Being Beestonian

Members and guests attending the February Talk event
at RBL Beeston heard from long-term friend, and former Committee member, Matt Turpin (AKA Lord Beestonia).

Professional journalist, Matt Turpin is also founder and editor-in-chief of local magazine The Beestonian.
Matt played a key role in Nottingham’s UNESCO City of Literature organisation. As course leader at
Nottingham College, he disseminates his diverse journalistic skills to the next generation of
scribes.

He shared his personal and journalistic journey which took him from nearby Stapleford, to London, Kent,
Spain and eventually ‘back’ here in Beeston.
As a resident of Beeston Rylands, Matt examined the role of journalists to ‘find, listen and report’ news and information
– most especially at local level. He expounding the virtues of hyper localism – how people can affect change at local level
via readily available information.
His illustrated talk demonstrated how the twelve-year progress of The Beestonian has led to the
high-quality publication we so highly value today.

“The integral role of local print media is essential to enrichment of the
local community – community is a necessity for a Good Life”

Matt Turpin

U3A

The SPOTLIGHT presentation for the evening’s event featured Alison Wilson and Kathy Shipway from Beeston U3A. They extolled the befits of ‘lifelong learning’ – run by members for members.

With over 1000 members they truly are another of Beeston’s success stories – with an extensive array of interest groups and topics to embrace their tag-line: ‘Learn. Laugh. Live.’

Thanking the Society for the opportunity to share they do; Alison and Kathy commented “The attentive, interested audience, made us feel very welcome”

Mervyn J Brown
Beeston February 2024