Residents have got in touch with bournvillevillage.com to voice their frustration with one claiming that the cars are “driving me nuts!” and another asking: “Surely our road is not the central hub to park these things?”.

The scheme was launched in May after car2go – owned by Daimler and Europcar – won a tender from the City Council. The scheme allows those who register to hire the cars for 35 pence a mile.

It works by users starting and finishing their journeys in specific areas of the city which includes Bournville and Stirchley.

Users can simply leave the car where they last finished using it as long as it is not illegally parked.

In response to the complaints from residents car2go say that the vehicles reduce the need for other car journeys and are aimed at those without cars of their own:

@daveharte @terrygoodwin Hey guys, it follows population and density … The more people the better … 1 car2go = 8 private cars removed

— car2go UK (@car2goUK) May 31, 2013

@daveharte @bournvillenews Cool. We give access to people who can’t afford to have car. Pay as you go without the cost !

— car2go UK (@car2goUK) May 31, 2013

 
Should residents have any issues with the parking of Car 2 Go vehicles, they can contact them direct via email birmingham@car2go.com
 

car2go Smart cars are parked around the Bournville and Stirchley area

The event on June 8th is aimed at harnessing public support for the bid which will see the now derelict swimming baths on Bournville Lane transformed into a community centre.

The original idea to release balloons met with many supporters on Twitter voicing their concern. One local resident, concerned with the harm that balloon releases can do to harm wildlife, said: “I love Stirchley but please please don’t release balloons”.

@zilchuk @kerrymurdock @greenrevs OK – the response is we “will find an alternative solution, rather than letting off the balloons” ^NB

— Stirchley Baths(@stirchleybaths) May 17, 2013

Organisers have now said that the event, which takes place on the former bowling green in Stirchley Park behind the baths, will now have a balloon-popping finale.

The event will also see the unveiling of a ‘Love Seat’ which was made for the Love Stirchley Festival earlier this year.

The plaque will be unveiled at the Minworth Greaves building in Selly Manor Julia Varley at 11am on 24 May and then will be erected on Julia’s former home at 42 Hay Green Lane, Bournville.

Born in Bradford she devoted her entire working life to fighting for better working conditions for women employed in a range of trades and industries.

She became a member of the Birmingham Trades Council and also stood as a Socialist election candidate in King’s Norton. In 1912 she became a member of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society.

She was awarded an OBE for her services to public work in 1931 and died in 1952.

Picture via Birmingham Mail

CoCoMad 2012 – Council funding for the 2013 festival has been cut

At the recent meeting of the Bournville Ward Committee the council made a series of recommendations to cut funding for festivals and for other groups such as Stirchley Toddler Group. The funding comes from the ‘Community Chest’ budget which is allocated to each Ward to spend on local projects.

In the past both CoCoMAD and Bournville Village Festival had received funding from the Community Chest fund. A spokesperson for the Friends of Cotterdige Park who run CoCoMad said they were surprised to discover that their budget had been cut as they weren’t at the Ward Committee meeting and only found out afterwards.

The ‘Friends’ are now hoping to rally community support to plug their shortfall by turning to a crowd-funding website where local people can donate. Emma Woolf said: “In the true Friends of Cotteridge Park spirit local residents and CoCoMAD fans are doing what they can to keep the festival going as the cuts hit us again.”

A spokesperson for Bournville Village Council who organise the annual Village Festival said: “Obviously Bournville Village Council are naturally very disappointed at the decision not to support our community chest application as we are a volunteer organisation looking to raise funds for local good causes. Anything that impedes us from doing that is always a challenge.”

They added: “If community chest funding is made available to councillors again next year, we will submit another application and hope to be successful next time.”

A spokesperson for the City Council said that decisions on spending for Community Chest funds were made locally but that the overal budget had been reduced in order to tackle youth unemployment – a decision made in January this year. They said that this funding has since attracted further funding.

Councillor Tim Huxtable, Conservative, blamed the Labour leadership of the City Council saying: “the cuts to local fun days and festivals in Bournville are a direct consequence of the Labour City Council’s severe cuts to Ward Community Chest funding.”

