Wholesale Memory

Friction Arts documenting our Wholesale market

For many people who call Birmingham home, the Markets are an afterthought, a part of the city that they may only occasionally dip into. What they may not realise is that Birmingham started its life as a Market Town, when Peter de Bermingham was granted a charter to run a market from what was at the time just a small settlement.

So, it’s something of a tragedy that the historic Wholesale Markets are set to close this year without many people making much of a noise.

Desert Island Archive

Exploring Archives of photos
from 2011 at Paganel School

Imagine you were to leave three items for future generations to use to study our society, what items would you choose? Or if you could only take three personal items with you onto a desert island, what would they be? These questions can be useful in establishing what is important to you as an individual. What items hold sentimental value? Or perhaps represent a particularly happy memory or an object from a loved one passed on to you. Archives are not only official records held in libraries or museums, archives can be a family photo album or a piece of jewelry from your great grandmother. We can create our own individual archives as representations of our lives and what we consider to be important to us and items which embody personal or family identity.

These were some of the questions we asked the children in Year 5 at Paganel Archive After-school Club, and their responses were surprising.