Cornwall lights Birmingham hearts

Among the missing -
Scene in a Cornish Fishing Village 1884
Walter Langley

'Cornish Lights' exhibition at Penlee House, Penzance, has just ended.  I didn't know about the 'Birmingham Boys' who came to dominate The Newlyn School Art Colony'. Boulton & Watt we knew about, providing the power for most Cornish mines driving deeper during the mining heydays of the nineteenth century, but the Birmingham Boys brushing scenes of social realism in fishing villages?  Nope.

Follow the signs

Alright, so it's not the most exciting photo opportunity, so well done Cllr James McKay for smiling for the launch of Birmingham Road Safety Strategy consultation document, 'setting out Birmingham Council’s approach to making our roads safer for all'.  As photo opps go, I guess it beats scowling at grafitti, and there's no doubt speed kills.

20s plenty have over 250 campaigns running across the UK, and the list of towns and cities adopting a 20 mph limit for most of their streets is ever growing.  Merton Council have recently produced a comprehensive report documenting the impact 20mph has had in Camden, Islington, Kingston, Bristol, and more widely.  The evidence is pretty clear:

Play on our mean streets

Escalator to the gym

Great to see so many enthusiastic cyclists as you enter Kings Heath.  Sadly they are lined up on bike machines looking out of a shop window in a gym, and not so many on the street - lots of people want to ride bikes, walk and run, but apparently would rather do it indoors.  The car park behind the gym is full.   Why aren't they on our streets, biking, running, walking?  Is it because people don't feel safe on our streets, or that it's just not as warm & friendly as in a gym?

Travel to Swanshurst School

Swanshurst school enrichment day is about 'equipping our girls with the skills they need to be happy, successful, confident young women who have the desire and resilience to go to University or pursue a career or vocation and be the best they can be'.

I was happy to volunteer, working alongside others from Swan Corner Community Group, Commando Joe, Riverside Performing Arts and others.

Learning twitter from the masters

I'd moved on to answering emails, when Chris Addison's voice came on the headphones.  Beyond enjoying the familiar dulcet tones, I wasn't really thinking about it until I heard him say, 'School careers advice is rubbish, and university careers advice is worse'.  Now being in the business of supporting careers advisers, this got me interested.

The problem with cycling to school

Linda from Sustrans, and the sweet jars

I don't find it easy to come up with fun activities to discuss safety on roads at a school fete.  Queensbridge, the school my eldest son goes to, had launched 'Family Safety week, Safer cycling' earlier this year, and I wanted to keep a high profile on issues raised, and test a bit, to see what people really thought; afterall, it's not that often parents and children are together in the school - parents evenings and school concerts are probably a worse time to find people to discuss road safety.

So I shared a table with Linda from Sustrans, had a pile of goodies and information from RoSPA, started a small survey (only three questions) and 'guess the sweets in the jar linked to road use statistics' fun activity.  Unfortunately Sustrans juicer bike was out of action, so had to rely on jars of sweets to draw people to the table - I got 54 people responding, and given the size of the school and event, and the attraction of bangra dancing and other things going on, I was pretty pleased.  So here's the results:

It wasn't surprising to find that most people either walked or drove to school.  What was perhaps more interesting was that nearly half the drivers would have prefered not to, and that nearly three times as many people who did actually bike to school would have liked to.
 

The results of the last question (and the quick voxpop interviews following the survey), explain this.  It was great to see that the majority of people (57%) felt very safe travelling to school. Most of these were the people who drove to school.  Of the others, all four people who felt they were 'not safe' were cyclists (most of all the cyclists).

A small sample, I know, but everyone in this survey who felt they were 'not safe' were cyclists, and most cyclists to Queensbridge felt unsafe - it seems pretty clear why there are so few cyclists, and that Birmingham City Council has a long way to change both the perception and reality of safety on the roads.

In the interviews cars and drivers were unsurprisingly seen as part of the problem.  However cyclists themselves were also seen as part of the problem by a significant number of people.  The Headteacher also identified 'the dilema' of cycling on pavements as a problem.  It's important to remember that over 50 people a year are killed just on pavements in the UK by motor vehicles. Collision with a bicycle accounts for less than 2% of injuries caused by vehicles on pavements - Cyclists and pedestirians are the victims - including the tragic death of Hope Fennell 200 metres from the Queensbridge school.  Cycling on pavements, while far from ideal, could be saving children from death and injury on our roads.

The problem to address local to Queensbridge, as it has been for many decades now, is to make our roads and pavements safer for our vulnerable pedestrians and cyclists.

Useful links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/438040/reported-road-casualties-in-great-britain-main-results-2014-release.pdf

Know your neighbour

Best not to cut yourself off from neighbours

Last week it was time to put letters through the doors to invite everyone to our community group. It's a job I quite like doing, and one which our kids are always happy to volunteer for.  We were also delivering a first letter inviting residents to take part in 'Playing out' on two late summer afternoons.

Playing out is where we close the road for traffic for neighbours to meet up and play.  Wheelers lane is particularly lucky in that it has a stretch of green between the road and the houses which, when the service road is closed, is big enough for a game of football.  Local residents who have been there a while say kids used to play regularly on it, but since I've been living round the corner (15 years) it's mainly used as a car park, or sometimes a cut through for cars desperate to avoid traffic.

Last year we ran Playing out on national play day, 7th August  2014.  Having started our own community group earlier on that year, I thought I knew a lot of our neighbours, but I met many more, and a bit of luck with the weather gave me and my children a good chance to chat and play in the sun.

This year we're running it again, this time after school so we can invite Swanshurst school as well.  Birmingham City Council have once again waived the fee to close the road, Amey are willing to provide road blockades as and when required for free too, and Highways will give permission following assurance we will behave responsibly.

Both Swan Corner community group and 'playing out' work on different principles to gated communities, which assume keeping people away from where you live is safer:

A community group, and playing out, invites people in to where we live to make it a safer, better place.  By opening conversations and play, we hope to build trust between neighbours.  For example in our area litter, vandalism and agressive behaviour  are problems.  We've organised litter picking, planted trees and worked with residents, local groups and Swanshurst school on arts projects including making our fabulous Swan sculpture.

We're run by residents, not the council or a private business. Where there has been an opportunity to collaborate with others, like Swanshurst School, we've taken it - one of our 'playing out' sessions will also be with Moseley and Kings Heath woodcraft folk.

It's still all very new to us, and feels like an experiment.  From the start of Swan Corner Community Group many people have given good reasons to doubt it'll work. Who knows? Maybe they're right, but whatever happens, I know  we've done the right thing trying.

Useful links:

http://www.khcse.org/whos-coming-out-to-play/

http://www.khcse.org/playing-out-on-national-playday/

http://birminghamlives.blogspot.com/2014/09/looking-after-your-own.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gated-communities-and-segregated-schools-6bn-cost-of-poor-social-integration-9805025.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/property/house-and-home/rise-in-gated-communities-could-pose-a-threat-to-public-services-581318.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10206682/Fortress-Britain-No-weve-had-dozens-of-invasions.html