He went on to explain the reason for not funding the festivals: “Given the availability of only £36,750 instead of £125,000 to allocate it was decided not to support one-off events but projects/schemes which last for weeks. Moreover, both CoCoMad and Bournville Festival will continue to take place and The Hazelwell Park Funday & Duck races has received a £5,500 Awards For All grant to enable its continuation.”

Cllr Huxtable pointed out that it was the the Labour administration running the City Council who voted to axe the £25,000 Community Chest capital grant and cut by half (£50,000) the £100,000 Community Chest revenue grant and in addition the Selly Oak District Committee voted to further cut the Community Chest revenue grant by £13,250. He and Cllr Rob Sealey voted against all the above cuts.

Labour councillor Phil Walking said: “The truth is that there is no money. Your questions relate to the funding at Ward level, on which decisions were taken by the two Conservative councillors without consulting me at all. But they are correct that the global amount was cut. The fact is that they voted against it because they knew that they would not have to find the money.

“Am I sad this is happening? Of course I am, but not so sad as I would have been to see these cuts avoided at the cost of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our community. The Labour council is doing its best to protect the poorest and weakest against the ConDem’s grant reductions.

“There is no good news here. If you want someone to blame, try the bankers and the other Fat Cats who caused the recession. And the ConDem coalition who think that the way to get the economy back on track is to cut their grants to the cities.”

Switch-on events for Christmas lights in Stirchley and Cotteridge were also a victim of the cuts although the lights themselves will continue to receive funding.

Links:
Council document detailing the cuts (PDF).
CoCoMad crowd-funding website.

The following projects were approved for Community Chest funding, to a total of £33,710, for 2013/14 by the Ward Committee:-

Bournville In Bloom – £8,840
Cotteridge Christmas Lights – £5,900
Environmental Improvements – £740
Kings Heath Detached Project – £2,400
Masefield Afterschool Club – £2,000
Masefield Holiday Playschemes – £4,000
Neighbourhood Management – £737
Stirchley Christmas Lights – £3,304
Stirchley Playschemes – £2,789
The Freedom Project – £3,000
Computer Session Volunteers at Stirchley Library – £740
St. Francis Film Club – £800
Story Tots – £1,500

View Bournville Estates Charity Walk in a larger map

The event will take place between 11am and 3pm and participants can do as little or as much of the walk as they like. Checkpoints, from which you can start and finish, are Shenley Court Hall, Weoley Hill Village Hall, Bournville Village Green, Kings Norton 1st Sea Scouts Hall and Manor Farm Park.

Entry is via a Booklet which costs £2 per person and can be purchased at these checkpoints on the day. This years walk also includes a Fancy Dress Competition for under 16s.

Bournville, Weoley Hill and Shenley Councils, Friends of Manor Farm Park, Bournville Seascouts, Bournville Village Trust and Bournville Model Yacht & Powerboat Club have come together to organise and run the event.

You can donate to St Mary’s Hospice via the event’s Just Giving page.

Shop manager Lizzy Hunting said that there had been a Christian bookshop on the site 30 years but trading had become difficult: “Unfortunately, like many small traders, we cannot compete with the internet and companies like Amazon who are able to undercut us all the time.”

The shop is housed in a Grade II listed building and is the property of Bournville Village Trust. St Andrew’s bookshop have five other shops in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

The screenings are archive films from 1984/85 that focus on women’s activism during the miners’ strike. They accompany the current exhibition (until 11 May): ‘A Factory as it Might Be (Bournville)’, an ongoing research project conceived by artist Patrick Staff.

The project takes William Morris’ eponymous 1884 text on the re-imagining of the factory, and Colin Ward’s response in ‘The Factory We Never Had’ (1994), as points of departure for reflexively examining contemporary sites of production, education and social space, and the intersections between industry and leisure, performance and congregation.

The films being screened are introduced by Margareta Kern and are part of her continuing exploration into the instructional, agitational, campaigning and experimental modes of film-making.

