In addition to compiling and updating MBC’s online Covid-19 Notice Board, sending out regular newsletters and keeping up telephone contact one of the projects that Carole Smith, MBC’s Seniors Worker and coordinator of Lunch Club is currently involved in is promoting a magazine called Shine.
This is published fortnightly in conjunction with Ageing Better, a programme set up by The National Lottery Community Fund which aims to develop creative ways for older people to be actively involved in their local communities.
During a recent conversation with Carole, John Sherbourne (now 71) mentioned that just before lockdown he had bought an old 35mm film camera from a charity shop in Harrogate, loaded it with a roll of black and white film and taken himself off to Headingley and Burley to record in words and pictures just how much the area had changed since he and his family left there when he was 7.
“That,” said Carole is exactly the sort of story Shine magazine is looking for, you need to send it in.” And that’s precisely what John did. 
Entitled It was all so black and white the article appears across 4 pages in Issue 4 and features many of Headingley’s famous old landmarks including: South Parade Baptist Church, the Lounge Cinema, the former Bennett Road laundry and even a shoe shop on North Lane which in order to guarantee a perfect fit zapped X rays through children’s feet.
A copy of the magazine together with an up to the minute newsletter and a large print version of a story John wrote for our website about Lunch Club regular and bike mad nonagenarian Cynthia Chandler is currently being sent out to all MBC’s seniors.
Shine magazine which at this moment in time only has funding until mid July is available free of charge both online or for those who prefer it that way on good old glossy paper. This is a shame as it is proving to be very popular. However, it’s important that while it is is with us we don’t think of it purely as something only produced for seniors. No, on the contrary it actively entourages contributions from them.
So if anyone has any memories they would like to share, and puzzles or poems you can either email them to hello@shinealight.org.uk or you can pop them in the post to Shine Magazine, PO Box 908, Elland, HX1 9WF.
You can find out more about the whole Ageing Better project and download the magazines at https://www.timetoshineleeds.org/
If this article or the pictures below have whetted your appetite for a touch of nostalgia you read John’s story in full by clicking HERE
