My time with PHC

Since September, I’ve been working with People’s Heritage Co-op for my placement on the Professional Skills module on my history course at the University of Birmingham. Now that my placement is over, it has made me reflect on everything I have done over the past seven months, and the progress that I’ve made in that time. When I chose this placement, I did so as it seemed like an opportunity to do something unlike any previous work experience I had taken, but I did not realise just how varied my work would be or how rewarding I would find it.

The Tea Party – Refreshing the Curriculum

Within the People's Heritage Co-operative we are passionate about delivering exciting, creative and enlightening heritage projects to make history come alive for younger generations.  On 6th July we will be sharing some of our work with teachers to support local schools in delving into history.

The 'Tea Party' at mac Birmingham is an opportunity for teachers to learn more about the exciting educational provision being offered by arts, culture and heritage organisations.

We will have a stall where we will be showcasing a range of educational and school work by the People's Heritage Co-operative and our members in schools across Birmingham, including Untold Stories, Fight for the Right, Women's History Birmingham, Paganel Archives, Children of War and Pool of Memories.

Do book a place and come and see us, we are always open to conversations about our work and potential projects!

This is an Arts Connect event in partnership with Birmingham Education Partnership produced by The Company.  It runs from 3:00pm to 5:30pm at mac Birmingham on 6th July.

Untold Stories: sharing stories across the generations

As part of The People's Heritage Co-operative's HLF funded project, 'Untold Stories: Birmingham's Wounded Soldiers from WW1', Year 8 pupils at Swanshurst School took part in a series of workshops with Rachel Gillies - Community Film Maker to learn how to conduct filmed oral history interviews.

Filming Untold Stories

So here I’m sat at my desk, looking through scores of photos and hours of footage, wondering how I’m going to pull so much fantastic stuff together.  My job, you see, is to turn all of the lectures, interviews, workshops and explorations we have undertaken through our ‘Untold Stories’ project into a finished film for our launch on 13^th September.

Ties that Bind

Private Jesse Hill [WAVE: DX554]

Over the last few weeks we have been supporting Big Brum Theatre in Education Company with their new WW1 project, Ties that Bind, which is supported by the HLF. We’ve been lucky enough to see previous WW1 productions by Big Brum and have been in awe of their creativity, passion and immense talent for working with young people in order to explore complex and challenging situations. Ties that Bind involves working with young people from schools in Birmingham and Wolverhampton to explore the experience of the young men involved in the First World War and their relationship to each other. This week I went with Matt and Richard from the company to Wolverhampton Archives, where I previously did some work, to explore a particular deposit that I hoped would be inspiring for the project. 

At Home with Vanley Burke

At Home with Vanley Burke at the Ikon (until 27 September) is unlike most exhibitions in that it presents the visitor with the entire contents of Vanley’s flat in Nechells, north-east Birmingham. Most of us know Vanley as a photographer, working in Britain and Birmingham since the 1960s, but he is also a collector and archivist. This exhibition allows us an unusual insight into Vanley’s own world. As Marlene Smith writes in the excellent accompanying guide, ‘now we see him’.

Birmingham's Hidden Spaces

Curzon Street Station.

Image by Birmingham Post / Birmingham's Hidden Spaces

Do you look up at the historic architecture found above the gaudy line of every-town shop branding? Do you have a curiosity of what might be behind an interesting looking door or wall? If so, you are going to love Birmingham’s Hidden Spaces.

Fight for the Right!

In 2012-13 I worked on an exciting project called Fight for the Right: the Birmingham Suffragettes. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project gave an opportunity for young women living in Birmingham to explore the activities of both sides of the suffrage campaign, militant and non-militant, that took place in the city in the early 1900s. A group of young women from two local schools, Kings Norton Girls’ School and Waverley School, who were aged 12-15 during the project, investigated social and political change by looking at different ways of campaigning and protesting by women who wanted the right to vote. The young women involved in the project believed that the Birmingham suffrage campaigners were an important part of their heritage. While some of those involved had some prior knowledge of the suffragettes, often little is known or understood by young women about the histories of women involved in the campaign that lived and acted locally. Fight for the Right aimed to re-dress the balance by exploring women’s voting history from a local perspective, focusing specifically on the activities of the Birmingham suffrage movement between 1909 and 1914. While primarily a local history project, participants also considered social and cultural change within women’s rights today and explored ideas about voting and politics.

