A window into LandWorks

“Obviously, I’m here doing my hours that I was given by probation for a car accident that I had back in October last year…

I actually came for a little walk round, just to meet everyone. I was very nervous about coming here. It sounds awful, doesn’t it. You have an image in your head, so I came up here just to meet everyone. It was really nice. Chris showed me around the first time I came up here. It seemed like a very nice place, nowhere near as bad as what I was imagining, obviously. Yeah, everyone seemed really friendly and quite relaxed…

I think my first day, I think I spent the morning with May doing some gardening in the poly-tunnels. A bit of work with Mon, just a little bit of like weeding, sort of pruning things, etc, in the poly-tunnel. I had a little tour with Daniela, do a bit of like paperwork and that, etc, I was just starting … obviously lunch with everyone. I think I spent the afternoon with Graham in the workshop. So, a bit of everything really.

I was tired at the end of the day, meeting a lot of new people. But yeah, I felt a lot more comfortable about coming back the next time. I think ‘relief’ is probably the right word. I’d built it up to be something it wasn’t in my head and coming here put me at ease.

I’ve pretty much just done one thing while I’ve been here, which is work with Mon doing the veg because obviously somebody heard I worked in a garden centre, so it’s just been gardening for me the entire time I’m here. So yeah, I think the entire I’ve been either harvesting veg or bagging things up for the shop, little bits of weeding, tidying up various beds out in the field. So, a bit of everything, but just gardening really. I’ve quite enjoyed it actually. It’s quite nice. It’s easy enough to get on with. It’s quite therapeutic, gardening. Something quite nice about … although it’s quite repetitive, it keeps your hands busy, and you can sort of process other things. I’ve done quite a lot of processing through like obviously what happened over the last year, the car accident, etc. So, nice to be physically quite busy but not too much thinking, if that makes sense, so you can process other things.

I think just having that chance to think through things without getting too emotional because I’m still busy with something else. There’s still a bit of a distraction at the same time.

Before I had my first day, I came here with the intention of get it done, move on and forget about it, but I wouldn’t say I feel the same now. I think it’s actually been quite an enjoyable experience. Actually, today being potentially my last day, depending on what happens with the hours, I feel a bit strange about not coming back next Monday. It’s sort of just become part of my life, even though it’s only been nine or 10 weeks. I’ll have to pop back.

A highlight is probably the socialising, it has been quite interesting coz probably people I wouldn’t normally have interacted with. I think a lot of people can say that they wouldn’t normally interact with the people who are serving community hours and that, but definitely changed my outlook. I went to a grammar school and it’s quite sheltered isn’t it, there’s not much going on, so to speak, but it’s been interesting hearing peoples’ stories of how they got here and like how they feel about it now. I think part of it is it’s not necessarily the people you expect to be here who are. Like I would never expected myself to end up somewhere like this, but I think there’s quite a few people in a similar situation who wouldn’t have expected to end up here. They aren’t your stereotypical like people who have been involved in the Criminal Justice System.

I guess you think of like people who are quite selfish and help themselves, not necessarily thinking of others. I think generally just not very good morals is what you associate with crime, but that’s definitely not the case, not at all.

I’ve been surprised by the people I’ve met. I think that’s the main thing being here. Like it actually happens to good people and unfortunately things don’t always go the way we’d like, but you can definitely turn that around and move past it.

I think I built it up to be quite like a scary ordeal of coming and doing community service hours, when actually it’s really relaxed. You spend quite a lot of the day having cups of coffee and discussing things with each other. It’s actually been a brilliant experience, nothing like I was imagining. I think like my anxiety sort of took over a bit. I was worried everyone’s gonna be really strict and like it was more punishment rather than anything else. For me it was something that came out of the court case, which felt like it should be a punishment. Perhaps that was my own thoughts, that I should be punished for what I’d done, maybe, but yeah, I definitely thought it would be more of a punishment rather than the experience I’ve had, which is actually lovely. It definitely stems from me thinking that I deserve punishing for what’s happened … not the case. I think that’s me projecting my own thoughts onto what I expected of this place.

Everyone was really friendly, very relaxed, not at all about punishment and everyone was very positive. It builds people up and it supports them. Yeah, just generally supports them.

LandWorks, I think it’s very practical. It gets people doing something which I think is often a positive thing. I can’t articulate what I mean. It just feels like you’re getting stuck in and being productive and that’s quite a positive thing.

I definitely think keeping yourself busy does give you a chance to think and process other things. It’s something that’s particularly helped me. It’s also good just to learn some new skills, like there’s other areas that you perhaps might not have done before. I think a lot of people haven’t done much woodwork and stuff. Gardening as well, it’s just a bit different. It’s nice to learn some new skills.”