Community Health in my brave new world

Volunteers recieving award from Coop

Yesterday I took a couple of trees worth of willow along to the Heart of England NHS annual community health fair.  John Boyle from Midlands Coop had asked me to come - see Fairtrade Blog for more photos. 

I got lucky - on arriving a handful of volunteers from Joseph Chamberlain College helped me get set up, trial my activity, and spent the rest of the day wearing willow crowns and waving wands all around the event.  Someone from 'Heart of England NHS foundation asked if I could make a willow heart (why didn't I think of that?).  I gave it a go and before long, decorated heart wands were as popular as the stars.

Exchanging a 'wish for a wand' generated a tree worth of comments which reflected conversations we had making and decorating our wands.  The free chocolate, interestingly was turned down by many (on health and diet grounds?).  The event was really fun - great atmosphere, and got to meet loads of interesting and different folk.

It's glass half full, I know, but being cut off from my main source of revenue, training, networking, everything (creative partnerships) isn't all bad.  I probably wouldn't have got to go to this event, go to wikipedia workshop later next month, think more about what it is I want to do, sort out the garden, and generally work just as hard for half the money!  But today, I'm loving it.

Search for a hero

Last week has been really exciting as Paganel Primary School decided to take a whole week to explore heroes in every class - Greek, local, vegetable and every other variety.  Everyone loves heroes.  It's a great tool for learning - to think about our heroes and villains, those we know, we imagine, or the ones in all of us.

I was leading two days of workshops on, 'Food heroes and villains'.  First thoughts on 'Food Heroes' was nutritional and healthy food - Initial chat with school suggested children and parents are not necessarily very familiar with fruit and veg (See brown bags vs. mystery meat).  This fitted well with my feelings to try and keep what 'heroes' and 'villains' the children chose (and why) open - partly to see what they already knew, but mainly to see what they thought about fruit and veg.  We choose to only look at fruit and veg, and not muddy the waters with processed or other foods.

Only veg and fruit (no obvious sweets, crisps or other bad boys) meant focus was on veg and fruit, but also on what children thought about the good stuff.  Not surprisingly, the look or the taste seemed more important to children than any health or other considerations.

So what makes a hero, or a villain?

Spiky Cucumber is caught stealing.
 Pumpkin and Sweetcorn save the day.

'Heroes save the world.'

'Heroes always help people.'

'Heroes are kind and think about other people.'

'Villains want to rob and keep it all for themselves.'

'Villains take over the world.   They want to control everything.'

The children understood straight away.   Every child in the school has been encouraged in this week to tell us about their own (personal) hero.  Children as young as four were quite capable to articulate what made a 'hero' and why.  Whether it's a Daddy, an Uncle or a family friend, children understood:

'He is kind because he helps people by taking them to hospital for treatment.'

Pyn Stockman, the creative practitioner working with other classes was making masks of heroes, based largely on the children's personal heroes.  We had vegetables, and not really enough time, staff or proper risk assessment to introduce carving.

So we concentrated on accessorising our vegetables, and creating scenery, lighting, other means of making a story, with the help of our storyboards.  Every child made their own hero or villain, but worked towards developing teamwork - children working together to create their stories.   The stories needed at least one hero and one villain for a story anyway, and this provided a means to make teams and explore why or how a hero does what he or she does.  Teamwork is recognised as important by teaching staff, but:

'We don't often work together like this.  It's not easy to assess individuals.'

The heroes lent a helping hand for the children to reflect:

'Heroes can work together.  Villains aren't very good at it.' (child comment)

The project has been really well supported by all the staff at the school, and both the Head and Deputy visited and talked to the children.  For a moment I worried what response the head teacher would get when he walked into a lively class and ask children, 'Where's the learning?'  Everyone was having fun, but the heroes were working tirelessly on the learning - children were having discussions together about what being a hero is all about, and the challenges of working together to save the world!

