Category: The NOP Werkshop

Facing the Silent Killer: Behind the Scenes of a Football Resurrection

You might be familiar with the series of Tennis Player confessionals we’ve been publishing for a few years now.  They started as a one-off after one ‘Andy Murray’ won Wimbledon in 2013 and, fast forwarding 12 years later, will be completed this autumn when he attempts finally, to win the US Open as the swan song in his career. I never intended the original Confessions of a Tennis Player to turn into a mini-series, but that’s what it did: and I’m now faced with a similar challenge with another in the series, Confessions of an Ageing Football Player (note, not Footballer: the reason for this title will become clearer in the fullness of time.)

To be truthful (a dubious concept given our brand strap line (The Truth, the Whole Truth and Anything but the Truth), the motivation for this sequel has not been due to a narrative cliff hanger at the end of the first book; it’s not as if I intended to create a load of loose ends which needed tidying up before abandoning the whole project, although there is some Truth in that. Another Truth is that the book ended in our hero winning the World Cup on a solitary high back in 2014 so there was not much further I could have taken it.  “The only way is down” as D-Ream might not have sung then, but might have done so more recently given last year’s re-election of the Labour Party in the UK. 

No, the motive for the resurrection of this story was more sobering: the steadfast refusal of my blood pressure to drop out of its usual hypertensive habit into a region the doctor calls normal. I have to say I find the whole notion of normal blood pressure or normal BMI or normal anything when it comes to our bodies really problematic.  The figures we’re bombarded with every day warning us of our imminent death and decay are invariably population statistics from which we are told we are either normal, not normal or just plain weird. The medical fraternity have a huge battery of ways now of telling how un-normal we all are and how problematic our lack of normalcy is. 

In my case, my lack of normalcy means I have a silent killer lurking around my being; something that could strike at any time, without any warning or any immediate or obvious cause. A kind of biological stealth bomber which, due to its invisibility, is undetectable and there’s nothing you can do to stop it in its tracks as you can’t see where it’s coming from.  I have to say, when doctors talk about silent killers, it tends to stop me in my tracks. It’s one of those narrative gambits which stop the conversation stone dead as there’s nothing you can say in return to someone who’s told you that you have a silent killer somewhere about your person.  You can’t ask ‘where?’ Because it’s silent; you can’t say ‘prove it’ because it’s invisible and you can’t say ‘I’d like a second opinion’ because once a silent presence has established itself inside your head, there’s no shutting it up. It becomes very noisy, this so called silent killer and no number of other opinions are going to quell its whispering and ghostly presence.  The only thing you can say is “OK doc, you win, give me the pills.” and as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ve taken the first step towards a life time of constant pill taking.   I’ve also been recommended to join a local football project, ManvFat which is intended to help me lose weight, get fitter and presumably reduce the chances of the silent killer making itself heard. But it’s too late for that: its presence is established and there’s not much I can do now to de-establish it.

Other than to use the opportunity to write a sequel of course. Life is nothing if it’s not a lot of research opportunities to write your next book, so with that in mind last night I tentatively pulled on my new knee length football socks, slipped in a couple of shin guards and tied up my new football boots laces ready to face a new group of potential pals and adversaries in the form of the ManVFat football community of North Hykeham. My blood pressure was normal (for me), my hopes higher than normal (for me) and the astroturf pitches beckoned. What could possibly go wrong?

Confessions of an Ageing Football Player

Confessions of an Ageing Football Player

73 – nil! Those were the days: moments of glory on the school playing field on a foggy Wednesday afternoon when the final whistle went and your school mates would gather around you, beaming their small faces at you from every conceivable direction as they congratulated you fulsomely on the 23 hat tricks you have just completed in your team’s undeniable slaughter of the opposition…

The pages of this book will transport you back to those cherished early moments of your footballing endeavours. It offers a thrilling journey through the 2014 Brazil World Cup, a time when the possibilities for players of all skill levels felt boundless. At its heart, this is a 78-year-old man’s tale of determination and achievement in the sport he holds dear: Subbuteo Table Football.

Come and listen to all the action on our podcasts here!

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A Day in the Life of The Creative: All Things to All People

Continuing the serialisation of Mess Theory, here’s the next episode of A Day in the Life of The Creative.

All Things to All People

One benefit of working as the Creative in a hugely huge multinational corporate conglomerate Firm is the variety of tasks one is presented with on an hourly basis. The pleasures of multiple portfolio development opportunities make for an endlessly fascinating life although sometimes this brings its own set of unforeseen consequences. For instance, just this morning I was presented with a task that had seen off several management teams combined intellectual capabilities. The task was to turn our vast and disparate work force into a perfectly formed highly motivated staff team in order to impact on productivity and economic performance. The current management cohort had exercised its collective brain power for many years over this vexatious task and had all but given up until some bright spark suggested bringing their irreconcilable differences to the attention of the resident Creative aka yours truly aka myself.

