgrounds in the budget is so important – and how it should be spent Play has been pushed to the edges of children’s lives.

Good response to recent playgrounds announcement from @naomilott.bsky.social.

Play is a right not a luxury, playgrounds are good but not enough, safe access to playgrounds is also critical, and the right to play is also about time and permission.

theconversation.com/why-the-18-m...

Indeed, why not!

A teenage girl on a bike with a trumpet in a brown case in the left hand pannier.

A child with a trumpet on a bike! Full rucksack in other pannier.

"I spoke to one 80-year-old woman who has been in our organisation for decades, who said it was one of the greatest experiences of her life, and the only place in her 80 years where she’s been treated as a woman with respect.”

What does this do for women's rights?

It was a very quick pic - just happened to catch a moment!

Spot the abandoned football in the sunset-lit puddle -

Hebben jullie de Stad van de Zon in Heerhugowaard wel eens van boven bekeken?

Is vrij… funky.

It's official: 400 redundancies and a campus closure. At-risk staff will get a letter next week. Absolutely no serious consideration of any of the union's counterproposals.

Please share widely.

Restoring children's freedom to play out: let's seize the moment Society is waking up to children's right and need to play out; councils and orgs around the UK are taking action, come and get inspired !

Tomorrow I'll be talking through the political process we went through on Wirral to get outdoor play on our council Work Programme.

Join the latest @playingout.bsky.social webinar if you can! Lots of other good stuff on the agenda as well 😎😀

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/restoring-...

The sun setting behind some wooden playhouses and a caravan at Shiremoor Adventure Playground

The sun setting behind the MUGA at Shiremoor Adventure Playground

A big red cone in front of the zipwire at Shiremoor Adventure Playground

A yellow hoop, a green crate on wheels and a blue and yellow trike, in the path, waiting to be picked up for more play

Sunset over the Shiremoor Adventure Playground this afternoon, as the children arrived to play, and pick up the toys they left behind yesterday.

Ah, the North Shields-IJmuiden ferry (it's not Newcastle-Amsterdam whatever anyone tells you). Enjoy!

University senior managers: Will negotiate with Reform. Won’t negotiate with their own staff.

Enabling play streets in Leeds’ priority neighbourhoods: questions of social, spatial and environmental justice The Leeds Play Streets Enablement project was established in 2021 to support the development of play streets in the city’s priority neighbourhoods, where poverty intersects with a range of other ch...

Out now in International Journal of Play, our reflections on Leeds City Council's play streets enablement project, explored from the perspectives of social, spatial and environmental justice, and calling for (even more) political, advocacy and policy work at all scales to support play on streets.