Dear local councillors, fix my mom’s street
Date: 18 August 2009
To:
Mohammed.Idrees@birmingham.gov.uk,
Ansar.Ali.Khan@birmingham.gov.uk,
Tariq.Khan@birmingham.gov.uk
From: Dave Harte
Subject: demolition/regeneration of houses on Naseby road, Alum Rock
Dear all,
I am a former resident of Hazelbeach Road in Ward End (B8 3HL) and am writing on behalf of my mother, still a resident there, about our increasing concern regarding the condition of properties and land on Naseby Road. For quite some time now, a number of years as I recall, the houses on the south side of the street have gradually been vacated and demolished due to subsidence. However, a couple of the houses still remain occupied and therefore adjoining houses remain undemolished. The street is falling into significant disrepair with fenced off patches of land between the undemolished houses becoming overgrown, vandalism on the houses themselves and graffiti appearing on walls.
My writing to you now was prompted by the relatively recent vacation and boarding up of the corner house on Naseby/Hazelbeach with the result that graffiti has now appeared on the wall facing Hazelbeach. Having watched my mother, now 78, tolerate this for many years now I feel the situation must be brought to some kind of resolution.
I spent all of my childhood, up to the age of 19, on Hazelbeach road and it is an area that I remain extremely proud of. My mother continues to live there because she too is proud of the area and feels safe in a neighbourhood and house she has lived in since 1967. Yet the appearance of her immediate surroundings are being allowed to deteriorate and I find it simply unacceptable. Ward End and the area around Ward End Park are, I’m sure you would agree, hard-working working class neighbourhoods where people like my mother have spent their working lives trying to improve. Yet here we are with the City planners content to let this situation on Naseby Road drag on for years and let a proud area descend into decay.
I implore you to do all you can to intervene and help support the residents of Hazelbeach and Naseby roads to once again feel proud of their streets.
Date: 27 September 2009
To:
Mohammed.Idrees@birmingham.gov.uk,
Ansar.Ali.Khan@birmingham.gov.uk,
Tariq.Khan@birmingham.gov.uk
From: Dave Harte
Subject: Re: demolition/regeneration of houses on Naseby road, Alum Rock
I still haven’t had acknowledgment of this. Can you update me on progress of this query?
That cinematic backwater thing - maybe I just need to chill
I thought I’d leave a week until I blogged about last Monday’s ‘Cinematic Backwater‘ debate which kicked off the excellent Fazeley Digital Festival. I thought maybe I’d calm down in the interim, that the underlying issue of ‘does it matter that Norwich get cool films before Birmingham?’ would vex me less.
Suffice to say I’m still vexed. And I’m even a bit more vexed because having now aired the topic in public I could see that I wasn’t alone in feeling frustrated at the current state of film exhibition in the city. For those new to me moaning about this take a read of the original post that resulted in this event being created. I was joined by a fantastic panel: Roger Shannon - Film Producer & academic; Ian Francis - film festival curator; Rachel Carter, Film Producer and co-founder of Fullrange Media.
All agreed that yes, it did matter that some films tend to only get to Birmingham on their second-run. Not all in the audience agreed but in general the discussion covered:
- the dominance of film programming by the few to the detriment of the many;
- questioned whose role audience development is in the region;
- pondered the cultural priorities of a city where Digbeth can have three modern art galleries but no cinemas;
- debated the link between a thriving culture of exhibiting the weird/leftfield/arty/independent and the impact that might have on the films that we produce out of the region.
Roger brought with him a whole bag full of consultants’ reports from the past 20 years that in one way or another touched on the issue of whether Birmingham needs a new arts cinema. He drew our attention in particular to a recent report by Tom Fleming ‘Mixed Art-form and Media Venues in the Digital Age’ (link to PDF).
There was some reference to the Arts Lab/Triangle era and there was much nodding at the suggestion that what we need now is perhaps the best of that (its radical edge for a start) combined with the dynamic and vibrant social media scene that’s currently setting the city apart. That’s perhaps where this discussion should go next.
