Last Saturday (April 25
th, 2009) Katie and I returned to
Lozells and East
Handsworth to carry out the first of our Give Me Your Hand Tours. We took with us a photographer, a load of our postcards and our suggestion box. Th suggestion box was adorned with posters generated through the various workshops we have been doing over the last few months, and are a way of disseminating back to the community all that we have discovered. We found that people were really interested in reading the quotes and asking about the images, as we went around.
The suggestion box was constructed from a big trolley, and houses a scanner, printer and laptop. The idea being to trawl the streets meeting people to talk to them about the area, and how they feel about it, and asking them to scan their hands in order to add to our hand collection.
We arrived at
Lozells Methodist Church, as we had decided that this would be a good place to start the tour - being familiar to us.
We were a bit nervous, as we were not sure how people would react to the spectacle. The first group of people we came to were a group of boys outside the petrol station trying to blow up their football with the tyre pump. We said hallo and told them what we were doing, and the boys were all keen to fill in the postcards and scan in their hands. They said they wanted better places to play and a skate park. We gave them the print outs of their hands and moved on...
I went into
Asif's takeaway, but the man working inside didn't live in the area, so we tried next door in the barber's shop.
The man running
Shak's barbers was really friendly. I asked him what he thought of the area, living here and running a business here. He said it has always been a good place to live and work. He said he opened the Barber's shop about 5 years ago and it was a good business, but that recently with the credit crunch things have been hard. He thought there should be more support. He asked us to take his photograph, and I promised to send him a copy.
We posed outside the salvation army building which is boarded up these days.
We made our way to St. George's Park where there was a lot going on.
People playing in the children's area, and a group of teenage boys playing a game of cricket. We met this young man who was on his way to another park.
He was really friendly and filled in one of the postcards and posted it into the suggestion box.
He said he was on his way to the other park, and said we should go there on our tour later. We met two very friendly ladies, only one of them could speak English, so the other lady, who may have been her granddaughter explained what we were doing. They scanned their hands in together, but the older lady moved before it had finished.
That was
ok though.
We carried on around the park and met a young man with a very cute tiny girl. She was having a lot of fun. The young man filled in one of our postcards and posted it into the suggestion box. We asked him to scan his hand in, but he said 'No way, that's police stuff innit?' but offered to scan in his little friends hand instead.
This was the smallest hand we have collected so far.
While in the park three police cars drove past at speed. This had an effect of causing a great commotion in the park, with people scattering in different directions, and what had been a very positive atmosphere suddenly changed, and we found we were suddenly eyed with suspicion. It may have just been our perception, but strangely it seemed that the presence of the police in the vicinity, rather than creating a feeling of well-being, somehow did the opposite. This was a strange occurrence, and not something that we really understood. We moved off from the park to continue our tour of the streets.
We went up Wills St. a little way.
We contemplated where to go.
We had thought we would try to avoid
Lozells Road, as we thought the trolley might get in the way a bit, but in the end we decided to go for it. We met a Rastafarian man on the street, and he asked 'So what's this then' indicating the trolley. I explained what we doing and asked if he had any suggestions or hopes or dreams fro the area or himself.
He said, 'the same as anyone really - I need about £50,000 right now.' We carried on down
Lozells Road, but it was quite hard to manoeuvre the trolley along the path at times, as there were a lot of cars parked on the pavement.
Dumping is a real problem in the area.
We ended up back on Wills St. where we met some men who lived on the street.
We asked them if they had any suggestions, and they said 'we don't, but this young man is the clever one' gesturing to a young man inside the house. He came out to talk to us. He was a very friendly and articulate young man, and told us about the good and bad things about living in the area. He said 'A good thing about living here is that there are a lot of really good people, but a bad thing is that there are also a lot of bad people too.'
He said that there were problems with drugs and crime in the area. He said that only the week before someone had come along and keyed all of the cars on the street. He said that people work very hard to raise the money to buy their cars, and that it is really awful for something like this to happen. The older men agreed, and we discussed if they thought there was anything that could be done. 'Yes,' they said. 'We could really do with some security around here, perhaps some CCTV.' We were going to scan in his hands but the computer crashed at this point, so we
photographed them instead.
This site at the end of Carpenter road always has a big pile of rubbish there, and this day was no exception. We made our way back around to the church where we had started. As we were going along the road a group of lads called out from where they were hanging out, 'Give us an ice cream.' I shouted back that we didn't have any ice cream, and they said what have you got then. I called out that we were photographing hands, they laughed and put their thumbs up. As we went round the corner they ran over, shouting 'Take a picture of my pants' they had misheard. We explained that we weren't
photographing pants, but hands. They were very interested in the box, and the laptop inside, with one of them saying 'We are going to rob your laptop.' The oldest one told the other one off, saying 'No, that is not EVEN funny!' Perhaps being aware of the very negative way that young people in the area are often portrayed by outsiders. He was really polite and friendly, keen to show himself and his young pals in a good light. They were our last group of hands for the day.
