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Our social mission is to provide a ‘change of scenery’ for those who need one in our Brandwood neighbourhoods by providing activities which help connect people to people with shared interests to reduce social isolation, and through fun and collaborative community ‘build’, active citizenship and environmental improvement projects.
Get to know new people on one of our creative ‘build’ projects. A chance to use your skills, learn new ones, drink tea and chat.
Be part of something fun and beneficial for our local communities.
Get in touch, share your ideas and bring together your own interest group.
Our business is everyone’s business.
During 2023 we will be working with residents, community groups, stakeholders and partners, local councillors, the police and council services within Brandwood & Kings Heath and Billesley wards to shape, coordinate and deliver environmental improvement and community safety projects and run activities which seek ways to improve the quality of life for people through increased access to and activities in our wonderful green spaces.
This is a 12 month commission from the Neighbourhood Development Support Unit, Birmingham City Council.
This Spring and Summer, thanks to funding from Sports England and support from the Active Communities programme, we are creating a series of new walking and fitness trails with a smiling-making twist, to help people get active, get social, have a laugh and enjoy our wonderful Brandwood green spaces and neighbourhoods together.
All trails are co-designed and tested by local residents and groups and we’ve created nine of them!!
We are Chatty Chatty Brum Brum
Chatty Chatty Brum, how do you do?
We are Chatty Chatty Brum Brum
Join us for a chin wag and a brew!
This car boot cafe project is funded by the National Lottery with an Awards for All grant.
You may have seen a few yarn bombs around Brandwood and Kings Heath. It was quite possibly someone from our friendly craft group! Come along to our monthly meet up to meet up with crafters of all experience and abilities to create cheer and raise smiles.
With thanks to funding from the CoOp Dividend Fund and a Local Giving grant will be running some low cost community comedy movie events in Brandwood which will have us laughing out loud!
These film event ‘pop ups’ are in collaboration with Screen B14 and include Autism Friendly ‘relaxed’ screenings.
With thanks to a Celebrating Communities grant from Birmingham City Council and funding from Sports England through the Active Communities programme, we hosted a programme of events and activities to mark the end of our year-long Beaming Brandwood-themed project.
Over the summer 2023 we ran our first inclusive play holiday club, partnering with the Childrens Quarter and Parks For Play. We had an epic time! Outcomes for local families with children with SEND have been amazing and we are looking at building this into our overall programme of activities.
Our Good Yarners group created festive art all over Brandwood during the Christmas holidays 2022-23. We also made a STEP AND SMILE CHALLENGE around the area featuring 16 yarn-bombed post boxes topped with crackers and jokes!
This project was part of our Laughter Lines programme funded by Sports England and the National Lottery through the Active Communities programme. More to come!
Between May and August 2022 we are ran a project to shine a spotlight on all the brilliant places and people who live in the Brandwood area, brighten up our streets with creativity and wildflower meadows and bring people together at events, workshops and community litter picks.
Together we wanted to put our little corner of South Birmingham on the map, encourage people to get talking and give the rest of the city something to talk about!
We wanted to do something practical to help people during the energy crisis and also reuse the wonderful crochet and knitted flowers made by the lovely crafters for the Brighten Up Brandwood yarn bomb.
We made ‘door huggers!’ AKA draft excluders. A really effective way of blocking off drafts under doors and keeping the heat in your room.
At the beginning of 2022 we teamed up with the local Neighbourhood Network Scheme to do some community engagement and activity planning work which included a resident survey, face to face meetings and some focus group discussions. We wanted to understand what matters to people living in Brandwood’s neighbourhoods, what social connections people enjoy and need, and how many people identified as experiencing loneliness. Most importantly we tried to understand what projects and activities residents were interested in and how we could help reduce social isolation. This work is helping to shape our plans moving forward.
For twelve weeks we ran a community DIY build & environmental improvement project for the over 50s. Our Pallet to Planter project started in late February. We reclaimed wood and repurposed it to build 44 planters which we then gave away!
We then delivered planters all over the area for residents to adopt and grow small wildflower meadows in their front gardens and driveways (‘pit stops’ for pollinators) – so everyone gets to enjoy the blooms – especially the bees.
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