For me though it still comes back to competitiveness. Those in the city with access to resources and the power to influence decisions need to understand that when Norwich are getting interesting films ahead of us then the time for action is now.
Birmingham Half Marathon 2009 is go
Entries are now open for this year’s Birmingham Half Marathon taking place on Sunday October 11th. The route is changed to a flatter south Birmingham one (from last year’s undulating north/west Birmingham one) that happens to go very close to my house in Bournville. There are some undulations as you come into Bournville and it looks like the last half mile is a bit uphill but other than that it’s relatively flat. I’ve mapped an approximation of the route in g-maps:
This year’s event incorporates the World half-marathon championships so there’ll be an elite field competing for quarter of a million dollars in prize money. I still have a vague hope that Paula Radcliffe will squeeze it into her schedule as it would form the perfect build up to the New York marathon in November.
Even if she doesn’t show then rest assured I will - my entry is already in. Online entry attracts a hefty booking fee of £3.10 so it may be worth just printing out the form and putting it in the post. The race may well fill up early this year so do get your entries in ASAP.
Fine but show me how the web can solve ‘real’ issues.
There’s a great story over at Pete Ashton’s blog about how his post on the use of street advertising by the Birmingham Rep got a response from the senior staff involved (of both the Rep and the advertising company) and resulted in a solution, an apology and even a donation to charity.
Now the title of this blog post is more to bait comment than suggest that the defacing of a work of art isn’t a ‘real’ issue but I think it might be less of an issue than the systematic decay of the streets where my Mom lives in Alum Rock. I did three things to try to get some movement on this. I wrote to the local councillors for the constituency, I made a request through fixmystreet.com and I blogged about it. The letter got a response to say it was being looked at, the fixmystreet.com request got acknowledged by streatcleansing@birmingham.gov.uk very quickly but with no progress two months later and the blog post got a single comment.
So what’s going on here? How do I work the web in such a way that produces the kind of swift action we saw over the Rep’s adverts?
Birmingham - a cinematic backwater
(Trailer for Synecdoche, New York. I want to see this NOW)
First some nostalgia: I’ve been a Birmingham cinema-goer for a long time. Get me drunk enough and I’ll bore you to within an inch of your life by listing the films I’ve seen in cinemas now long gone. From The Towering Inferno in the upper circle of the ABC New Street to queuing round the block for Jaws at the Beaufort in Washwood Heath and watching Godzilla double-bills with my Mom at Ward End’s Capitol.
At some point in the mid-1980s I discovered ‘arthouse’ cinema. Or rather my brother did and I picked up his interest. The Triangle was our cinema of choice and it did that repertory thing of combining new leftfield film releases with retrospectives and cult movie double bills (I recall a packed 11pm screening of Taxi Driver and Hardcore).
One of the things I discovered as I combined a love of the mainstream with world/independent cinema is that the former would arrive in Brum on the week of release but the latter always tailed behind. I’d be getting excited by reviews of Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice only to realise that it wouldn’t be showing anywhere near here for a week or two or three after its initial release.
The reasons why were partly about the scarcity of prints and the whims of distributors but also to do with the pattern of regional film theatres established by the British Film Institute in the 1960s which effectively overlooked Birmingham as a regional centre for non-mainstream film viewing (see Terry Grimley’s excellent article in The Birmingham Post last year for more context).
This week I note that nothing’s changed. The list of non-London cities showing Charlie Kaufman’s highly-rated new film Synecdoche, New York in the week of its release include: Sheffield, Nottingham, Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool, Newcastle, Norwich, Edinburgh, Glasgow. Birmingham’s not up there. Oh we’ll get it okay - as soon as next week at the superb Electric. But that’s not good enough. I’ve been waiting until next week since the mid-1980s and I’m sick to death of it. It may be just lack of venues and when the MAC is back on stream it’ll all be fine. Or maybe we don’t have the punters, maybe they’re a more eager, cultured lot over in Norwich. If so then let’s get some audience development initiatives underway.
