We had a brilliant time at our Markeaton Park community event. The aim was to show people what Reppin Endz Derby was all about and celebrate the work done by the young people. Thank you to Derby City Council for the Pitch and Putt hut, Vita at the drinks kiosk for the refreshments and Nick (park ranger) for showing us round and putting the heating on!

Craig:
“I was delighted to be invited to attend the REPPINENDZ event on Markeaton Park. The idea I was told was to meet up with local young people, who would be using creative media to celebrate people’s memories of Derby parks.

Will and Craig.

The event took place in the golf admin’ building and I was struck by how well organised everything was. Underneath photographs of local parks laptop computers were arranged. One contained people’s memories of Derby parks set to music. Another one, photographs of the parks, and a third one with editing and music software that a talented young man called Will was using to acoustically edit and enhance people’s memories.

Following an introduction by Rosa I was interviewed and recorded by her on my memories of Markeaton park. As I am a lifelong Derbian and have recently turned 70 years old, I could go back in time quite a bit. I was then passed on to Will who edited my audio file and set it to a background of some really cool music. It didn’t quite make me sound like the late rap artist Tupac Shakur but it made me feel I was maybe at least on the bottom rung of my hip hop career.

By now people were lining themselves up for interviews with Rosa and then passed on to be immortalised by Will’s technical magic.

Finally it was time to go, which was difficult given how much I was enjoying myself and how interesting it was listening to other people’s memories. Finishing off my  coffee and crisps I reluctantly left this fine project and set of people and legged it across the grass to catch my bus back to Derby.”