As part of Culture Central’s project development support within the Cultivate Heritage programme, we delivered an informational webinar highlighting one of The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s investment principles ‘Inclusion, Access and Participation’. The session encourages organisations to hold this principle as a high priority in the development of their heritage project.
The webinar explores:
Creative approaches to heritage and feature presenters and case studies demonstrating good practice approaches to ‘Inclusion’ creative partnerships and collaborations.
Access – Approaches to make heritage projects more accessible to D(d)eaf, disabled and neurodivergent audiences, staff and volunteers.
Participation – Share tips and strategies for meaningful community engagement and attracting diverse audiences, and an overview of the principles of project co-design/co-production.
Our guest speakers were:
Phoebe Gilmore – Public Programme Development Manager, Moseley Road Baths – will be sharing a case study on MRB’s creative programming approach to heritage, with an emphasis on partnerships and collaborations for inclusive engagement.
Stephanie Tyrrell – Head of Arts at Sense – will be presenting on various approaches to make heritage projects more accessible to D(d)eaf, disabled and neurodivergent audiences, staff and volunteers and highlighting the fundamentals of accessibility and the key steps to engagement and support.
Paul Warwick – Co-Artistic Director at China Plate – will share how their Birmingham 2022 Festival heritage project ‘To the Streets’ Production, embedded the principles of co-creation/design for community engagement and participation.
and we’d love to also know who’s in the room so if you can just drop your name in the chat and the organization that you’re with that will be great and and you obviously use this opportunity to connect with each other as well so um we’ll get started my name is Charlene Carter James I’m the Partnerships and development manager at culture Central I’m a black woman with black afro hair and it’s tied up in a kind of Tang colored head wrap you probably can’t see my dress but I’m wearing like a green stripy um jump address um I’ll give you a little bit of an idea of the webinar overview so this is an overview of today’s session um we’ll have a little bit of time for um a short Q&A at the end but if you have any questions as you go along please feel free to drop them in the chat and my colleague YZ will and I will also look at what comes up so at the end we can we can call them out oops I’ve gone a bit too far so I’ll tell you a little bit so we’ve got um some great presenters today we’re going to have a case study um of mosy Road baths um and we’re going to have another look at another amazing project with a Heritage focus called to the streets through Paul from China plate and we’re also going to have the principles of project accessibility and that will be um presented by Stephanie um later on this afternoon so I’ll tell you a little bit about the program um so as part of cultivate Heritage program this webinar is part of a series of activities that we’re doing to raise awareness of national lotteries um recently launched grant program um and today we’re emphasizing the importance of one of four of their imp investment principles inclusion access and participation and that’s with an name of supporting creative program approaches to Heritage um and that’s with a view that the Arts and Heritage and creative adjacent organizations will apply for the funding with an ambitious project um and this will be part of the legacy of the Birmingham 2022 Festival if anyone can remember that it’s a little bit of a distant memory but we’re still pushing the legacy of the games um and it would be fantastic if out of this activity that we’re doing um that some people are inspired um to do some really creative projects with Heritage um lots of collaborations and connections are made off the back of this and hopefully you’ll have a a really competitive application for the new Heritage grants program what I wanted to do before we get into the the the presentations is just have a quick look at the investment principles just so that we’re clear around what then under the new heritage lottery strategy is what that looks like now so before under the old mechanism it looked very different now they’ve kind of condensed everything into four main investment principles and that saving Heritage protecting the environment organizational sustainability and inclusion access and participation so all four of these investment principles do need to be taken into account so although we’re just focusing on one today it really is up to to the applicant to decide the strength and focus of each of those as long as they’re all included you can still um demonstrate a stronger focus on one particular investment principle so we can look at that in a little bit more detail so this is what heritage Lottery says this is what they mean by inclusion access on participation so I’ve pulled this directly from their website and essentially what they mean by inclusion access on par ipation I’ve kind of underlined some of the areas that we’re going to be touching on today so there’s things around like Heritage for people and investing in volunteering Heritage care careers co-creating projects leadership Knowledge and Skills um also around removing barriers to access and participation so so for people that we would like as culture centry would say we would use the term traditionally excluded from the sector they use the term people underserved um by Heritage and allowing different audiences to explore and share their Heritage in the same way and that’s with a focus of of stories as well and the cultivate Heritage program has an emphasis on supporting Partnerships and collaborations and co-creations um to support inclusion um and with the 2020 the 2033 Heritage strategy Heritage Lottery want to increase diversity remove barriers um and enable enabling everyone’s