Showing posts with label Birmingham City Council. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Birmingham City Council. Show all posts

Thursday, 13 March 2014

Swan Corner Workshops begin

Freya and Turtles admire their
artwork  at Swan Corner
Yesterday (11th March) we began workshops at Swanshurst School with 30 young volunteers eager to improve our environment - making it safer and bringing people together to discuss parking, traffic and other issues, thanks to funding from Near Neighbours, as part of Hall Green Arts & Kings Heath Centre for Space Exploration project.

Not too surprisingly, young people raised similar concerns to other local residents about what the problems are - here's a summary of the problems they identified:



The group also had a good grasp of some of the problems local residents have already identified.  Here is a summary of what they thought problems residents would have:


Given the problems have been around for a long time what difference can we make?  Well, I suppose that's where a group like Swan Corner Community Group, newly started, could be influential in bringing about the conversations, raising issues with appropriate bodies, and getting out and doing things.

The Swanshurst Group will be making a big impact straight away in bringing about may of the Community Group objectives over the coming months by:

  • Improving the local environment, creating a garden space for people to use
  • Talking to local residents and finding out what's important to them through surveys
  • Creating a dance performance outdoors at Swan corner, for residents and locals
  • Adding wood sculpture to complement the gardening, improve the environment adding value to Swan Corner
There's a lot of other parts to what Swan Corner Community Group will be doing to make a safer, nicer Swan corner for everyone who uses it - our next meeting on 25th March will include Councillors, representatives from the Police and Sustrans, as well as local people and Swanshurst school to discuss parking, traffic and road improvements.

Thursday, 8 August 2013

Street play spreading across Birmingham

Yesterday was National Playday, and in Kings Heath we celebrated with a day of street closures to bring communities together and encourage people to play on the streets.  Goldsmith Road, Woodville Road and Albert Road all closed to cars for the day, and a range of activities were coordinated by the residents of the streets.

It was supported by Hall Green Arts Forum through music activities (provided by Musicshaker Fiona Howe), and also by our pioneering 'Kings Heath Space Explorer' project.  Parks4Play (part of Dens of Equality) provided a range of creative activities, the Library service with street stories and Birmingham City Council were instrumental in providing support to close the roads.

We sent out our young reporters to talk to some of the revellers at Goldsmith Road and Woodville Road:


An estimated 600 people in total took part - mainly residents of the streets themselves - all three streets were visited by Sarah Falkland from Midlands today and was reported live at 1:30 and 3 min clip available on Midlands at 6:30 too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b037xkkk/Midlands_Today_07_08_2013/?t=21m33s

Laura Watts from Parks for Play was also interviewed on WM Radio and ITV central.

Also some great photos of the day:


Street coordinators will meet in September with City Councillors and other partner organisations (like Hall Green Arts Forum) as the newly formed 'Kings Heath and Moseley Playing out group' and will build on success for to discuss which streets and when streets will open again for play in Birmingham.  See below a short film made for playday:


Also see fabulous film:

Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Hall Green District Arts Strategy

'Presenting officers' Ginnie Wollaston and Marcus Belben at Hall Green District Committee meeting, Council House!  Thanks to the wonders of technology the whole 3 hour meeting can be accessed online at Birmingham City Webcasting.  I think the automatic cameras in the middle sensed when a microphone was switched on (you'll notice ours glowing red) and spun round to capture the speaker. Very clever.

But if you want to avoid the hour or so informative debate on wheelie bins, then skip straight to Hall Green District Arts Strategy for ten minutes of me and Ginnie presenting each of our reports - mine was based on our main year report, also available on our site:

Short version

Full version

Great to see how much support we have for work from the Council and all looking good for future of Hall Green Arts forum - Councillor Lisa Trickett formally took responsibility for arts and culture in HG.