Could it be…
Yes it could…
Something’s coming…
‘Something Good’!
Sorry! Bit of a West Side Story fan! ;)
[Clears throat]
All this week, YOU can be part of a creative community art experiment taking part in Rubery – and across the city – as part of Birmingham Cathedral’s 300 year anniversary!
‘Something Good’ (measures of us) is a creative experiment which aims to measure how communities across Birmingham are feeling, as winter descends, by asking residents to answer a question every day for five days using a small digital box in locations within their communities.
As part of the project – a collaboration between between Orit Azaz, Redhawk Logistica and Lisa Koeman on behalf of Birmingham Cathedral – daily questions will all request an emotive response, with participants being asked to agree, remain neutral or disagree.
From Monday 28th November until Friday 2nd December, each community’s feelings will then be displayed, from dusk, on a large illuminated boarding their neighbourhood – in Birmingham City Centre, Hall Green, Handsworth, Hodge Hill, Rubery and Sutton Coldfield.
The event will culminate with a full display of all the community boards from across Birmingham in the Cathedral Square on Saturday 3rd December.
Organisers hope the event will create discussion and engagement within and between communities.
Artistic Director, Orit Azaz, said: “measures of us is … a pilot, an experiment to explore potential for a city wide creative conversation using light based artworks in surprising ways. It is a way of bringing people from different areas and backgrounds together and creating a sense of connection across different parts of the city. People will have a chance to express how they feel, and then see how others in their own neighbourhood, and others areas feel too. We hope they will also suggest new questions that they would like to ask their neighbours and people who live in other parts of Birmingham.”
St Chad’s Revd Claire Turner said: “Rubery is a great place with a strong sense of community pride but like many other parts of the country, people are aware that they don’t know their neighbours as well as they used to. We also know that Rubery sits on the border between Worcestershire and Birmingham, on the edge of the urban and the rural, in between the town and the countryside. This project gives this community a great opportunity to get to know who we are and who our neighbours are.”
The Very Revd Catherine Ogle, Dean of Birmingham, said: “The Cathedral is so pleased to be enabling a city wide and imaginative conversation celebrating common values. We believe that the diverse communities of Birmingham, of all faiths and none, can enjoy sharing in common humanity.”
The project’s findings will feed into research by ICRI Cities: Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities and UCLIC: University College London Interaction Centre led by researcher Lisa Koeman. Focussing on designing technology for urban communities that enables people to have their say as well as allowing them to see the opinions of others, Measures of Us will be the first time that the researchers will have deployed easy-to-use and engaging community technologies, such as the voting boxes at a city scale. The study will enable them to learn which aspects of technologies, like those used in the project, affect community engagement.
Participate!
Where and when can you answer the daily questions?
- Monday 28th Nov: 11.15am-12.15pm & 7-9pm at St Chad’s
- Tuesday 29th Nov: 9-5 at Gracie Mai’s, Mica Kennedy’s Hardware, Robinsons Opticians or Rubery Library
- Wednesday 30th Nov: 10am-12pm & 2.30pm-4pm at St Chad’s
- Thursday 1st Dec: 9-5 at Gracie Mai’s, Mica Kennedy’s Hardware, Robinsons Opticians or Rubery Library
- Friday 2nd Dec: 10am-12pm at St Chad’s
The display will be visible outside St Chad’s Church in New Road every evening from dusk, Monday – Friday
Venue details:
- Gracie Mai’s Tea Room – 185 New Road
- Mica Kennedy’s Hardware – 188 – 190 New Road
- Rubery Library – 7 Library Way
- Robinson Opticians – 135 New Road
- St Chad’s Church, New Road
Final event:
4-8pm Saturday 3rd December in Cathedral Square, Birmingham B3 2QB