Heritage to be recognized and there is a a bit of a focus around like making accessible through technology so digital um creative digital uses um to make Mak in Heritage more accessible um to different audiences so that’s a little bit more in detail um I can also send you an overview of all of this in a separate document for you to have so just so that you’re clear on the investment principles um CU I I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out through through misinterpretation but um so that’s it I’ll tell you a little bit before I hand over to our amazing presenters today I mentioned we have Phoebe Gilmore who is the programs program and development manager at mosy Road bass and I will be handing over to to them to give us a little bit of a case study we’ve got Stephanie TL we’ve got Paul wari um who will be giving us some really great really interesting projects that they’ve delivered with a Heritage Focus um and touching on inclusion access and demonstrating how this could be done within your own projects as well so without further Ado I’m going to hand over to Phoebe hi uh yes so as Charlene said I’m DV I’m the public program development manager here at mosy Road bass I’m going to apologize if there’s any background sound I co-work um currently out of the National Trust offices based in The Roundhouse and I saw someone from The Roundhouse is here hello um I’m a white person with pale skin mousy brown hair um currently slick back in a bun um and uh a pair of cycling sunglasses that do not come off my head um I’m pretty sure they are a permanent f um I’m just going to share my screen um so the mostly Road Bath is um give you a bit of context about the organization itself the building was opened in 1907 um it is a public bath house and swimming pool it was originally segregated via class and gender men’s first class men’s second class and women’s um and that is on the facade of the building as well um and it has um continu continuously hosted swimming uh and I think is the only public pool built before World War I to have continuously hosted swimming um and it has also been used for several functions throughout um the over the century that it’s existed um and hosted um a variety of activities alongside swimming and B um the diving it was left in a over a period of the 116 17 years it was left in a period of sort of disrepair uh and um in 2016 the friends of mosy Road baths were formed to campaign to save it um and after a decade of uh Relentless and persistent um Community activism and campaigning um it was listed on World Monuments uh fund Heritage at risk register which is an International Register that’s sort of the Catalyst moment for a whole slurry of partners coming around the table uh to save the building and it’s now undergoing a 32.7 million pound Capital restoration program along with the library as well uh which is directly next door to it uh and it appears as one building um so with with that it’s split into two phases and what’s called the activity program or the creative program is also split into two phases there’s the development phase up front um let me see if the screen uh which is round one um this is Max twoyear duration uh it’s sort of a research phase a lot of consultation who are our audiences who are not our audiences what do people want and that that goes across everything that goes across the capital works and designs themselves um it goes cost the activities uh and it also goes into the operational um consideration of the building as well and what that business plan will look like um the second phase um will is Max five years and that’s sort of the delivery of of everything we’ve learned over the past two years all culminating and that’s still to come um just to talk a little about the capital works because it’d be a Miss to to not mention them is the access is woven through the capital designs as well so that includes sort of retrofitting uh lift access ramp access and also widening doorways doorways were a lot smaller um and so in instilling that building best practice through that as well um so we’ve just undergone a bit of business planning and it’s really important that that is done um and um just to give you a slight overview swimming is at the Beating Heart of what we do our spaces are packed with diverse programs we’re proud of our heritage and we’re inspired and operate with and for local communities it’s the very existence of the CIO itself exists because of community activism and active participation we are still owned by the city council but we are operated as the charity um our approach to Heritage so the Heritage for themselves let you Define heritage um but moso bath remains an operational swimming pool and that’s crucial to visitors understanding the history and Heritage of the building the We Believe Heritage is not static it is constantly in motion um and it also reveals something about the very here and now and today as well as the past um and how can we articulate that future through how we practice operations today um and so we’ve done that through um piloting a variety of socially engaged Pro uh approaches including co-design co-creation steering groups consultation and that that really changes the authorship of who gets to author that Heritage and how is that value assigned or unassigned through that process what matters to people through that process of of codesign co-creation and consultation um a little bit about our approach to participation as well participation um is something we value from people just walking in and out again being being curious and being curious is sort of centered at this all the way through to being a trustee which um they’re sort of the opposite ends of the scale but one isn’t valued more than the other um but they do come with different levels of responsibility and levels of Engagement um so just to talk about our pilot program so over the past 14 months time keeps passing so I have to keep extending that over the past 14 months we ran four pilot projects so the first