Teacher comment:

'Some of them found it quite difficult to work together...[The children said] 'I don't want this to happen, I don't want that to happen'.  They're a very independent bunch that like their own ideas.  They all enjoyed it...it will help teamwork in the class, and tomorrow if they actually put other people's heroes into their [creative writing] stories, that'll be great!'

Child comment:

'It's hard to work together when it is working in a noisy team.  It can be hard.  You need to listen to each other.'

Useful links:

Fruit and veg city


Bad School Lunches uncovered

What is a fair share?

There's no consultant in team

Unless you're in a team of consultants.  As creative partnerships draws to an end, more people in my team are calling themselves creative consultants.  I guess some people think of me as a consultant too, but there is something about it which has always made me uncomfortable.

We are 'creative agents', experienced creative professionals who are highly skilled in working in educational settings, acting as a 'critical friend' to schools.  But if a consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice (wiki), what's the difference?

As Creative Partnerships ends, so will the term 'creative agent', so what can I call myself so people know what I do?

First off, what does a consultant, or consultancy, look like?  Well, according to google image search, it's either something to do with a missing jigsaw piece, or two strong, white, masculine, suited hands shaking.

A consultant is someone you call on when you have a problem.  Maybe in a recession, one of the best businesses to be in is consultancy.  Consultants are brought in to research or solve a problem, but generally have no actual responsibility to implement the change advised.


That's what I am most uncomfortable with - consultants are not part of any team.  Even though I have been mostly self-employed now for a long time, I need to feel part of a group, team, whatever.  That's why I'm going back to calling myself 'Community Art Worker', even if Community is not a popular term anymore.  Truth is, it never really has been.  


Derived from 'common' its usage dates back to the middle ages, meaning simply 'those who share'.  As with common, it has been associated with ''normality', 'vulgarity', 'inferiority' and 'of low social status' (OED).  Google images of community are of people, lots of people, colour and loads of hands holding (not shaking), jigsaw pieces (clearly a lot of jigsaw fans out there), the odd wheelchair, bike, and not a middle-aged suited banker in sight.


Even in 1970s, the heyday for 'community art', it was seen as, 'a kind of folksy Marxism' (J. Pick, 1980).  Pick goes on to say community art workers 'use the means of expression excluded by too haughty definitions of the 'arts'.  In this the word community returns to its former meaning, that of purposeful amateur activity.'


Socially responsible, sharing, amateur - doing it for the love of it.  I feel like I'm getting back to words I can happily stick my name to.  It's cheesy in buckets, and I'm not so keen being called 'average', 'vulgar' or 'inferior', but at least I'm not a consultant.

Techno Toddlers riding homemade horses

I was taking photos of children at our stay and play, and immediately the children wanted to see themselves.  Inagine a world where you couldn't see the photo immediately? Not for these toddlers.

My  Blackberry, only marginally younger than the children, looked like a bit of a brick to them.  They all had their fingers trying to push the photos on to see some more.

Two thoughts - first of all, this touch screen technology is genuinely easy enough for a toddler to use, and the toddlers in my stay & play have access to cutting edge technology.  Hmm.

Also a good excuse to show our video.  Horses made by residents at Evergreen Care Home, ridden by the Jockeys at Kings Heath Community Centre Stable (consent from parents).

Connecting Young and Old - Art Swap

This project is a bit of an experiment, and not sure where, or how far it will go, but I'm quite excited about the possibilities.  A care home I have worked in on off for fifteen years contacted me again, after a break of some three years, interested in xmas craft activities.

I have met a couple of times since then, both times with my daughter Freya (2 years old), who seemed to cheer up the old people more than I can.  I was pushed to commit time to start a new project, but keen to keep connection.  The only time I have is on a Thursday afternoon, when I care for Freya, so we arranged to start workshops, but instead of having Freya along as an extra, we've planned the project to include her, and all her friends, in Kings Heath Community centre stay and play group on Thursday mornings.

