Canon Street Memorial Baptist Church Oral History Project
Small Heath Community Forum Rainbow Project
Birmingham St Patrick’s Festival Oral History Project
The Inheritance Project - ‘Guess who is coming to dinner?’
Multiple Heritage Voices Project
New Style Radio Oral History Project
Patois the Spoken Word Project
Kajans Youth Group Project
Smethwick Bangladeshi Youth Forum Heritage Project
Canon Street Memorial Baptist Church Oral History Project
The Canon Street Memorial Baptist Church Oral History project aims to record, document and communicate the history, experience and evolution of the congregation since the 1950s. The congregation’s cultural complexion has changed a great deal since that period and the church has moved from Canon Street to Soho Road in Handsworth. The project has been gathering the oral testimonies of elder members of the congregation and will be putting displays onto the Digital Handsworth website. This project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
For further information contact Soryah on 0121 551 5260 or e-mail: genesisfamilyschool@yahoo.co.uk
Small Heath Community Forum Rainbow Project
The Small Heath Rainbow project involves the development and production of an innovative exhibition illustrating the main changes that have occurred in Small Heath since the 1950s from the perspective of ordinary people and in particular from the view point of first generation immigrants. The project also includes conducting oral history interviews with a range of people from the area, as well as building an archive which will reflect the area’s development. Most importantly the project is trying to generate an interest among the local community in recording their own heritage. This project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
For further information contact Naila Suleman on 0121 685 7277, or e-mail: sh_forums2002@yahoo.com
Birmingham St Patrick’s Festival Oral History Project
1950s
“Shamrock used to arrive from Ireland days before and we wore it to school pinned to a ribbon. It was all shrivelled up, but so was everyone else’s!”
1960s
“I can bring to mind the sound of Irish music, crowds of folk and men and women holding poles on which were attached boards proclaiming the different county associations.”
“Walkers were urged to obey county marshals and to keep in formation and not to smoke on parade nor wave to people on the side.”
2000s
“I turned the corner to look down onto Digbeth High Street and the road had simply disappeared – it was covered with people – as far as you could see. Everyone had made such an effort to dress up I felt a bit silly just wearing jeans and a t-shirt!”
Quotes from ‘Making Our Mark’ by Carl Chinn
The parade, as we know it today we believe started in Birmingham in 1952 – minutes before any other St Patrick’s Day parade in an English city. It went from strength to strength in the 50s and 60s until it was stopped in the 1970s after the Birmingham pub bombings. In the mid-1990s, the St Patrick’s Day Parade once more returned as a part of Birmingham’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations and is now the third biggest St Patrick’s Day festival anywhere in the world and a major date in the calendar of Irish people in the Midlands.
The St Patrick’s Festival is putting together a book and exhibition about the St Patrick’s Day festivities in Birmingham from as far back as we can go right up until the present day. This project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
For further information contact Gudrun on 0121 373 2747 or e-mail: stpatrickshistory@word-works.org
The Inheritance Project - ‘Guess who is coming to dinner?’
The Inheritance Project exists to explore and celebrate the experiences of people of mixed heritage through education and research, and act as a focus and a platform for the mixed race community to advocate on their own behalf and highlight pertinent issues. By exploring the origins of people of mixed parentage, the project aims to chart their journey through history and help them define their identity in the present. The project works with people of mixed heritage, parents, wider family members, carers, teachers, social workers, the prison service, health workers and the wider community. Part of the work involves developing mechanisms to support mixed heritage children, particularly those suffering disadvantage and exclusion. The Inheritance Project works with other voluntary groups and charities that are interested in similar issues and which operate under the ethos of sharing and openness.
The project would like to invite people who were in mixed race relationships during the 1950s and 1960s and the children of these unions to be part of an oral history project called ‘Guess who is coming to dinner?’ The project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and will also shortly be launching a new website at www.inheritanceproject.org.uk
For further information contact The Inheritance Project on 0121 440 6333 or 0775 111 5404 or e-mail inheritanceproject@yahoo.co.uk
Multiple Heritage Voices Project
The Multiple Heritage Voices (MHV) project is working with young people from Ladywood and beyond in exploring their heritage, and the history behind the mixed-race population. It consists of dance, drama, poetry, art, and craft workshops as a medium for expression and exploration of identity, heritage and culture. They will also take part in day trips and be photographed as part of a travelling exhibition which will visit up to 19 libraries across the region.
Other outcomes of the project include a booklet which will be distributed free of charge to youth and community groups, schools and libraries as a reference to the exciting outcomes of the project including photographs, poetry and art as well as a section on the historical context of mixed race.
The project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and aims to increase the participation of youths exploring the multiple heritage population from the 1950s onwards, increase the local communities awareness of the history behind multiple heritage and create a visual resource that can be used once the project has ended.
For further information contact Ayo at Race Equality West Midlands on 0121 250 3545 or e-mail ayodele@mixedrace.com
New Style Radio Oral History Project
The New Style Radio Oral History has just finished. It focused on recording the history, experience and development of African-Caribbean communities in Birmingham. Archival and historical sources were combined with oral history work to create an innovative approach to communicating the results of the project to both the African-Caribbean community and to the wider society through a weekly radio programme on New Style Radio. This project was supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
For further information contact the African Caribbean Millennium Centre on 0121 455 6382 or e-mail info@acmccentre.co.uk
Patois the Spoken Word Project
Patois the Spoken Word project is to research and collect untold patois songs and phrases spoken by Black African Caribbean first generation pioneers who settled in Britain in the 50s and 60s, and who now reside in Birmingham.
Patois the Spoken Word allows children and young people from second and third generation of Black African Caribbean heritage, to work alongside their elders to interview, record and archive their untold songs and phrases in patois. The project allows performance artists using a variety of creative, fun and skill based workshops, to work with children and young people living in Birmingham.
For further information contact Danny Miller on 07071 191741 or Cordelia Brooks on 0121 236 1945.
Kajans Youth Group Project
Kajans Youth Group based in The Albert Hall in inner city Aston is to benefit from a substantial grant through the Young Roots programme. Kajans Youth Group in partnership with Birmingham Central Library Services and Artsites – Birmingham will use the Young Roots grant to help young people in Birmingham research the history of Gospel Music. This is a groundbreaking project linking the singing aspirations of young people with voices from the past.
This is a welcome boost for Aston one of the most deprived wards in Birmingham to receive this funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Young people now listen and sing gospel music but because they do not know the origins of the music the feeling and some of the meanings are lost. The aim is to help young people connect to the music in a special way so that they can understand what the writers felt at the time of writing.
The project will include visits to places of historical significance in order that the young people will see and understand for themselves the true path of gospel music. They will them research and unearth old forgotten gospel songs as well as working with professional song writers to create new ones of their own based on their findings. Working with Birmingham Central Library Services the research will be documented and archived in as a resource for the people of Birmingham. With the 200th anniversary of Emancipation in 2007 the project will culminate in a concert celebrating all the songs unearthed, written and learnt and a CD/DVD of the performances will be created as a permanent record.
Smethwick Bangladeshi Youth Forum Heritage Project
Information coming soon...
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