of all was the slipper bath pilot and this was about reanimating one of the original slipper bath cubicles don’t think Roman bathing think individual private slipper bath cubicles and to work out exactly who um would would be able to access these in a building that currently doesn’t have the Retro fitting um and what would what would that offer look like um Beyond Beyond a bath and and and people who um are easily ACC uh easily access and have um the means to do so that experience so we went out and consulted with six different groups 91 different people uh and sort of said what what would um this this experience look like to you in centering the concept of necessary luxury or public luxury within that um we also so that that culminated in um you know people really experiencing um really centering what what’s that experience um and actually it was about how to tailor that um and how could how could we do that so we um put a speaker in the mirror so people could connect to the speaker and pick what they chose and it sort of that experience was door to door um guided um being naked in a public building is quite quite vulnerable thing and so actually ensuring the operational safety was the first thing that came through um with that process we also then had Borel Heath’s living room pilot which was a third space um project um about very literally not conceptually turning an emptied garpal into a living room space um we delivered this with a huge amount of Partnerships um and that that’s really crucial is that there were 12 organizations um with a paid partnership involved and that’s 63 freelancer opportunities within that um and that was three months of design build and programming um as well as no programming to allow that that Curiosity and living room space um I think here you can see um there’s some images on the screen um there’s an 8 foot uh TV screen um which had three channels um curated by flatback um we had um beautiful um wall hangings um which were commissioned by or Gallery um by nupa Yasmin um and then friction Arts um sort of glued all of those pieces together to create this living room um there were over those three months there were 421 visits I think the the the key here is this was previously an area of the bath that wasn’t continuously opened it was sort of padlocked we’d open it just um for our weekly programming things such as capera or floristry um and and that was built this project was built on those existing relationships and activities that we’ we’d sort of been um increasing over a period of 3 years before that um we also had um within the living room um a a previously unused Courtyard space um and this partnership was with parakeet um about co-creating a a child Le space um and what would a child Le and accessible space um look like for for this Courtyard um and how could we alleviate parents from that uh and play was something that really came through and souled play um and that’s actually something that that we’ve taken away this was um sort of uh a gem in the project that that that’s going to lead to more um policy work around having a play policy how do we Center a play workers approach to risk for children and play how do we make sure that play is accessible in an area where the green spaces aren’t um look as cared for as other green spaces within the city um bourel Heath where the bats is situated has um one of the highest levels of uh environmental justice which means there is a real lack of Green Space um in in Birmingham city as a council um he then had The Imaginarium pilot um this um partnership was really key so I mentioned originally that we consulted with 99 people for the slipper bats well one of those groups um was BH cats which is Borel Heath uh child action team um and it’s a coalition of parents with disabled children um who campaign um and take action to ensure that their children have access um um to public spaces and activities um and it was very apparent that we would not be able in our current format um to to provide them a bath um they wouldn’t be able to take the their their children into the baths and for it to be a safe space for them to do that um and we in partnership with the library realized that the library in its current form is ostensibly physically accessible but there is a lot of apprehension about the rules the unwritten rules of a library um and so it was very apparent that there had to be a clear cue an invitation to play and this is where that play comes back into it um and um so we commissioned a sculpture an interactive sculpture with intervention architecture uh an open theater that sculpture took that approach to participation from individual curiosity just looking at something all the way through to being the backdrop of an immersive theater performance um and sort of reiling and reimagining um performance and storytelling and the role of uh World building in libraries um open theater were an essential partnership on many fronts they also um helped us develop um a more accessible offer for volunteers um um and trained two of our staff members um they supported us with the actual co-design of this sculpture we worked in um with school children from ofcom and calop as well as BH cats um and sort of consulted and got got the feedback um and so um this culminated in this sculpture that sat within the library and currently um sits within a local Primary School in their Library um as as we’re currently closed for restoration um the sculpture itself was longlisted for a Reb Rebel murin award um and it it it’s sort of um something that will embed further into the library um with future activities really centering how do we make uh an environmental um and experiential welcome um it’s great having ramps and automatic doors but if your visit you feel like you can’t be yourself then that is another barrier so it it’s um Consulting noticing and finding out barriers and then taking that creative approach um in whatever form that takes to remove those and invite actively explicitly invite people and open