Part inspired by Kate Brookes's sock puppet project, we've started making pompoms (a craft they had all done previously) and I have taken photos of them making them, to give the pompoms to the stay and play group.  I photoed (with consent) the children playing, and me and Freya came back to the home with photos this Thursday.  All good feedback from children, parents and the old people.  Next week we will start on making sock horses at the old people's home for a race at the stay and play.  I'm also planning to do art and craft activities in the stay and play to give to the old people.

We could continue in this vein, but I'd also like to develop a social media element - photo collation, film clips, audio could be made available to old people, their family, parents and children at the stay and play.  This would be something new for many of the partners, and I'm aware the technology may prove too much, or simply that the artwork and connection is more valueable through the artefacts and people themselves.  Also issues of consent to sort out.  More photos when I've cracked that one.

The Sarah Jane Archives

My first laptop! - Compaq LST128, top of the range

At the end of my 'O' levels, I symbolically ripped every sheet of notes, coursework, everything, and burned them. For one scary moment the flames licked the ceiling and I was reminded that by ripping them all up, I had increased the surface area exposed to air, therefore impressive flame (I always liked physics).

Fortunately, the pitifully low volume of fuel also meant the fire lasted less than a minute, and school was safe.

My 'A' level notes and first degree notes went much the same way, but by the early 1990s I had a green screen laptop the size of a small car, 'wordperfect' had made me legible, and I discovered Papyrus Bibliography system!  My computer may have had the RAM of a modern fridge, but for the first time I could catalogue my notes, list, add keywords, search by author, date, anything. For the first time my notes were useful for something other than fuel.

Sarah Jane's computer, Mr Smith

Sarah Jane (Dr Who spin off on cbbc) also has a computer the size of a small car, but with much better special effect add ons. This morning Luke (son of Bane, with near perfect memory recall) was using said computer, Mr Smith, to create his own backup of aliens encountered, and a new spin off series.

I've worked a lot with archives and appreciate their value to future generations. In our (Birmingham's) archives, I'm also aware how little 'primary' material there is written by young people in our archives (rather than 'secondary' i.e. About children, of which there is quite a lot). It's a tough one, but the pandora box opened by our new technologies, accessible, properly catalogued information recorded by young people (and other poorly represented groups and comunities) is an opportunity we need to take full advantage of.

Today on Radio 4 news following the Cumbrian floods (again) a victim was upset about loosing the most valuable thing to her - the photos and artwork of her children.  Our own children's work holds a special place for each of us, but how important is the artwork and voice of our children now, and what should we be doing to listen to, celebrate, document, and archive it for future (or even the same) generation?

Our own Creative Partnerships database does document and evaluate our work in schools extensively, and I hope will be put to good use when CP is no more in July. However, is this really going to hit our own (CP's) objectives to empower young people, providing open access to all? In Foucault's terms where does the knowledge and power reside?

Luke ended the programme with a pithy remark which sums up archives for me - 'I hope this is useful to you, Sarah Jane, or whoever you are, in the future , to save the world.'

Bright Space beyond creative partnerships

My workshed is coming on a pace now.  I've already spent a fair bit of time on it, and temptation is, in present economic climate, to spend a lot more time in there, head down and get on with work, while all the cuts hit.  Bright Space, the organisation I've worked with a fair bit, which 'promotes brighter futures for young people through arts and culture' is one of countless organisations in Birmingham under threat at the moment.

More than a decade ago, I started an organisation with a few friends, 'Birmingham Lives' - celebrating the lives of older people in Birmingham. At it's zenith, in 2003, I think we had a dozen members, including our cat, Poppy. I can't remember how many meetings we had - it wasn't many. Me and Poppy were the most regular attendees, but the existence of an 'organisation' opened up opportunities for funding, and, for a time, we did quite well.

The end of the Millennium was a good time for oral history based intergenerational projects. Carl Chinn opened our first exhibition, and shortly after began his own, much bigger, Birmingham Lives Archives. Chris Upton, academic, local historian and writer for Birmingham Post was fantastic in supporting our modest contribution to local history, and the more important work of valuing the lives of young and old in Birmingham, but as time went on, funding became harder to come by and people started to move on.