I set about the task with my usual vim and vigour but had hardly opened the manual (Managing Effective Team Building in order to impact on Productivity and Economic Performance Vol. 9) before the next task had landed in my email: provide a challenging range of services for users of the company’s crèche in order to increase their social cohesion and improve their chances of upward social mobility in later life. No sooner had I opened the manual (Increasing Social Cohesion and Improving Upward Social Mobility vol. 56) than the next task was dropped on my desk: tackle the antisocial behaviour of lunchtime layabouts in the company’s car park. Needless to say, I had no time at all to consult the manual (Tackling Antisocial Behaviour of Lunchtime Layabouts in the Company Carpark Vol. 213) than yes, love, you guessed it: three other tasks pinged through the ether and presented themselves for immediate creative solutions from myself aka yours truly aka The Creative.

I am of course honoured to think that someone upstairs thinks that the company’s woes can be addressed through my services and simultaneously grateful for the opportunities to extend my career in such a diverse manner. What did we do in the olden days? I mused as I set about solving the sickness record of persistently sick employees. Not solve such intractable problems? Employ the services of what or who? Use magic? Whatever we did, that was then, and this, love, is now and I don’t have time to reflect on the whys and wherefores of how the Firm did or didn’t address its creaking infrastructure as I’m far too busy sticking Elastoplasts on short term issues, reading the manuals about the medium term ones and writing the manuals to address the longer term intractable ones.

All I know is that I’m busy busy busy, earning a good whack, have all the benefits of freelance employment status and none of the disadvantages of being micromanaged by an outdated management team who don’t know where to begin when it comes to building the perfectly formed highly motivated staff team in order to impact on productivity and economic performance. Life is nothing short of perfection and nothing on earth can ruin it.

To be continued…

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Mess Theory

Mess Theory

Mess Theory has been inspired by my belief that creativity is dependent entirely on mess.  We need scrap, junk or any old rubbish to exert our creative muscles and this book is no exception.

Mess Theory plays with the challenges of getting and securing gainful employment in the creative industries whilst providing an alternative insight into what that work can entail. ‘Creativity’ is one of …

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What is Art? Reflections from Anissa Ladjemi

After graduation from LIPA, Anissa Ladjemi took a trip to Norway via the EU which turned into four years of Arts work in Europe and South America which changed her life and where her creativity was embraced wholeheartedly. She came back to find little Community Arts work in the UK so diversified into local government and charity work. She now advocates and works for people with life limiting health conditions which she enjoys. She says “LIPA opened so many doors for me and allowed me to see a world beyond the UK and its restrictions. I loved the opportunity it gave me. It sent me on an unexpected path of self discovery and fun. Sadly we will never look as good as we did the year we graduated from LIPA.” Here she writes about how her time at LIPA transformed her understanding of what art is.

What is Art?

In 2001 at LIPA I attended a discussion group called What is Art? A  community music student, Tom used me as an example of the human body being a work of Art and made me stand up while he spoke. We take it for granted everyday but we would be nowhere without it, everybody is unique and your body is unique. You have scars all over you from medical procedures and you’re still here. Your scars are your very own tattoos. They tell the story of your body and all it has endured and survived.  Your imperfections give you grace and strength. As time goes on you will look back and wish you looked like you did today imperfectly young and beautiful. 

The joy of a body that works is the greatest gift so enjoy it and never take it for granted! It really stayed with me as nobody had taken the time to appreciate my imperfections including myself. At first I was embarrassed but Tom wherever you may be, thank you for always saying something positive and true to me even when I wasn’t ready to accept the compliments. These days I always acknowledge a compliment and you taught me that. 

 I attended an Art exhibition with Roger Hill in 2004. It was about an artist whose husband had died of cystic fibrosis. To deal with her grief, she had decided to pay homage to him via an art exhibition which included a big inflatable penis and the artist bowing to the penis with lots of images of bondage and S and M. I had previously had a conversation with Roger regarding my frustration about the fact that society labels those with disabilities and health conditions as non sexual beings and incapable of being desired or loved: so people assume they must be with people like them and can’t be desired by able bodied people.

By seeing this exhibition, as much as it was uncomfortable and intense at times, (each to their own but S and M is not my thing) it made me realise that not everybody feels this way, that those from minority groups and those with disabilities are desired by many people but mainly those who are open minded enough and willing to not see it as a barrier. 

I was grateful Roger had invited me in the first place as many students refused to attend. Was it his way of saying it doesn’t matter what others think and don’t let society’s expectations stop you from being free? When asked about the exhibition and the discussion on art, Roger said “It captures the quality of the education we were offering so well – feelings and intuitions and discoveries“. I feel society has tried to put me in a box my entire life but we all have the power to step out of the box and be true to ourselves.

The exhibition stayed with me because it was the first time I had seen a person with a health condition talk about sex openly and who dispelled the myth that disabled people are sexless and unlovable. 

Trawling the LIPA Metaverse: Community Music, my LIPA, and Questions of Research and Scholarship by Lee Higgins

Lee Higgins is a professor at York St John University, UK and the Director of the International Centre of Community Music. As a presenter, guest speaker, and workshop leader he has worked on four continents in university, school, and NGO settings and was the President of International Society of Music Education from 2016 to 2018. He was the senior editor for the International Journal of Community Music(2007-2021), author of Community Music: In Theory and in Practice (2012, OUP), and Thinking Community Music (2024, OUP), co-author of Engagement in Community Music (2017, Routledge), Free to be Musical (2010, R&L Education) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Community Music (2018) and Ethno Music Gatherings (2024, Intellect).