We enjoyed the tour, and were really pleased with the openness of the people we spoke to during the day. It did feel like an area where people are used to being asked to take part in things of this nature, and many of the people we met seemed quite savvy, in terms of what our motives might be, and how they may wish to be portrayed by us. We look forward to our next tour on 16
th May.
The suggestion box was constructed from a big trolley, and houses a scanner, printer and laptop. The idea being to trawl the streets meeting people to talk to them about the area, and how they feel about it, and asking them to scan their hands in order to add to our hand collection.
We arrived at Lozells Methodist Church, as we had decided that this would be a good place to start the tour - being familiar to us.
We were a bit nervous, as we were not sure how people would react to the spectacle. The first group of people we came to were a group of boys outside the petrol station trying to blow up their football with the tyre pump. We said hallo and told them what we were doing, and the boys were all keen to fill in the postcards and scan in their hands. They said they wanted better places to play and a skate park. We gave them the print outs of their hands and moved on... 
I went into Asif's takeaway, but the man working inside didn't live in the area, so we tried next door in the barber's shop.
The man running Shak's barbers was really friendly. I asked him what he thought of the area, living here and running a business here. He said it has always been a good place to live and work. He said he opened the Barber's shop about 5 years ago and it was a good business, but that recently with the credit crunch things have been hard. He thought there should be more support. He asked us to take his photograph, and I promised to send him a copy.
We posed outside the salvation army building which is boarded up these days.
We made our way to St. George's Park where there was a lot going on.
People playing in the children's area, and a group of teenage boys playing a game of cricket. We met this young man who was on his way to another park.
He was really friendly and filled in one of the postcards and posted it into the suggestion box.
He said he was on his way to the other park, and said we should go there on our tour later. We met two very friendly ladies, only one of them could speak English, so the other lady, who may have been her granddaughter explained what we were doing. They scanned their hands in together, but the older lady moved before it had finished.
That was ok though.
We carried on around the park and met a young man with a very cute tiny girl. She was having a lot of fun. The young man filled in one of our postcards and posted it into the suggestion box. We asked him to scan his hand in, but he said 'No way, that's police stuff innit?' but offered to scan in his little friends hand instead. 
This was the smallest hand we have collected so far.
While in the park three police cars drove past at speed. This had an effect of causing a great commotion in the park, with people scattering in different directions, and what had been a very positive atmosphere suddenly changed, and we found we were suddenly eyed with suspicion. It may have just been our perception, but strangely it seemed that the presence of the police in the vicinity, rather than creating a feeling of well-being, somehow did the opposite. This was a strange occurrence, and not something that we really understood. We moved off from the park to continue our tour of the streets.
We went up Wills St. a little way.
We contemplated where to go.
We had thought we would try to avoid Lozells Road, as we thought the trolley might get in the way a bit, but in the end we decided to go for it. We met a Rastafarian man on the street, and he asked 'So what's this then' indicating the trolley. I explained what we doing and asked if he had any suggestions or hopes or dreams fro the area or himself.
He said, 'the same as anyone really - I need about £50,000 right now.' We carried on down Lozells Road, but it was quite hard to manoeuvre the trolley along the path at times, as there were a lot of cars parked on the pavement.
Dumping is a real problem in the area.
We ended up back on Wills St. where we met some men who lived on the street.
We asked them if they had any suggestions, and they said 'we don't, but this young man is the clever one' gesturing to a young man inside the house. He came out to talk to us. He was a very friendly and articulate young man, and told us about the good and bad things about living in the area. He said 'A good thing about living here is that there are a lot of really good people, but a bad thing is that there are also a lot of bad people too.' 
He said that there were problems with drugs and crime in the area. He said that only the week before someone had come along and keyed all of the cars on the street. He said that people work very hard to raise the money to buy their cars, and that it is really awful for something like this to happen. The older men agreed, and we discussed if they thought there was anything that could be done. 'Yes,' they said. 'We could really do with some security around here, perhaps some CCTV.' We were going to scan in his hands but the computer crashed at this point, so we photographed them instead.
This site at the end of Carpenter road always has a big pile of rubbish there, and this day was no exception. We made our way back around to the church where we had started. As we were going along the road a group of lads called out from where they were hanging out, 'Give us an ice cream.' I shouted back that we didn't have any ice cream, and they said what have you got then. I called out that we were photographing hands, they laughed and put their thumbs up. As we went round the corner they ran over, shouting 'Take a picture of my pants' they had misheard. We explained that we weren't photographing pants, but hands. They were very interested in the box, and the laptop inside, with one of them saying 'We are going to rob your laptop.' The oldest one told the other one off, saying 'No, that is not EVEN funny!' Perhaps being aware of the very negative way that young people in the area are often portrayed by outsiders. He was really polite and friendly, keen to show himself and his young pals in a good light. They were our last group of hands for the day.
We enjoyed the tour, and were really pleased with the openness of the people we spoke to during the day. It did feel like an area where people are used to being asked to take part in things of this nature, and many of the people we met seemed quite savvy, in terms of what our motives might be, and how they may wish to be portrayed by us. We look forward to our next tour on 16th May.
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