My first experience of Creative Partnerships in Birmingham, to become Bright Space in 2008, was an invite to Marie's house, the then creative director, for xmas meal 2004 with Nikki.  I remember having a long chat with Katy Aquaye-Tonge, and it was then I decided I'd start looking out for opportunities to work with CP.  In 2005 I worked with the Quinzone 'Associate CP' Cluster (Qunizone Action Zone is another org likely to disappear soon) and Birmingham archives on two projects - the Ballad of Baskerville with John H-D and 'Playground games' with Worlds End Infants, Graham Langley and John H-D.

Since then I had the best training experience ever with Vivien Hampson to become a creative agent, working under a number of talented creative directors - Rob Elkington, Lesley Green and now Deborah Kermode.  Being part of the 'family', supporting each other, we deliver some really exciting work with young people, sharing our experiences to make for a better future.  Working for Bright Space has been a life changing experience, for me personally, developing my practice and influencing the lives of other creative practitioners, teachers, and of course, young people.  We have, right now, one of the most extensive networks of teachers, creative practitioners, and others interested in working creatively with young people in the West Midlands.   We are highly experienced in delivery of a range of diverse creative activities.  We are best positioned to champion creativity in our region.

It would be easy to go our own ways, keep our heads down, get on with things - afterall, we all need to earn a living.  But if we don't get out there, promote the work we (Bright Space and all the other endangered creatives) are doing, stick together, share experiences, develop our community, what are we saying about the future for young people?

Net works or networks in Frankley

In 2007, we had just completed training as the first cohort of Creative Agents at Bright Space.  Holly Hill Church School had funding to prepare for their Change application and for us to trial our new creative agent roles - I took more the role of the creative agent at Reaside, and Juliet Raynsford was more the creative agent at Holly Hill, although both of us shared roles.

Juliet’s specialism matched Reaside’s drama interest, becoming an enquiry on ‘How can drama change the world?’. At Holly Hill they were interested in developing and supporting the wider school community with no fixed media. This became ‘What makes School?’

At Holly Hill, we started working with the school council. Previous council minutes were dominated by school dinners, which seemed like a natural starting point. Inspired partly by the work of Stan’s Cafe in a local primary, we started to ‘make school’ out of school dinner. We explored archives, made our own bricks from clay in the playground, experimented with cakes and other materials before creating an art installation made entirely from bits and pieces brought in or found in the school.

There were difficulties, and although a number of creative partnership projects had run at Holly Hill previously, this appeared to be the first attempt at a ‘whole school’ creative project. The groundwork had been done for our ‘Change Programme’ and although over the next year we worked mainly outdoors, our area of focus did not change. We were interested in promoting creativity across the whole school, to support and develop more general social skills, and look to the wider school, Frankley and Birmingham communities.

In those early tendering, real paper database days, I contacted a few people we thought would be good, and introduced them to the staff on a staff training day. Everyone liked each other, and itching to get going with the work, we arranged a visit to the wonderful Bishops Wood Forest School Centre with staff, parents and children, in what was to be a fabulous start to avery productive year, working with Sarah Jenkinson, Gillian Twaite, Marcella Erskine & Nick Williams. The real find of the year turned out to be on the doorstep - 100 yds away was the ancient Balaam Wood, previously unknown to most of the staff, and apparently never before ventured into with children.

The end of the year came suddenly, and so ended the funding from Creative Partnerships.  There was no opportunity to continue with CP. The project had been a wonderful creative adventure for all involved, but where was the embedding of practice? How could we continue? Caroline Proctor found additional funding to carry on. Initially the nursery and music specialist teacher employed Marcella to continue weekly music workshops and related CPD. Then in Spring funding and time was found to work on ‘Our Community’ - a project I had suggested, and was invited to come back as creative practitioner to deliver.

