arts residencies

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Potato Day

Come along to Edible Erdingtons Potato Day festival

Saturday 26th February 11am-3pm

Erdington High Street, outside the Swan pub, near the fountain

Free, all welcome

Over the last 12 months Eleanor Hoad and a group of volunteers have been growing vegetables on Erdington High street. Come and see the vegetable plots and join in a celebration of the humble potato.

* Display of some of the 150 varieties of potato available in the UK

* Free seed potato giveaways- grow your own spuds at home

* Enter the “Great Erdington Potato Self Portrait Competition”- decorate a potato as yourself! Prizes to be won

* Seed Bomb Making

* Vegetable Growing Advice

* Morris Dancers

* Potato Planting Demonstration

* Seed Swap- bring along seeds to swap

* Free Food

Funded by Be Birmingham and Birmingham City Council Arts Team

In partnership with Erdington Town Centre Partnership and Court Lane Allotments

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Apple Day 2010

Apple Day Sunday 24th October 11am-3pm Court Lane Allotments, Erdington, Birmingham

Free fun for all the family at this years Apple Day.

Drawing on centuries of tradition surrounding the humble apple, ‘Apple Day’ will include:

* Live apple pressing, see and taste local apples turned into delicious juice with our amazing home made apple press- why not bring along your apples to turn into juice
* Apple expert Julian Brandram, with a display of apple varieties and fruit growing advice (www.appletrees.org.uk)
* Apple trees, pickles, preserves and produce for sale
* Fun apple games including Apple bobbing, Longest Apple Peel competition and Apple and Spoon race
* Morris dancing from 1st Sedgley Morris group
* Make a mini scarecrow to take away
* Live music from Jim Mehan
* Food
The event is brought to you by ‘PREPARE’ a project to harvest and distribute unwanted fruit in the Erdington area run by Artist in Residence Eleanor Hoad based at Twickenham Primary School supported by Birmingham City Councils Community Arts Team.

For more information contact Eleanor Hoad on 07974 934 917 or eleanorhoad@hotmail.com

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Tree planting in Erdington

On Sunday the 5th December there was an extraordinary amount of tree planting in Erdington ward: first at Kingstanding Leisure Centre coinciding with a tree planting world record attempt; then in Erdington Town town Centre, as the winners of a fruit tree naming competition dug in their saplings in seasonal surroundings.

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Art workshop for refugee children

Dr Mohsen Keiany in partnership with Women’s Federation for World Peace, conducted a day workshop for children of refugee families. The art workshop was assisted by another artist – and former Head Teacher – Marjorie Saunders.

Around 30 children from a number of different countries, and ranging in age from 3 to 16 years old, enjoyed the experience and all of them were able to produce a good end product, as shown below. Dr Keiany had to use all of his teaching skills to cope with such a wide range of ages, and Marjorie was a big help in that respect, having considerable experience with smaller children.

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Hags and Heroines

I went along to the performance of Hags and Heroines at Rookery School in Handsworth, took some photos, and really enjoyed the performance. There was, as mentioned below, a great atmosphere in the hall, and it was a great way to spend a Friday evening.

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Art workshops for Birmingham Central Mosque

Art workshops for Birmingham Central Mosque
The series of art workshops were successfully delivered for Birmingham Central Mosque in partnership with Birmingham City Council, Nechells Green Community Centre, Sufi Trust Foundation, and Moshen Keiany Artist in residency on following dates:
Sunday 25th October
Monday, 26th October
Wednesday, 28th October
Sunday 1st November
The participants were including families, adults, and young people. It offered a series of art Techniques such as watercolour, collage, mosaic making with an especial focus on Islamic art. The term of “identity” within the Islamic arts can be reflected in the use of Islamic patterns, tiles, ceramic and miniatures paintings.
As a key issue, which was expressed in my initial plan of artist in residency with BCC, these days art workshops were seeking to engage the Muslim community and to value their traditional art as well as open up new avenues to art making as a means of increasing greater understanding and tolerance between community groups. It is also attempted to increase the level of understanding and respecting cultural and religious differences under the golden rule of “humanity to others” which can be found in any culture.
The art workshops were particularly focused on Islamic arts (Islamic Calligraphy and patterns) and it delivered in Central Mosque free of charge. Some magnificent pieces of art were created by participants. Birmingham Central mosque is planning to organise more similar art workshops for Muslim community in near future.

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Apple Day Photographs

I very much enjoyed Eleanor’s apple day at Kingstanding Leisure Centre. The juice was really tasty, and well matched the crisp autumn air and sunshine. There was a really interesting and interested mix of people there, and I came home with a massive organic allotment grown beetroot, a big bag of spinach, and a hefty red cabbage. Here are a few pictures of the apple pressing and juice tasting.

A traditional Mummers play was performed, which was great fun and enjoyed, with musical accompaniment, by all.

I made some portraits of the performers afterwards, which you can see below. I couldn’t stay for the ceilidh, but the play itself, and the day as a whole, gave a rooted sense of location, and a connection with folk history that is seldom seen in the city.

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Picture From Syria

This is a picture from the Jesus Festival which happens each September in Maloula, Syria.
Also to test the tweeting.

click to enlarge…

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BuggyCam - Week 3

The first three BuggyCam sessions were designed to introduce the idea of cameras and photography to the children. The next 6 sessions leading up to Christmas is focusing on them taking the led to tell us what they would like to take photographs off. We want it to be open and have discussions with the children about the subject matter. The third session was about giving the children another chance to pay with cameras through games and also an opportunity to create something artistic that they could photograph. 

Again using the ideas from Flotsam as our starting point myself and Nina brought in images of  Star fish,  Seahorses and other underwater creatures in on cards so the children could colour in and cut out. The idea was to make an underwater world like in Flotsam and give the children the opportunity to take photographs of their own magical world. The children worked very hard to create their world and a lot of glitter was split. But eventually  each nursery created something. At The Pump the staff were fantastic and really pulled out the stops. We even had the sound of water splashing. The children were very proud of what they did and each took time in the magical made up world taking photographs of the sea life they discovered. We wanted to carry on with this activity next week so both nursery’s have decided to keep their underwater world for the time being.

The feedback we have been getting from the both staff and parents for the project has been fantastic. The staff especially have said that have been amazed at how the children have got involved in the project and how much they have retained week by week. Our aim is to make being creative with the camera second nature to the children and already they know exactly what to do and what they would like to photograph. We want to take this idea further and give them the opportunity to show us how they see the world.

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Residency Up-date

I thought I would give a short up-date about what Reel Access has been up to recently and it’s been really quite hectic. We have been working with The Pump Youth Club every Monday night creating animations, small films and pop videos. We are five sessions in and its going really well. We have also another team working out in Norton Hall every monday. Theatre practitioner Jon Morris and filmmaker Nina Jones has been working with a group of teenagers working on a small horror film that will be ready by Christmas. 

At The Pump I have been showing films to what is turning into a Reminiscence group for residents over fifty. We watch ‘Meet me in St Louis’ which went down a storm. We are now developing a film / mapping project with the group that will involve young people from the area. 

I am also developing the ‘Painting on Film’ which is going well although time consuming. I will post some of the work I have been doing on that shortly.