The films showing from 6.30pm are:

‘Side by Side Women Organise’, by The Other Side Video Collective with the Nottingham Women’s Support Group, Nottingham, 1985, 44 min., VHS transferred to DVD, colour.

‘Coal Board News’, by Glasgow University Media Group, 1986, 15 min, VHS transferred to DVD, colour.

More detail on the gallery’s website.

The current exhibition at International Project Space will be its last. The Bournville campus of Birmingham City University is due to become a college for international students from later September this year: www.bcuic.navitas.com/

1946 Festival Queen

Wednesday 17th April will see this year’s Bournville Festival Queen chosen. The Festival Queen plays a large part in the Maypole on the day of Bournville Village Festival which this year is on Saturday 29th June.

Girls aged 11 to 18 from the Bournville area are eligible to apply and follow in the footsteps of the 2012 Queen, Cordelia Roberts from King’s Norton Girls’ School.

The choosing of the Queen takes place in front of a panel of judges at Dame Elizabeth Cadbury Hall, Oak Tree Lane, Bournville. Registration will be from 7.00 pm with a 7.30 pm start.

The Village Council, who organise the festival, have also announced dates for maypole practice for the many local girls who will participate in this year’s event: bournvillevillagecouncil.org.uk.

We were given an exclusive look at the new concourse and our pictures are published below.

The new exits from the station will be on Stephenson Street and Hill street. The escalators from the Pallasades shopping centre down to the current concourse will close, although this area will remain open and there will be a covered passageway to the new concourse. Eventually the Pallasades area will become ‘Grand Central‘ and will include a new John Lewis store.

A walkway connecting Stephenson Street to the Bullring area has been built which runs through the former Newt and Cucumber pub. This will be the main route for shoppers to get to the Bullring until the rest of the new concourse is completed in 2015.

You can read more about the changes to New Street Station at: http://www.newstreetnewstart.co.uk/

Each of the pictures has more details about the changes. You can view the full set (on the Flickr website) or in the slideshow below:

Events on Saturday 23rd March include:
‘Something out of the Ordinary’ – 2pm and 4pm at the British Oak pub, Stirchley (moved from Co-op car park).
“Funny, moving, magical and enthralling new theatre, for people like you, living where you live. Every day is the same… ’til something changes… and nothing is ever the same again.”

‘Hinterland’ – 1pm till 6pm, junction of Hunts Road and Hazelwell Lane, Stirchley.
A site specific installation by Tom Cahill-Jones of Stirchley Happenings constructed from materials reclaimed from local streets. Come and add your memories of the area.

‘Magic, Science, Technique and Willingness’ – 2.30pm, International Project Space, School of Art, Bournville.
Patrick Staff with actor Laura Evans. A promenade performance (20 mins) moving between the gallery, art school and factory, it focuses on an interview with a factory worker in which she discusses her relationship with work and culture.

‘Fades, Braids And Keeping It Real’ – 6pm and 7pm, Headmasters Hair Salon, Cotteridge.
LaToya, hot shot stylist at Touching Silk Beauty Salon has stories to tell you.

Sunday 24th March
Max Merrick Wren – 11:30am at Leverton & Halls café, Maryvale Rd, Bournville.
Bob Dylan and John Martyn influenced singer songwriter

‘Silks in the Park’ – drop in 10:30am till 4pm, Cotteridge Park
An aerial silks workshop for all ages by CircusMash

‘Pint Dreams’ by Tin Box Theatre – 3pm and 4pm, The British Oak, Stirchley.
Maggie is a perpetual wanderer. Desperate to see new places, meet new people and collect their stories, she is travelling around the country one pub at a time. The West Midlands is her next destination.

There are more events across the Selly Oak constituency.

The brochure is available to download (PDF) and the interactive map below shows you the events happening local to our area. Should the weather disrupt events then the Facebook page or Twitter account are useful to follow for any last minute changes:
facebook.com/artsforumsellyoak.
twitter.com/ArtsForumSellyO

View Art SOAK 2013 in a larger map