For ‘Our Community’ I had grand plans of involving parents, community leaders, local organisations, everyone in school in a project working mainly outside school, supported by digital media. I don’t think I’d properly considered we would be working with a tenth of a change school budget, or indeed that although I felt digital and social media would really help, I don’t think anyone else did.

For initial research I googled Frankley, and found ‘Frankley Travelodge’ top of the list, followed by houses for sale, more ‘Travelodge’ references, ‘Frankleytalk’ - a local schools podcasting site set up with previous CP funding, the parish council site, a local businesses site claiming ‘Frankley is much more than just a motorway service station’, and Frankley Library site.

Initially I contacted Podnosh, responsible for Frankleytalk, thinking this could be the start of
something interesting. Over the course of the month or so I was inputting to the site, I watch it steadily move from tenth to first on the ‘Frankley Birmingham’ google-o-meter. Looking back I
should have taken more notice that Frankleytalk had ceased to be used for nearly two years,
and that the low number of visits to any Frankley websites meant that my usage of ‘Frankleytalk’
was probably the sole reason for its rise in popularity. This, my first experiment in blogging, was useful to me, but probably not to anyone else in Frankley.

I had, however, made contact with a number of different community partners, and the
workshops included visits to Frankley Library, Frankley City Learning Centre, and several visits
back to Balaam Wood supported by the Park Ranger service, Adam Bates from OPAL, Nick
Williams and the wonderful Friends of Balaam Wood. For me it was great to see connections
made in the previous year being developed. Teaching staff regularly use Balaam Wood
creatively for a range of different curricula areas and year groups. The Library were renewing
links with teaching staff and children, and the City Of Learning Centre developed further
work with Holly Hill after our visit. We had, of course, other outcomes, including the creation
of ‘Steve the Colourmaker’ - a giant collaborative chalk silhouette artwork outside the school
(see chalk images above), and created a lovely home for Steve and cutouts of all the chalk monsters made from silhouettes in Balaam Wood. We also had a lot of fun and achieved a number of learning objectives too.

Maybe digital networking hasn’t worked here, but the contacts and networks made through Holly
Hill’s Change Year have made a big difference and continue. Although Creative Partnership's funding ceased over a year ago now, a creative philosophy and practice continues at Holly Hill. The hard work of staff, parents and children at Holly Hill, together with their community will maintain outstanding creative practice.

Preserving the past - cave paintings

Rouffignac cave paintings look like nothing when reproduced in image like this.  Only way to see them is in the caves.  The composition, the way the drawings work together, here with ten mamouths together, but most impressively on the roof of main cave - twenty or more fabulous drawings, all working best when viewed from particular points of the cave, where the animals begin to really gain movement and flow together.  So well thought out and executed.  There are over 200 images in this cave.  Shame couldn't make it to more caves.

An odd feeling to be connected with early homosaps from 12,000 years ago, and to admire the craft of whoever it was who did it.  Also the importance of preserving orginal work.  There is a cave closeby 'Lascaux II' a replica of the orginal cave, with far more and more colour workings recently discovered.  Access to the orginal is not possible so they faithfully recreated.  I wasn't that interested to see it, when could see originals, albeit lesser 'quality'.

Rouffignac had been damaged by visitors with flame torches in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it had taken a lot of skilled work to remove marks made over the orginal, but it is still 'original'.  There are challenges preserving the past, tough judgements to be made.

Normandy and Bayeux

A long drive and light closing in Normandy when we approach our first campsite.  It was called 'Camp Oasis'.  Sadly the 'Camp Oasis' we'd booked was ten miles up the coast.  No matter, we got there in the morning, slightly cleaner, three not two stars, but still no toilet seats.  That must be four star.  So, what to do in Normandy mid summer with three children under 7?

We went for the truly awesome Bayeux tapestry.  There was a bit of a queue - I'd have settled for the tea towel, but Nikki was determined, so three hours later, we were there.  Slightly disappointed not to see Harold Hardrada there, or the giant beserker who held Stanford Bridge, or Harold's mates Magnus and Eric, which had made the bulk of my story to keep kids going in the queue, but that's Normans for you.  Although apparently it was probably made by English nuns.