Lee was an employee of LIPA for 12-years and led the Community Arts department from 2001-2008, before leaving the institution to take up an academic appointment in the USA. Here he reflects on his time at LIPA: what the significant moments were and he pinpoints events that disrupted his practice and thinking. He asks all of us, irrespective of whether we were at LIPA: in what ways did your education shape your thinking? Are there questions you have carried since you completed that journey? If so, what are they and how are you considering them today? 

Community Music, my LIPA, and Questions of Research and Scholarship by Lee Higgins

I was driving my bright yellow, ex-British Telecom Ford transit van on the A47. As usual, the vehicle was filled with samba drums and assorted instruments as I made my way from one to another of the regular workshops I had initiated since being a music animateur employed by Peterborough Arts Council. A news item came on the radio. It was a feature that sought to highlight a new performing arts institution in Liverpool. David Price was the spokesperson; I recognized his Sunderland accent immediately. I knew Dave through my association with Sound Sense, the UK professional association for community music. The place, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, LIPA for short, sounded intriguing, particularly because Dave was the Head of Learning, and his background was in community-based work. As I drove between workshops, I reflected on the LIPA news item and was curious to find out more. As it happens, I had been considering my next move because I wasn’t sure what else I could achieve in my current position. I kept an eye and ear out for any openings at LIPA, any job opportunities. Within the year, a few arts posts were advertised. I applied and was hired in 1997 alongside Roger Hill. Our main task was to ‘deliver’ the European Social Funded (ESF) community arts programme to a large section of the City. I recall Roger and I trooping all over Liverpool providing a plethora of drama and music workshops –at least within the areas with the ‘right’ postcodes. Liverpool was a new place for me, but not so for Roger, and it was during our many Taxi rides that I began to get to know and understand Liverpool. As the student cohorts increased, my teaching role at LIPA expanded. I became a ‘main grade lecturer’ reflecting my shift from LIPAs community ‘outreach’ to its academic teaching and learning staff.

What to read the full article? You can download that here:

Community Music, my LIPA and Questions of Research and Scholarship Higgins 2025Download

The Gangster Girls and The Pathways Out

Before LIPA had become the august colossus it now is, complete with a footprint which straddles the Mount, Hope and Duke Street triangle, the brains and brawn behind the operation occupied several portacabins, parked precariously on the building site from which the LIPA we know and love slowly metamorphosed. 

 In those days, there was much concern about how LIPA would engage with its local communities and several myths grew up alongside the newly unfolding building, many of which were to do with access to the organisation’s courses and activities.  It was an “elite school for foreign students” ran one meme; a “FAME school” ran another and not far behind in that meme race was the notion that it didn’t give a proverbial fuck about its local communities across the wider city region. One of the first things the brains and brawn did in the early days to counteract these memes was to set up the Community Liaison Team. This pan-organisation body soon became known by its acronym, CLT: but this was soon dropped when it became apparent that it had a rather unfortunate pronunciation (if you were squeamish about that sort of thing).

These memes all ran their course over time, and truth finally outed as it tends to do.   Before too long though, LIPA had recruited a healthy percentage of local students’; it contributed significantly to the local economy and cultural ecosystem; and its work in the wider communities across the region was recognised and appreciated, although perhaps not as visibly or audibly as some of us would have liked.

One way we did that was by running several years of ‘Pathways’ projects in local schools and communities in which local artists would be engaged in schools, often working with the most disengaged young people, in order to bring some inspiration and opportunities to their lives.  One of those projects was run by the musician, Caroline Murphy, who we engaged to work with young people in Brookfields Comprehensive in Kirkby.  Caroline worked in the school over several years and over time developed life lasting relationships with the young people she tutored.  But it wasn’t all plain sailing:

“Before my first music session, the teacher said there are music instruments in the room . It was a box of percussion! The kids had already opened it and started banging the hell out of it. I said OK let’s start now, but they kept on. I thought what can I do? So I got a book and pulled a chair out and started reading it. Eventually after quite a while someone said, ” What you doing Hippy?”  so I said I was reading my book. I’m getting paid to teach you music, but at the moment I’m getting paid to read my book . They started asking me questions like “do you live in a caravan?” and in the end, I ended up having a great time with those kids. They had all never played an instrument before  but after working with them, they played at the St George’s Hall.  One of the girls, Marie was so nervous she ran out the hall barefoot and down the steps before their slot. I had to go after her and persuade her to come back.”

Whilst the work was initiated under the Pathways scheme, it was so successful that the school also kept her on after it finished for a couple of years in order to help address the behavioural challenges the school faced. In many ways, this work was a precursor to the work of Creative Partnerships in the region in the years to come, although we didn’t know it then.  But it was yet another testament to the power of arts and culture for young people; and this tape that Caroline saved from those years back, tells you a little of their lives, challenges and ambitions.