Culture on your doorstep - Billesley common

Billesley Common 1st edition Ordinance Survey 1831
This work is based on data provided through
www.VisionofBritain.org.uk and uses historical material
which is copyright of the Great Britain Historical
GIS Project and the University of Portsmouth

Here's Billesley Common in 1831.  A fair bit has changed since then (see the map below).  Maps are a great place to start finding out about a place - there's also some great images of Billesley Common, historical and other:

The Transport War Memorial
on Billesely Common
& Doug Smith's book about it

We also have historical websites, like William Darque's excellent A History of Birmingham Places and Placenames, and access to related statistics too, on sites like Vision of Britain

Billesley Common New popular edition Ordinance Survey 1945

This work is based on data provided through
www.VisionofBritain.org.uk and uses historical material
which is copyright of the Great Britain Historical 

GIS Project and the University of PortsmouthAdd caption

There's more sources we can find, giving us more statistics, more photos, more information.   Billesley was the site of one of the earliest council estates in Birmingham; It is also an area identified as a 'priority area' with ‘multiple factors of deprivation’, so it's not surprising to find a rich source of information from the city council (and indeed the Police).

So what's missing?  Why spend time focusing on an area which is already so well documented historically?

I guess for me it's all about who is involved in writing those 'histories', how they are presented and what control the people who own those 'stories' have.  And that's why we're looking to work in Billesley - building on conversations we have already documented as part of 'Stories from the Mill' project.

Billesely Stories - a project for which we are applying for funding is about documenting and representing the stories of people who live and work in Billesley.  We will document conversations, training and leading local volunteers to interview each other.  We will be working with local people and artists in whatever media appropriate - photography, film, dance, sculpture, poetry - whatever.  We will exhibit or perform in Billesley too - by local people, for local people, in the locality.

Perhaps we're working here for similar reasons to why  Nick Hennegan launched Maverick Theatre at the Billesley Pub in 1994 (much missed at the Billesley Pub).  It's where we live, they're our stories and we want to share them in the way we want to.

Rally for the Library of Birmingham

The rally was against the cuts being proposed to the libraries of Birmingham on National Libraries Day 7th Feb 2015, with speeches and performances from:

• Carl Chinn, historian
• Birmingham Poets Laureates, past and present 
• A message of support from Benjamin Zephaniah
• Vanley Burke, photographer
• Judith Cutler, Writer
• The Indian Workers Association
• A representative from Refugee Action

Peoples Heritage Cooperative were there to show our support and also to document some of the visitors and protesters voices on 7th February. Please see this short video from the day, with clips from those interviews:

listen to ‘Libraries deserve more funding’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘Forward ever backward never’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘Studying in Libraries’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘Volunteers dont replace librarians’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘Join your union song’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘A citizen of no mean city’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘Jangle your Bangles’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘Protect the library’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘Ode to LoB’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘Here come the Philistines’ on audioBoom

For more details see:

• Friends of Library of the Library of Birmingham
• Rally Event facebook page
• Birmingham Post - Library of Birmingham rally calls halt in cuts
• Brian Gamble presents cut proposals to the Culture, Learning and Skills Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Birmngham City Council
• Public rally to take place over Library of Birmingham cuts

Rescue!History and Climate Change

Rescue!History - not, as you might think, a group attempting to rescue History, but historians (mostly) who want to help save the world from climate change (see bottom of page for more detailed statement from their webpage).

I was lucky to be invited to present at their event at BMI Birmingham on the subject of  'Archivism, activism and climate change'.  The event as a whole took on a broad range of very different historical perspectives on how climate change might be changing our view of history, and how history and historians might best save the world.

There was nothing too conclusive, as you might expect but in the mix a lot of interesting points made, a healthy meeting of opinions on crisis and history, and a less healthy meander into eco-eugenics and the futility of fighting the selfish gene.  I kept fairly well clear of the toxic parts of the debate, and was keen mainly to put over the relatively simplistic point - people need to ask their own questions, find out for themselves, relate to the issues if they are going to take any meaningful part in the solutions.

We all need to be historians, if we are to understand any of history's lessons (and using example of Paganel Archives we can!)  I'll certainly be following more closely Rescue!History and keeping in touch with new found historian friends.

For more see: https://storify.com/CareersNetwork/history-and-climate-change

Also see my presentatin, Archivism, activism and climate change

Rescue!History are:

'practitioners of the Humanities and Social Sciences wish to affirm that investigations and findings from our colleagues in the scientific community overwhelmingly support the conclusion that contemporary global warming is anthropogenic: that is, at least in considerable part, a consequence of our own individual and collective human actions, at all levels of local, national and international society, economy and polity.'

 Who:

'recognises the urgency of the situation we are now in, and seeks to develop, both individually and collectively, research, curricula, and other educational programmes of past and present societies that will contribute to disseminating knowledge about the human origins, impacts and consequences of anthropogenic climate change, while also enabling and empowering the broader public to make the epochal changes that are going to be needed if we are to survive and sustain ourselves in the face of the challenge before us.'

http://www.rescue-history.org.uk/