I doubt it somehow - we’ve been seen as a second-run city for cinema for as long as I can remember and I’m really not sure how we can change that perception. Not even publicly subsidised digital distribution has helped. Ideas anyone?
Best Lunchtime Run Ever
View Lunchtime run in a larger map
As I continue to plod my way through Edinburgh Marathon training I’ve taken to doing a bit of running at lunchtimes (now that I at last work somewhere with shower facilities). I thought it worth sharing the route with you as it’s a fantastic, popular, traffic-free run with a few interesting sights along the way.
The start could be from anywhere in the city centre or Jewellery Quarter but, as the map indicates, I start from the B1 building opposite Spring Hill library. I enter the canal near Summer Row and then proceed towards the National Indoor Arena. You could cross here and continue down the Birmingham and Worcester canal but better by far to head up the Birmingham Mainline canal, the M6 motorway of the West Midlands canal system.
I say that because it’s dead straight, very wide and with a towpath on both sides. And it’s full of lunchtime runners. Most just go up and down but I do a loop round the Soho loop. This runs at the back of the prison and then comes out again on the Mainline canal where you can head straight back to base. The straightness of the canal really lends itself to some short sprinting if you’re so inclined. There are several bridges so it’s worth trying to push hard between them and then recover to the next, repeating until you run out of bridges.
In total the run is just over 5 miles. It would make a pleasant enough walk as well. If anyone fancies coming along with me one lunchtime just ask.
Google Street View plus Fixmystreet - a winning combination
For too long now the houses in the street next to where my Mom lives (in Alum Rock, East Birmingham) have been boarded up ready for demolition. Some have gone but others remain. In fact they’ve remained that way for several years now. I don’t actually know what the plans for them are but I seem to recall that subsidence issues meant most of the street had to go.
I’ve been cross about this situation for a long time. These are the streets I grew up in after all - a proud working class neighbourhood, once predominantly Irish, now largely Asian. The gradually neglect of these streets is a disgrace and I wrote a letter to my Mom’s councillors about it a few months ago to little effect (a response from one of them promising to look into it). I pointed out that if this was a more middle-class area the situation simply wouldn’t be tolerated.
I had been meaning to bring my camera along to take some pics but with the beauty of Street View I don’t have to. There’s the whole street in its neglected glory set out for anyone to see. Have a look around. Go to Farndon road as well, that’s the same. Admire the boarded up house that confronts my Mom every time she goes to the shops.
So having grabbed a few stills from Street View I’ve now used them to make a submission to Fix My Street (or rather, Fix My Mom’s Street, that’s a website waiting to happen isn’t it?)
To give my Mom some credit she doesn’t seem too bothered about it. I’m not sure she knows how to cause a fuss but even if she knew I doubt she would. Clearly I’ve developed some kind of middle-class angst about it but if this was your Mom’s street wouldn’t you try to do something? She’s lived in this house since 1967 and she’ll probably stay in it for many years to come so the bottom line is it isn’t something she should have to tolerate. I’ll report back on progress; should there be any…..
Digital Strategy for the West Midlands
I gave a presentation at the LUCID dissemination event today in which I proposed that the region needs to think afresh about setting a strategy for identifying opportunities in the digital economy. I know, sounds grand doesn’t it. The bottom line is that I have to write a short paper for Advantage West Midlands to influence their agenda in this area.
I’ll be writing that paper on a blog platform over at digitalstrategywm.co.uk.
The theme I’m using (the same one they are using for the Digital Britain consultation) allows for comments on each paragraph which I’m hoping will get populated sufficiently so that I can work them into the paper I send back. I’d welcome co-authors as well as commentators although I’ll appreciate it if the thought of writing strategy fills you with dread. The site is looking a bit bare at the moment but I’ll be setting out the sections of the paper very soon so do subscribe to the RSS feed. In the meantime I’ve posted up the presentation that kicks it off both here and on the consultation site.