up that permission um alongside this we had a festival two-day mini Festival um which um was um programmed via a Steering group a local Steering group put together um and went all the way from artart and crafts to Comedy in the evening there wasn’t anything that we weren’t interested in um and sort of taking that that approach of we will have a conversation we will take absolutely everyone in their ideas seriously and then we will follow through with that um and sort of not knowing what that Festival would look like we knew it would be an exchange of ideas it’s not just about us filling up people as an empty cup with information about the Heritage and the history of foral Heath library and mosy Road baths but actually what are we learning and really um having big ears with that one um and then finally we had our young curators pilot this originally stemmed um from um young people often being assigned the future and the weight that comes with an impending future and the the fear that that comes with and actually young people have agency here and now so what’s the structure and process we can do to give young people authorship and ownership of Heritage and history and the Here and Now not just that future um and so this was um an open invitation to um young people aged 18 to 30 there was two stipulations so that age range and you had to be within a 15 minute radius of the bats um we didn’t say whether bar foot bus it was just a 15 minute radius um that um had a large amount of applicants and we whittled them down to these lovely six um young people um and we provided a development program around that and brought in experts and Specialists from the Heritage field from the chain from people who make change um as well as also artistic and creative practitioners sort of taking that wider holistic view um for people so um it it sort of we’re asking them what do they want to know and providing that scaffold for them to be able to develop and deliver a project um another stipulation was that the output had to be digital um and we we sort of didn’t we we gave them a budget an idea a producer a mentor and all of these development opportunities and said we we want to know what you come up with um and and sort of gave them access to our archives um and that resulted in bath casts um they interviewed people in the bath um about their relationship to bosel Heath to themselves um to the baths if they have one um and there was also um micro commissions within that um asking local artists um some uh six poets and six uh musicians or sound artists to then create a a creative response that would go into the podcast um give it a lessen um and we had a live launch um of that um and we sort of wanted to partner with a Heritage organization that had um a similar Heritage of community activism um as well as a swimming pool and so we partnered with govern hbat in Glasgow um I think overall for the whole program there is near 300 freelancer opportunities um and over 30 paid Partnerships with organizations so um the the sort of time scale we delivered in um was really short and that couldn’t have been done without the expertise and Partnerships and it’s also really key here that we brought in fresh eyes everyone we saw what we were seeing every day um and that’s where that exciting value Le um creative responses come through to that um but that as I mentioned is sort of all the way through diving in as a whole wider Master project um we if you can see the amount of Partners at the bottom of the the PowerPoint slide we are literally wall to wall with Partners um so we have um professional consultancy teams we have the National Trust sort of um project managering uh project managing the capital work side as well as the activity team um there is a whole correlation of Partners as well as a historic pools um partnership that we constantly communicate with um a lot of the times the best ideas are adopted and we invite people to adopt our ideas too there’s no one set way and we’re only better with learning more um for the program itself we had um quite an emphasis on um hyper local Partnerships and those Regional Partnerships and sort of not not letting that that all that knowledge that is stored within the West Midlands and Birmingham itself with a deep freelancer base and um a a huge variety of organizations not letting that sort of disperse too far out um and it was really important that we approached people with the same values um and the same sort of direction towards we’re constantly learning and we want to constantly get better there are things that absolutely went wrong and there are things that we will embed in the future um with learning through those Partnerships um we also then are currently forming more International Partnerships um so here we um it’s a screenshot of us having a zoom call with a team in Tokyo who have a shared Heritage of bathing culture but actually um that has declined too and they’ve taken a third space approach um this one specific Bath House in Tokyo and so how can we collaborate collaborate internationally what does that mean for moso bat and our other Partnerships um and that um as well as um Bal which is in uh Iraqi Kurdistan um all of this all of these Partnerships um and all of these people have been really integral to how we approach uh and reapo and I I come back to that sort of approach of to Heritage not being static and being a value uh and then also that participation approach from just seeing the bats to actively being a trustee and having responsibility for the governance as well as you know drawing a picture of the bats and sharing that all of those are valued and we don’t underes at those opportunities for the baths to learn through that um and so we now currently um have three curatorial lines that our program going forward will lie against which is the stories of moso bass and bourel Heath which is about people a place for belonging and that’s um also about the process of how we do that through steering groups through paid opportunities um and