Tag Archives: Coplow Street
Birmingham’s first Big Dig Day
Saturday March 16th saw the first ‘Big Dig Day’ in Birmingham. Across the weekend, over 30 grow sites, allotments & community gardens opened their doors to all.
Although the weather forecast was non-too hopeful, groups all around the city put this aside, and welcomed new and existing volunteers to many varied and fun events.
Visiting my first event of the day, I arrived at Edible Eastside, to be met by Jayne & Rob. Lizzie Bean soon arrived and work began in earnest on the next stages of the earth oven.
Despite the rain, volunteers soon started to arrive, and with a fire lit, and work underway, I took my leave to visit Park Lane Garden Centre in Aston for the second stop of the day.
Park Lane were beginning their work on a new community garden next door, and as well as welcoming volunteers, Julia took time to show Clare Savage and I the plans and setting for the new garden.
A Big Dig in the Growing Gap
Every grass roots movement finds itself pulled in two directions: mucking in vs. wider coordination; hands on vs. strategy. Birmingham’s many community growing projects find themselves getting on with the former, and not so much of the latter.
An emphasis on one direction over the other leaves us with gaps: gaps in communication, gaps in in getting things done, gaps in sustaining a project. For example, at this point, the communication gap means that we don’t even know how many Birmingham groups there are!
Eating, growing and involving – the power of food to bring communities together
Around 60 local residents and members of local community groups enjoyed a food sharing session on Sunday 30th September at the Coplow Street Grow Site in Ladywood.
The Taster session was the first of a series of events organised by the North Summerfield Residents and the Black Environment Network which revolve around engaging with ethnic minority communities to celebrate, grow and share knowledge of food and food growing.
This first event of this new project to link local communities with food growing opportunities centred around a food tasting session.