Heathfield Primary School

On the 23rd February 2009 We went to meet Mo who works as a student mentor at Heathfield Primary School and found out all about the work that he does at the school. He offers the children the chance to take part in all kinds of exciting activities including sailing, martial arts, gardening, building and art work. We were really inspired by Mo and are glad that there are people like him working in schools in the area. What he is doing is going to be really important for the futures of the children he works with and he is so lucky to have the support of the head teacher with his ideas.


The school was filled with all kinds of creative work, at the school reception there is a photographic family tree that fills an entire wall and records all the past students. There are large 3D animals creating a jungle in the corridor and large banners in the hall. It was a real treasure trove of creativity and we are really excited about working with the school.
We have arranged to work with two groups of children at the school, to deliver some art workshops and to ask them about their wishes for their future and for the future of their area.

ABOVE BY KATIE - BELOW BY ANNA
Not all of the hands we are collecting are human:
On our visits to the area we try to spend a bit of time on the Lozells Road. This road is really vibrant and thriving, with lots of independent shops selling local produce, sari fabrics, ghee sweets and mounds of fruit and veg. As we were close to Soho Road we decided to have a wander around there this time to see what was going on. We dropped into the Community Library, which was bright and airy, and really reflected the cultural origins of the people of the area - with whole sections of texts in Bangladeshi, Urdu and many other languages.
We wanted to get some materials for our next workshop and so wandered into a few of the Sari shops. The shops around here are much posher than the ones in Stoke, and didn't seem to sell offcuts - but eventually we found one that did, and got a good selection of colours for a few pounds. The variety of shops on Soho road is great - it feels like you can find anything you want, and a lot of things you didn't know you needed. You can even get your palm read.

Ward Meeting Comments

Whilst we were at the Ward meeting some people made comments about things that they would like to see changing and happening in the area. Here are a few requests that people made to the panel on the 21st January this year.

• "Get the information out to the people, people don't know what is going on with their own area."
• "People need to know what’s going on."
• "We want regular updates on the allotments we would like the allotments to be ready. It's gone on too long with no deadlines."
• "The flats are scary at night. Some have people living in them and some don't"
• "You should be increasing the places at Holt School?"

Workshop with Dorcas Group

Wednesday, 18th February - Workshop with Dorcas group.
I arrived at Lozells Methodist Church at around 11am and met a few members of the Dorcas group in the doorway. I said; 'Are you here for the Dorcas Group?' and the lady at the door said 'Yes' so I said 'So am I' and we went in together.
Inside the hall there were quite a few members of the Aspire and Succeed group who were there with Birmingham Council to show the ladies a map of the area, and discuss the plans.
This was a coincidence, as we were both really there for the same thing, but with very different approaches. Some of the points raised about the area while I was with the group are listed here:

• Litter is the biggest problem. (Concerning the Malthouse Gardens area) kids hang around and drop papers, there are always papers flying around.
• Car parking is a problem, people from all over park here, so when family come to visit there is nowhere to park.
• The council should cut the grass and pick up the rubbish (someone else answered - but as soon as they pick it up, them drop some more)
• A massive demolition of the whole area.
• Get to know your neighbours, you get good and bad people in all parts of the world, doesn't matter race, religion or whatever.
• Getting around is easy - there are plenty of buses.
• I worship here - it's a good area.
• All the broken down houses look bad.
• (Do something about) The rubbish in the road.
• More cleaner and peaceful area - it's very filthy. It would feel safer if it was cleaner - there's always rubbish around.
• It's embarrassing to have visitors.
  

Once the council had gone the ladies and I talked about the area, and what it is like to live there, we thought about hopes and dreams for themselves and where they live. They thought it was an odd idea to ask them about their hopes and dreams for the future, saying, we are old! We have had our lives! What hopes or dreams can we have for the future? Esther said 'any hopes and dreams we have are for the younger generation coming along.'
We had cups of tea, and photographed the ladies' hands; we talked about how things have changed in the area. Nessa said when she came here 50 years ago the belongings she brought with her were in a shoebox and 'When I go back, I'm gonna need a ship.'
We looked through the cupboards at all of the craft materials the group have accumulated and discussed what we might do together next time. We will work with some of the images taken this time and make some tote bags, as some of the ladies said they wanted to try transferring photos to fabrics.

Sign Your Name

Within our Beyond Bricks workshops we will be working with our hands in a number of ways: folding with origami, gesturing with photography, communicating with sign-language, crafting with wire, creating with paint and paper and generally exploring what we can do with our hands.Images in this post are from Workshops carried out by Anna Francis in Stoke-on-Trent with Year 10 students.

Practitioners Update meeting

Today we had a session in Lozells with all the other Beyond Bricks practitioners, Multistory and some representatives from Urban Living. It was a session to report back on how all of the projects are going. It was great to catch up with everyone and see how they are doing, and we took the opportunity to get everyone to scan in their hands...

Follow up from Ward meeting

So, since the ward meeting on the 21st (our table at the meeting above) we have been following up on some of the contacts we made. In particular the Police community support officers in attendance were really friendly, and have been instrumental in forging links in the area. We are hoping that some workshops in local schools will result from our visit.
The workshops that we plan to do will involve a number of elements:
First will be a very hands-on workshop, where we hope to work with a local school to build a suggestion box. The suggestion box will be on a trolley, and of course, it isn't built yet, so we don't know exactly what it will look like; but we imagine it will be something like this:We also hope to link up with other groups to carry out other workshops where we will work with our hands, making wire sculptures, printing with our hands and using scanners and photography to capture our hands; we will be exploring how expressive hands can be; and how we use our hands to communicate. We will look at hand gestures, and sign language.
Within these workshops we will be gathering images of the hands belonging to the communities of Lozells and East Handsworth because Hands show our histories/our lives.
At the same time we will be asking people to tell us about the area, and what their hopes and dreams are for Lozells and East Handsworth and the communities that live there. We will be asking them which parts of the area we should visit to get a good idea about what the place is really like. This will help us to create a route map, which we will use later on out tour...
We will give them this postcard, and ask them to answer the question on the back (below):
They will then post their thoughts into the suggestion box.
Over the weekend of April 25th and 26th we will be going on the big Tour. Using the route map generated during the workshops, we will take our suggestion box onto the streets of Lozells and East Handsworth stopping people on the way to gather their thoughts and hands.

Anyone who may like to get involved, or knows a community group that would like us to come in and do a workshop with them, please do get in touch.