volunteering and then the here and now that context Heritage I think um Can often get bogged down with trying to give thesis level information about an each topic to absolutely everyone who walks through the door and it’s really important that we don’t forget that we’re revealing something about our society and how we interact and how we have relationships now um I think that’s it I am open to questions and I’m sure there’s about a thousand things I have forgot thank you so much Phoebe this I feel like I’ve said this before I like mosy Road baths and and what you and the team have done to it has been a master class in inclusion access and participation um especially when the the building itself has such a historical um history of segregation and inaccessibility and and exclusion that you’ve managed to make it really really exclusive and that all of the Partnerships that you’ve been able to establish have added value and you’ve had this this constant inter interrogation of your processes and how you do things which is is amazing and I hope there’s people in the room that are inspired by that um thank you again um so moving on um this particular project for me I feel like is when I leared about it when I first joined at culture Central um Paul and I had a conversation and I was astounded by the level of like Community engage especially a community that was so like difficult to kind of Ed themselves in um was able to be such a success so I’m going to hand over to Paul um who is going to present for us and give us um some insights into to the streets is that right to the streets let me just um get some slides up okay so uh hello everyone uh my name is Paul I’m one of the co- artistic directors at China plate based down in digu um and I am a white man in his 50s although not in that photograph that’s in this slide that probably needs a bit of updating got a bit more hair in that photograph U so I’m a white man in black clothes with some blond hair left um so the uh the bit that I’ve been asked to talk about is about participation um and all of these projects connect to Heritage in slightly different ways um but I’m going to focus on the ways in which we uh the ways in which we managed encouraging people to participate with the program at work and then the impact that that participation had on attendance at the the the the big project that these projects sat around but before I do that I think most of you probably know us but I’ll just do a quick intro to who China plate are um so uh China plate is an independent theater Studio based in Birmingham we work across the UK we produce and tour theater shows uh we do a lot of artist development we do a lot of production development we also run various producer training programs that we call our producer Pathways um and we are engaged in a number of kind of uh projects or initiatives to try and influence the sector to try and turn the sector into a better place to make work and to work um it’s probably useful to know how the sort of scale of the organization given what I’m going to talk about so China play is um comparatively I think in the region a fairly small organization we have a core team currently of 12 um we employ about 200 Freelancers a year and our turnover hovers around about a million uh we’re a charity and we’re part of Arts Council England’s national portfolio of organizations and we’ve been going for about 20 years um so sort of the main thing that China plate was set up to do was to make shows theater shows um but the way in which we’ve done that or who’s involved in the process of making a show at what point they’re involved in that process that’s changed massively over the 18 years that we’ve been running and it’s that really that I think is the way into US thinking about participation as part of the the for this talk so like most organizations uh working in Theater 18 odd years ago we thought that our job was to put artists at the center of everything that we did and we saw the function of the company as being about facilitating and servicing the vision of artists so crudely put my job was basically trying to remove as many of the barriers as I could to artists having the best possible experience making a piece of work um that has shifted over recent years obviously arists are still hugely important and valued in the work that we do because we’re making art um but now we see our job as building what we call Creative communities around projects and ideas now who those creative communities are or who’s in those creative communities is different for every every project that we do it could include communities of place it could include communities of Interest or communities defined in some other way depending on the needs of the project and the idea um for most of you on the on the zoom it will be self-evident as to why we’ve made that shift um like many organizations we’ve been thinking hard over recent years about who participates in the work that we do and even harder about those who don’t um I think the um analysis of the in England report in 2016 was a huge wakeup call to all of us when it was really clearly laid out that something we all knew was happening anyway that you know everyone pays taxes lots of people buy lottery tickets but only a tiny fraction of those people engage in the um cultural activities that are funded through that Finance um so we’ve been looking at different strategies for tackling that over recent years and one that we found really helpful is what the the brief for this session called design but what we tend to call co-creation at China plate and I think there is a real growing body of evidence and actually the Commonwealth Games evidence was really helpful here um to suggest that it’s true that the more people are involved in the creation of culture the more likely they are to participate in that culture in some way so again I’m not going to teach grandmothers to suck eggs here you I’m imagining we’re all pretty much on the same page with that um that is um very much encapsulated