Author: Suzanne Carter

Are you ready to put your hand up too?

Such a great afternoon and evening at Stirchley Community Market today – we gathered 75 hands which include ideas about history and heritage-related activity they would like to see at the Baths as part of a Heritage Lottery funded programme, statements of support for the funding application and some lovely memories.

A few local people below who have contributed their hands already!

Put your hands up if you support the HLF application!

This means, we now have enough hands to stretch thumb to finger around about a third of the Baths as we begin our community art challenge this Saturday. Phew!

If you are one of the lovely people we spoke to above – then thank you! If you haven’t had the chance to contribute a hand, idea, message of support – please pop along to our event at Stirchley Library on Saturday 10.30am-3pm as we try and create a community SHOW OF HANDS around Stirchley Baths – come and help us get enough hands to fill 60m of washing line!!

(I’m sure Stirchley Library staff won’t mind if you drop a hand off before the event if you can’t make it on Saturday!)

Right, best get on with some more laminating!!

Was the Palais Glide a popular dance at Stirchley Baths?

Palais GlideYou may remember last week I blogged about the ideas generating sessions we have been doing with young Stirchley-ites around the history and heritage-related activities that might be possible at the Baths.

One of the ideas they came up with is for an intergenerational dance-themed project where older Stirchley residents could teach them dances of the 1940s, as illustrated in the wonderful pictures we have of Den Jones at Stirchley Baths, and the teenagers pass on these skills to school children – sounds like the making of a great community showcase event somewhere down the line! The members of the Tea Dance at Stirchley Community Centre I spoke with today are certainly up for the challenge!

I was a bit cheeky earlier and asked if I could film a dance that would have probably graced the floorboards of the covered pool back in the 1940s. John was more than happy to volunteer the services of the Tea Dance members who gave us a wonderful demonstration of the Palais Glide. Watch them in action:

(Apologies for another low budget movie)! We had a great afternoon at Stirchley Community Centre, where we were running our second Splash Back in Time reminiscence event.

Coming up in the next week or so you’ll hear a few stories of people dancing at the Baths. Massive thank you to John and the members of the Tea Dance for being such good sports today!

A night out at the Baths!

If you were out and about around the Baths or Stirchley Park on Wednesday between 7 and 8.30 you may have seen (certainly heard?) a group of 18 young people on a youth club evening out to…. Stirchley Baths!

The previous week I met 11 of the young people up at the Den Youth House in Dawberry Road where we talked about possible history and heritage-related activities that they might be interested in getting involved with as part of the restoration project.

On Wednesday, armed with flip cams, they interviewed each other talking about the Baths. Here is some very rough and ready footage – busy roads, lots of excitement – but some useful insight into how these young people view the Baths.
0

The girls were really interested in the black and white pictures of the dancing taken in the 1940s and came up with the idea of organising a night of dancing back at the Baths – for the community!  It was great to see them talking about this on camera; about how they would enjoy talking to the older generation about the kind of dances they would have done there – and even learning some moves, and teaching older people some of their own!

Brian and Rowena from the Friends of Stirchley Park joined us to talk to the young people about possible future graffiti art work in the park which illustrated the history of Stirchley, including the baths. and we asked for a hands up who would like to be involved if the money can be raised? And that would be everyone then!

A massive thank you to youth workers Stuart and Martin for rallying up these brilliant young Stirchley-ites and thanks to everyone for their contributions.

Bid Development News Update

Great news that Emma and Jayne from Place Prospectus have been asked to contribute to this round 2 Heritage Lottery funded development phase.

They are taking as a starting point  the ceremonial key which was featured in their vision document of March 2012, marking the end of Stirchley Prospects. Neil sent us a great image of the key the other day as well.

Jayne says “The key seemed to be an important symbol of business, community and government working together at the turn of the century.Over the next week or so Emma and I will be out and about gathering information so that we can develop our ideas. This will result in a temporary visual artwork and help shape something that can be permanently displayed in the building”.

All sounds very intriguing…

See below Place Prospector’s vision document (Vision_doc_innerfinal (1)) and (Vision_doc_frontfinal (1)), which is a nice visual summary of the work they have been doing with the Stirchley community. It also features the coaster they made from an advertisement for the baths which is featured above.  I hope they have got some left – wouldn’t mind one for myself!

You can see more about their work at www.prospectors.org.uk and stirchleyprospects.wordpress.com.

Welcome to the HLF bid development team!

Date for your diary. Put your hand up! Stirchley Community Art Challenge

Do you want to see Stirchley Baths brought back into community use?

Are you able to pop along to Stirchley Library on Sat 6 April for 20 minutes or so?

Would you like to show your support for the Heritage Lottery Fund bid that is being submitted in June by Selly Oak District (Birmingham City Council)? 

Come on your own or with your whole family, but please pop along and get involved in our community art challenge to show the Heritage Lottery Fund just how much community support there is for the project!

Let’s give the Heritage Lottery Fund a SHOW OF HANDS! 

Are you ready to put YOUR hand up???

Paper, pens, glitter, glue, crayons, tissue paper, pegs, laminator and washing line provided! We just need your hands – and some dry weather would be nice too!