Friday: Autumn Site As A Classroom Week

The Floating Front Room is open 10am - 4pm, so pick up a brew and a warm welcome from the barge, with hot drinks, delicious food and space to chat and connect with friends, neighbours and practitioners available throughout the day. The polytunnel will also be open for drop in tours suitable for those who are visiting the site for the first time and want to know more about the Neighbourhood Public Square plans.
What's on today
Today will be a more relaxed day in the polytunnel, with the site open for site tours and an opportunity to chat to members of the CIVIC SQUARE team, alongside a workshop in botanical inks offering an invitation to pause, play and reconsider the natural world, mindfully processing themes of grief, loss and transition, followed by ‘Can Everything Be Mended?’, a workshop and film screening with Breaks and Joins.

POLYTUNNEL
To help keep each other safe on site, the polytunnel/ courtyard space is open to children ages eight and over, and children be accompanied by an adult. Babes in arms are welcome.
10:00 - 14:00 | Site as a Classroom Tours and Site Winter Prep
Take a tour around the site with a member of the CIVIC SQUARE team. We will share plans and dreams for Neighbourhood Public Square, invite your questions and reflections, and share ways you can join us in our collective explorations as we co-create the site. Neighbourhood Public Square will be a site of regenerative civic infrastructure in the heart of Ladywood, Birmingham, co-created and held in common with the neighbourhood, where all of us can access tools and spaces for the transition to a future where we can thrive. Tours last around half an hour and will begin on the hour. Drop in anytime 10am - 2pm to support with odd jobs to help prepare the polytunnel for the winter season.
PARK
All ages welcome, children must be accompanied by an adult.
11:00 - 13:00 | Scrolling the (h)edge: Botanical Inks with Carolyn Morton
Join artist Carolyn Morton to explore inks made from common wild plants, and co-create a banner of words, ideas, patterns, drawings and inky experiments. Laid out like a banquet, the inks, plants, drawing tools and prompts invite us to pause, play and reconsider the natural world. Hedges - like towpaths - are rich habitats, boundary markers, full of wild plants and wild life. Botanical inks are impermanent and unstable. Their simple magic is revealed by changing their colour with common household ingredients. In the workshop you can learn simple ways to make inks, how to modify their colour and ways to use them.
14:00 - 16:00 | The Beauty of Broke: Build a Poem on Bunting with Sue Mayo
Collage a strip of bunting with some inspirational words and images to see you through the winter. Give yourself a visual shot of Vitamin C to ward off the cold and remind you of the good things to come!

This workshop is followed by a screening of 'Can Everything be mended?' a 30 minute film by Breaks & Joins, a project about repair of our stuff, ourselves, and our communities. Starting at a one-man repair café in South London, the film collages a series of encounters with menders, from the orthopaedic team at Lewisham Hospital and the textile team at the National Theatre, to ceramicist Rachel Ho, who creates scarred pots to celebrate the marks we carry, and Ladywood-born textile specialist Rose Sinclair, who celebrates broken histories of Caribbean seamstresses and tailors. In their answers we discover the beauty, resilience, curiosity and tenacity of menders, who have so much to offer the world.
16:30 - 17:00 | Live music with Josh Vaughan
Let your soul be lifted by the beautiful voice of our neighbour and singer-songwriter Josh Vaughan. From a background in musical theatre and acting, Josh is taking steps into the music industry, and invites us to join him on the journey with his unique renditions of pop classics.

• As we are not (yet!) able to host in the building which will be home to Neighbourhood Public Square, activities will take place in our polytunnel, as well as in a tipi, which is warmed by a fire pit
  
• There is level access across the site, but the ground is uneven in places and can get muddy when wet
  
• Come dressed for the weather, and, for activities in the polytunnel, wear closed-toe shoes
  
• Portaloos will be available to use on site
  

If you have would like to let us know of any access needs, please do so when booking your ticket. For access queries, contact Emily on:

As we move into the middle of the Autumn season, we warmly invite you to join us for our another Site as a Classroom week, where we will open up the site to host for the final time this year for a range of intergenerational workshops, screenings and fireplace conversations. Together with friends and neighbours, we’ll be reflecting and celebrating all we have learned, and the progress we’ve made towards our shared goal of retrofitting the Icknield Port Loop site in Ladywood, Birmingham, to be held in common for generations to come.
From the nurturing of our weekly neighbourhood Trade School classes and monthly Supper Clubs, to the transformation of our polytunnel into a vibrant space for us to learn together, we have built plenty of collective knowledge and capabilities in bio-based materials, along with many other skills we need to retrofit our homes, streets and neighbourhoods.
Join us to explore the research, design principles, material possibilities and more for Neighbourhood Public Square, and explore the roles we can play in its design, co-build and stewardship of this regenerative civic infrastructure, ensuring it acts as a classroom and a systems demonstrator for wider transformation, and democratises access to the tools and spaces we need for the transition to a future where we can all thrive.
Whether you are already involved in our shared learning, organising and building week to week, or feel inspired to come down for the first or second time, we welcome you to join us for as much or as little of these four days as you like.
Bring your questions, ideas, dreams, fears and concerns with you for a week filled with food, play, learning, making, talks, performances, and more, celebrating the work of so many in B16 and beyond, as one part of co-building Neighbourhood Public Square together for the long term.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

CIVIC SQUARE Birmingham CIC, Rotton Park Street, Birmingham, United Kingdom