in our new mission statement so China plates mission is all about opening up the way uh performance is made who makes it and who’s experienced by it and that’s been our mission statement for a number of years it’s something that we think about on every project that we’re doing so you can see how participation isn’t just integral for us in terms of who experiences the work at the end of it but actually how people are engaged in that process throughout um I’m also aware this is going to be a very brief point but I’m aware that co-creation co-design these ter these terms mean different things to different people they can sometimes be problematic and depending on the the person who’s talking the people you’re working with or the context you’re working in that can mean different things so broadly speaking for China plate uh when we’re talking about co-creation we’re talking about a sliding scale that we use use um that has basically at one end of the scale artists L work so this is work that’s ostensibly being made for people um at the other end we have work that’s participant l so this is work that’s being made by people um but most of our work sits somewhere in the middle where we’re working with those creative communities that I described to make work with people so the majority of China plates Works sit work sits in that in that space um so probably the easiest thing for me to do is to do what I was asked to do which is to talk about the project that um the to the streets project which brought brings some of that into Focus so for those of you that don’t know to the streets is a a new British Musical that we’ve been working on for the last four or five years um it tells the incredible true story of the 1963 Bristol bus boycott told through the music of time so scar Calypso rock and roll um and this story is uh is a really historic moment in British civil rights I always think of it as the UK’s Rosa Parks moment if you like and that moment and all the amazing people that were part of that move movement then and to this day are celebrated in this two act fullscale Musical and this show was commissioned as part of the uh Birmingham 2022 Festival so what we had um is a story story that was really focusing on uh Caribbean and to some extent South Asian communities initially in Bristol but also in other the cities that we were working with to make this show um and of course we wanted those communities to be engaged in not only seeing the show but in the the creation of that show as well um those communities and this again this is a bit of a generalization I’m aware this is a hugely complex area but for the purposes of 20 minutes these communities are communities who have been um excluded from cultural participation for decades so how do we get them to to engage with this piece of work the first thing that we did as you can see from this picture here is that we decided that we wouldn’t we wouldn’t perform this show in theaters in town we co-produced the show with the Birmingham Hippodrome and they were very open to the idea that we don’t perform it in their building but that we perform the show open air in parks in Birmingham centry and wolver Hampton so that is part of the first part of our mission which is about um trying to open up who the work is experienced by and that’s simply about making it as easy as possible for people to engage with the the work this is what the Arts Council calls culture on your doorstep uh not a term that I particularly love but it’s one that serves in this case and was relatively successful uh but then if we think about the rest of our mission thinking about how we open up how the work is made and who makes it and how we give people agency in that process that’s the bit where participation really um came into play for us around this project so I’m going to take handsworth and the work that we did in hansworth as the example here um so one of the things we were really anxious not to do with this project was kind of helicopter into hansworth as part of the Commonwealth Games program with a Big Show and then disappear again afterwards W and we didn’t think that was ethically the right thing to do and we didn’t think it would be successful in terms of audience development so we wanted to find ways to build relationships with that Community um we wanted to or those communities we wanted to find ways to invite them into that creative process and also to give them agency over that Community process um this took a long time so one of the things I would say about um really doing co-design co-creation is that it takes a lot of resource and it takes a lot of time so two years before the show was due to land in uh in the Commonwealth Games program we hired two associate producers uh Deandra macalla and Axana Khan um who knew the communities in hansworth well in one case they were from those communities and they had relevant lived experience so it was it was important to be thinking about who is going to be walking into that those communities and how they’ll be received they spent six months um basically getting to know those communities building connections building trust having conversations finding out what people thought about some of the themes that were part of the show that we were trying to make and um finding out what they thought about that what they wanted to do what they felt their Community needed and really importantly what they felt the challenges were like in ter what they thought the challenges were or the barriers to them in terms of participation so those conversations led to Deandra and Axana coming back to us with six possible projects that those communities had uh co-designed and then some basic kind of scoping work about what each of those projects might look like um in August 2021 we then hosted something which we called the block party which was a free dayong event in The Gardens of Soho House in hansworth um and this was really an opportunity to kind of speak back to the community about what we’d heard and what we’d listen to