I thought I'd write from the shop today. The young people's group are in this afternoon and, rather than the madness you might imagine, there's a real sense of calm down here.  I'm sure that will change later, but it is amazing how Dennis and the team have got the group to develop the discipline and concentration they have, whilst still having loads of fun. 
The shop has come on loads.  We were sat here last year, huddled round (probably technically illegal) calor gas stoves, freezing, but still making work.  It never stopped the young people from coming in either. But now we are warm and toasty (in fact it's too warm in the little office at the back from which I am writing).  Not only that, but, due to Sandra and myself spending much of last year desk-jockeying, funding has come with a big bump, allowing us to upgrade the shop at a perfect time, in the run up to Test Bed.
I walked in today and one of the parents dropping their child off turned out to be someone I had worked with over 15 years ago (when I was still only a part-time artist).  This kind of thing seems to happen around me and the shop, I previously met someone I'd known as a young child, dropping their child off.  This either demonstrates something mystical about fate or serendipity, or something else, that I believe makes Friction and the shop so unique.
This is the fact that the people we tend to work with regularly are drawn from the communities we engage with.  This allows us to have a closer relationship with the people we work with and consequently an empathic approach to understanding their needs, issues and the way they operate in the world.  We have not consciously set out to recruit people from a BME ( or BAME or MABCEE or whatever the PC jargon is in vogue this week), or to take artists who have not gone through the traditional Art School degree system, this is just something that has happened naturally.