Homeless Diamonds at St Mungo's

After a busy and very productive 4 month period I am delighted to be able to update you all on what has been happening with Homeless Diamonds since my last report.

As mentioned in that report there was a desire for us as a group to start up a Writing group where we could meet together on a regular basis and give us an opportunity to work together and share our experience and ideas with one and other so I am pleased to confirm that we have successfully started that group and we now meet together on a fortnightly basis and in my own opinion it is proving to be benificial to us all as it gives us an opportunity to explore ideas within a group setting.

I had also mentioned that we were planning a public exhibition for this summer and we had it on Friday 14th August as planned in the Omnibus Arts Centre and it proved to be a great success all round as a very large number of people attended and it was a case of standing room only for some.

The Omnibus Arts Centre provided us with a brilliant venue and also we were greatly assisted by other Arts and Music groups who made a great impact with their work which ranged from Music to Fashion design and we were thrilled to have had the opportunity of watching a great short film made by Homeless and Ex-homeless people so a massive thank you must go to them all for their assistance in making the exhibition the great success it was.

The next four months will be business as usual and we will obviously be looking ahead towards our aims and goals for next year which will be our tenth year of publishing the Magazine so a lot of planning will go into celebrating that with an event which will be held in Camden, North London and I will be keeping everyone informed of progress in relation to that.

As always there are lots of things that we would love to do with the Magazine and we strive to expand and look for other ways of expanding on what we do but we can only do so much but I personally believe we are making great progress with the magazine and we aim to make it even better in the coming months and years.

As always I have to end by thanking all our readers and contributors as without them we could not do what we do and it is these people who inspire us and give us the strength to continue to grow and expand in what is a magazine we love to be part of so a Big Thank You to you all.

Having been a Writer and Contributor to Homeless Diamonds for many years I am
constantly impressed by the very high standards of the work of our Writers,
Artists and Photographers, it has always been this way and will I am sure
continue to be the case for many years to come.

All of our contributers have in some way been affected by Homelessness and the isolation that comes with it, and I believe that the magazine in many ways helps us through that painful period and it certainly has helped me express myself in ways that would not be possible otherwise.

The Magazine will continue to grow and get even better
and the progress so far speaks for itself, especially now we have changed the
format to size A4, that was an amazing achievement for us all.

As we approach our 10th Anniversary we are planning to celebrate that by publishing a special edition of the Magazine which will include a complementary Music Disc
containing Poetry in Voice and Poetry in Music, there will also be a very
special anniversary launch when we will be holding an Exhibition looking back at
the last 10 years and we hope to invite writers and artists who have been
successful in rebuilding ther lives and we will also be inviting our Sponsers,
Supporters and Friends, more details of this will follow in our next
report.

Homeless Diamonds relies on our readers and supporters so on behalf
of all of us at Homeless Diamonds, thank you for your continuing support.

W. Denis McCormick