Apna arrives

This week the Apna joined us at the Dave Pearson Trust, and today the first proper class was held in the downstairs room - an EFL class - and about 10 women from the South Asian community attended, with a teacher provided by the Lancashire BME organisation and a local woman, Hina, supervising. 

The downstairs room that the Apna has taken over is now suitably comfortable, with better heating and appropriate Islamic artwork (above). Afterwards the teacher was shown around the building by Hina and Arry Nessa, who is managing Apna, and shares a desk in our upstairs office - alongside myself and Ella Cole.   

Although we've made a few sacrifices in order to accommodate the group, it's been relatively straightforward, and the studio still holds thousands of Dave Pearson's paintings and artworks. In fact the effect has been to make us rethink and redesign things, so in may ways the building now provides an even better home for the work. For example, we've replaced the Apna room as a showing space for Dave Pearson's work by improving the upstairs landing gallery (below).

Best of all the building is now far livelier, as naturally it's attracting more visitors. There's now absolutely no danger of it becoming a dead storage facility. We've had to create new security systems and update our facilities, but its been good for the Trust to smarten things up a little, and create a facility that now has a real community function. 

We're convinced that Dave would have approved, and we feel that the decision to invite Apna to join us has been a situation that everyone has gained from.