A couple of weeks ago I had an invite to the RHS Chelsea flower show. My wife was incredibly jealous, but it was just the one ticket. I went after work.

The invite was from Centrepoint, the charity working with young homeless people. We’d helped them put a small garden together in the continuous learning section of the Pavillion. As I have blogged before, for a couple of years, young people that Centrepoint are supporting through a horticulture training course have been staying at Scotney Castle for a week, and helping restore and maintain the gardens.

The Centrepoint garden at Chelsea was inspired by Scotney’s walled garden and it was a little gem. It won a bronze.

But we were trumped! We’ve been quietly proud of our work with Centrepoint, we must have welcomed nearly a hundred young homeless people through our doors since we started, and the garden was a much to celebrate that as it was to celebrate Centrepoint’s own 40th anniversary. We even thought the media might be interested, and they were – locally at least. But then Centrepoint contacted the BBC about coverage during their Chelsea programme. They listened politely and then said “You do know about the Eden Projects garden, don’t you?”

10,000. Ten thousand homeless people and prisoners collaborated with the Eden Project on their Chelsea Garden. Kind of knocks our efforts into a cocked hat.

Now it’s the backdrop instead for some cultural exchange. I love the fact we’re this. Clandon has long celebrated it’s links with New Zealand, but Hinemihi has for too long, fir most of our visitors, been the unusual summerhouse that Lord Onslow bought at the end of the Nineteeth century. Yes, it’s also long been a focus and special place for the UK Pacific Islander community, but that’s happened for the most part without the knowledge of our mainly white, mainly middle-class supporters.

This event though celebrates Hinemihi and Clandon’s links, not just with the past, but also the modern day Islander and Maori community.

PS
As I’ve been writing this the London Mapri club have been signing this beautiful welcome song and Haka, and I wish I had a way of putting sound here. Time to check out Audioboo…

PPS. I did, and here it is

Back at work though, all sorts of things have been happening. Of immediate interest to the web-savvy is the Googlegroup set up by a volunteer at Knole for the other volunteers there. he has put a great deal of thought into building and populating a secure framework for content, which volunteers can access, and a coomunications channel for news. It’s not yet been released to more than a small group fo volunteers who are testing it all, but I am very impressed. I know other properties are thinking of doing something similar, and I think they should use this a model.

On Friday I found myself sitting at head office, working out the terms of reference for a proposed Technology for Engagement Group. It includes a number of people on the succesful Virtual Tours group (we had our phpto taken afterwards for the staff magazine, to celebrate our JODI award). We plan to support properties looking into using new technology for interpretation and it was interesting to hear the ideas that were coming in – Tyntesfield are exploring “mscapes” or mediascapes, and I’d not heard of these before. Other properties were thinking about podcasts and vidcasts and user generated web content.

The group also plans to be a first point of contact for companies and researchers approaching the Trust with innovative ideas, and I was keen that we should be a fixed term group, so we discussed running for two years. And maybe finishing with a technology conference.

Anyhow, today I’m thinking that we haven’t yet thought about how new media might improve access to Saddlescombe without attracting cars.