Anyway, 68 metres of embroidery with English audio did,amazingly, keep all children enthralled for the hour or so we were there.  It's got to be up there with Eiffel Tower for top things to do in France.  One of the oldest works of community art in existence!

Digitise my life

The other day I was challenged about my 100 hour challenge - Isn't my challenge just doing my job? Which...erm... it is, kind of. Can't get round that really. And another thing - what exactly is my challenge?

Well first of all, what is it I do for my job? I'd like to think as Community Art worker, what I do is value people's lives and support people to express themselves the way they want to.
It's about making connections between different jobs, people, places, home, interests in a meaningful way - its' beginning to sound more and more like connectivism, a theory I knew nothing about until recently, or 'social constructivism', which sounds a lot nicer.

And that's where using digital stuff starts getting exciting (hold back your enthusiasm). Like all good systems, they kind of reflect, or fit, what your view of reality already is. For Community Art Workers, like teachers and other community-minded types, we have a natural affinity for connectivism. The potential for connecting in digital is phenomenal - I am very excited about what Podnosh are doing in our area at the moment in Balsall Heath and other Bham areas exactly because of this.

So, coming back to 100 hour challenge, in roundabout kind of way, it is just doing my job. My 100hrs is about long periods of reflection, longer periods of experimenting with digital stuff out there, and even more networking, real and digital, which should be 'just doing my job'. It's really ring fencing a period of time for me to develop. Something I should be doing anyway, but I guess like lots of people, I end up getting caught up in work. It is an opportunity for me to digitise my life. I have also started to digitise my wife (she now blogs and has started Facebook, after years of resistance!), and looking forward to supporting others to digitise, getting back to community art worker definition, to connect and support people to express themselves the way they want to.

Day 2

Started brief twitterings. Had a couple of followers I don't know. Don't know why, but if they like it... Blogging is also starting to build and provide good record of work and also starting to refer back to them. Also Shenley one is now at end of project, so effectively dead, or dieing, but that's cool, because it was intended as a work journal and now the project has ended. Now more of an archive.

After a bit of experimentation, Paganel Primary school have started to encourage creative practitioners to keep their reflections on their own blogs, accessible to the school. That will be 5 practitioners, a teacher or two and me, so a real network of reasonable size which should work. I think this model is interesting - it keeps the blogs of Creative practioners belonging to the creative practitioners. I'm also hoping it will aid proper regular reflection for CPs and fabulous record for me, school and CPs to know what is happening and what has happened.

I'm also in touch with Podnosh to start a Digital Surgery in Weoley. I think this is a risky but potentially the most powerful bit of work I will do over next 100 days to network, share and support others. I'm also keen to bridge gap between schools and communities, supported by an open, sharing digital community media. My analysis of present situation is stuff happening in schools, stuff happening in communities. Only contact is for a particular project, normally led strongly by a school or by a community group with little real partnership or review beyond length of a project/visit. Already have good links with Weoley Library, schools in area, and other community groups I've worked with recently, in particular the Shenley Community Centre Groups. People have good reason to start conversations, but it will involve moving out of 'comfort zone' to meet others.

Next to do is experiment with Wordpress and meet with Podnosh. Need to start making more definite arrangements for Surgeries.

In the beginning

This blog takes its title the first big project I was involved with in 1997. A lot's happened since then, but my direction, purpose, mission, whatever you like to call it, always seems to comes back to it.

'Home is where the Art is', was the first project which pulled together all the various oral history, art and craft, drama, xmas crafts, work in old people's homes and other work together with my personal commitment, valuing the lives of people around me, old and young.

A couple of years earlier I had quitted the first year of a PhD creating a Computer Car Crash Simulation programme in Swansea, and now I felt I could call myself a community art worker!

My work, my home, my values and my interest in creativity and art all led to where I am now. 'Home is where the Art is' is my attempt to make some kind of sense of it all.