Tag: HLF

‘Sink Or Swim’ at Stirchley Baths

Sink Or Swim (9) (1280x857)

Stirchley Baths’ final-stage bid for Lottery funding will be submitted on 17th June 2013. It’s a pivotal moment in the history of the project and of the building itself.

This moment was marked with a fantastic participatory arts event at the Baths on Saturday called ‘Sink Or Swim’, organised by Place Prospectors.

Local people came along to weigh in their support for the project (literally!) and transformed the word ‘Sink’ in balloons into ‘Swim’. Dozens and dozens of balloons were weighed down with a ‘thumbs up’ ceramic weight. Visitors to the event chose a balloon…

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and had their ceramic hand weighed in.

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A record of the weight was made in a special ledger, which they signed, and their balloon was added to the ‘Swim’ board.

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Slowly, over the event, the word ‘Sink’ became ‘Swim’ – genius! – before all of the balloons were popped at the end!

Sink Or Swim

The wonderful Stirchley Shakers cheerleaders added a celebratory feeling to the day…

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and well over 200 people visited the event, many sitting on the old bowling green behind Stirchley Baths to have some food.

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At the end of the event, the water area even became an impromptu paddling pool!

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It was a really wonderful day! Huge thanks to Place Prospectors for creating such a fantastic way for local people to show their support for the Heritage Lottery Fund bid, and especially to everyone who came along on the day.

The HLF bid will be submitted on 17th June, with a decision expected in September…

To see lots more photos from the day click below

Peter Morgan of the Heritage Lottery Fund explains the process for getting the bid in.

Stirchley baths meeting re heritage lottery fund
Half the meeting

Yesterday there was a “stage” meeting about the final and full bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund (to be submitted in June 2013).  A good few people there who’ve been involved in some area of work creating or supporting the bid.  As much as anything it was a chance for the Heritage Lottery Team and the bid team to catch up on progress.  The picture is of one half of the meeting.

Afterwards I spent a few minutes with Peter Morgan from the West Midlands team of the Heritage Lottery Fund.  He explained how these meetings help – what will happen next and what happens to the bid after the June deadline for submitting.

listen to ‘Peter Morgan from the heritage lottery fund on the process for bidding ’ on Audioboo
  • The “stage” meeting help clarify that the bid writing and community engagement process is on track.  It helps everyone focus on creating the best quality bid.
  • Once submitted in June the bid will be assigned an officer who will read is and write a report
  • The report will be checked for quality within the system then submitted to the ctte for decision
  • The ctte read the report and are given a presentation by the officer.  They then decide based on this information and other bids in that month.  Ctte members are volunteers.

    • Thoughts from the show of hands for Stirchley Baths

    Hands Up

    Here are three lovely interviews with some of the people who came out to support the community arts project at Stirchley Baths recently.

    Almost 300 hands were displayed around the Baths, each with a personal message of support for the project or an idea of how the heritage of the building can be shared with local people. You can see more on the event HERE.

    All of the hands will be displayed in Stirchley Library soon, by the way, so you can have a look at the kind of things people were saying.

    Thanks to Matthew Green for these interviews…

    listen to ‘What Katie wants from #StirchleyBaths’ on Audioboo

    listen to ‘Local businesswoman Val tells what the redevelopment of #StirchleyBaths will mean for her’ on Audioboo

    listen to ‘Hear what local resident @philbanting wants from the redeveloped #StirchleyBaths’ on Audioboo

    Planning permission for Stirchley Baths project: report in the Birmingham Mail

    The Birmingham Mail has reported on planning permission being granted for the Stirchley Baths community hub.

    Birmingham City Council’s planning committee unanimously approved the plans on 21st March. You can read reporter Paul Suart’s article HERE.

    The article mentions that the project now depends on funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Our Stage 2 bid will be submitted in June, with a decision from the HLF in September. A ‘yes’ will see building work getting under way in November, with the new community hub planned to open in November 2014.

    Community Stakeholder Meeting Notes – part 1

    Where:  Stirchley Community Centre.

    When: 6.30pm – Feb 13th 2013.

    Part one was general update before part two – an exercise for the activity plan.   These are rough notes from the first part of the meeting:

    The group introduced themselves – some key facts reported by Karen Cheney

    Planning application for the bath’s development will go to the Birmingham City Council planning ctte on 7th March

    Next for the Heritage Lottery Fund is the second stage bid – which will also require an activity plan, covering activity which will support the heritage side of the work during the build and afterwards.  Suzanne Carter from Birmingham Conservation Trust will work with Chris Rice from Birmingham Museums Trust to create the plan.

    It was reported that the stage two bid needs item to be as strong as possible – so currently aiming for June to submit the bid.

    Suzanne Carter explained:

    Activity plan is a report which covers all the activity that the Heritage Lottery Fund which isn’t building work.  It’s the work that involves people in history and heritage.  Suzanne will be talking to lots of people in the community to help her create the planning and is focused on what people can learn about the history of the baths – how to bring it alive.  It can also involve plans to train people in conservation skills and hands on experience of heritage work.  this will also focus on how people get involved in making decisions about heritage in the area.

    3 important roles for the plan

    • to demonstrate that local people love the building and want it back in some form of use
    • demonstrates that people are interested
    • demonstrate that there is an interest in developing the heritage plan.

    Nick Booth outlined the use of this new website to capture news of the project,  stories from the baths and the community centre and how people are getting involved with the activity plan.

    Chris Rice said  that the reason the project got a stage one HLF bid was because of local people’s enthusiasm and ‘agitation’.  A successful stage two bid is not a given – so the work and enthusiasm from here on in really helps the bid for the money for construction.

    A discussion about timing – including frustration/argument about delays.  A further point made about how long the preparation for the project has gone on –  and how important that stage two of HLF bid will provide the money to get the work started.  When was it actually closed: 5th March 1988 –  so 25 years since it was closed, with 12 years of planning to get something to this stage.

    A query about finding archives from the central library on the history of the baths – might that be found in Birmingham Central Library or  Cadbury Archives or Worcester?

    7.15 pm onto Part two, Suzanne Carter led on ideas for the activity plan… (see separate notes)