over the previous uh six months so that was a day of uh you know food and music we we premiered the first five sh F five songs from the musical at that event so literally the first people in the world ever to hear that music were the people who came to that free event in handsworth that day which we hoped was saying something about serious we were about those communities being um honored and engaged by that piece of work um but we also ran taster sessions with a group of artists around each of those six ideas that em had emerged from our conversations uh we also um you know we also did things like provided a food bank for the day um we made it as easy as possible for people to come and looked at multiple different ways or multiple different M motivations for people to come and see uh to come and see that activity um based on the feedback and the learning from the block party we identified the three projects that we felt um had the had the legs to go forward from the six and then we began the process of working with Partners to raise the funding to make those three projects happen two of them became creative City projects and one of them became a cultural action Zone funded uh by well in partnership with the local business improvement district but funded through what was uh greater Birmingham and solle Le so these projects although they have a Heritage Focus they’re not specifically funded by the uh by the Heritage Lottery fund um at that point we um recruited additional staff uh to be part of that team so that’s when brilliant producer Jade Samuels came on board to work alongside Jade Axana and we set up um focus groups in the community Phoebe mentioned in importance of FOC focus groups as well we found them incredibly impactful as part of this project uh so focus groups attached to each of those projects um and we recruited the artists at that point who would maybe be able to come on board and help to uh make those projects happen so the three projects that we uh delivered um with those communities the first one um was a project called Soho settlers so this is a project that’s looking at hansworth history of migration and the kind of intangible Heritage that comes with that so waves waves and waves and waves of migration through that part of Birmingham from the 1950s all the way through to today um and what we we worked with uh two brilliant organizations over here who are a poetry organization work largely digitally uh and have some brilliant sort of tech Wizardry um and black Heritage walks Network who do a lot lot of work around black Heritage but were particularly interested in this project in broadening their work to look at other migration stories uh in hansworth as as as well as the black the black story so that uh project became a bit like Pokemon go really so in the end what we had is what I like to think of as kind of digital blue plaques so you can go around uh hansworth and you can collect on your mobile phone pins and each pin has either a piece of creative writing an interview a story that somehow speaks to the different communities who have arrived in hansworth over the last 70 80 years um and that’s uh yeah that project so was called Soo settlers and it’s still available today um yeah it was a a really exciting piece of work and uh really unveiled some fantastic stories from the from from that Community but that’s Soo setas I’m going to spend a bit more time talking about the third one but moving on to our second project so this time we were working with um an artist called Jane tordin um who uh ran a project called we still here so this was now uh this is a kind of crafts meets activism project which is Jane’s area of work um Jane’s particularly interested in handcrafting beautiful protest banners um one of which you can see here and she worked with groups of residents in ladywood for months to run sessions where basically you Jane’s thing is um she talks about having busy hands and open mouths so the idea is that people were learning to craft they were learning skills but as part of those conversations soorry as part of that process they’re sitting together for periods of time having Cups of Tea and talking about their lives their communities and what’s important to them and over time Jane is amazingly skilled at taking the subjects of those conversations and weaving them into the fabric of those banners that were then exhibited at the to the street site but also in a number of other places and then ultimately returned to the community sites where they were made and here we were working with um different Community groups we were working with food banks we were working with schools a whole bunch of different organizations and Grassroots groups that came to work with Jane in that project oh and the bus drivers uh Jane’s dad had actually been so Jane’s father came from Guyana and had been a bus driver in city in the 60s so we were really interested in making sure that we be work with some bus drivers as well so that’s that one uh then the third project is a project called on our way um slides are not behaving so um on our way was a project involving bus stops um so you can see how each of these projects speaks to the themes of uh the to the streets musical so about protest about migration about buses um but each of them had kind of been taken by that community in hansworth and ladywood and and developed to to fit their context so on our way uh is a project where we worked with um the wonderful artist curator nupa Yasmin um who worked with eight different different Community groups in hansworth to design the stained glass windows basically that were fitted to bus stops and actually still there we initially envisioned that they would be there just for the games period but they’re still there to this day um so each one is designed by a different group in the community and each one celebrates local residents and their stories again that idea of capturing in some way the intangible Heritage of that community um this project was funded by uh greater Birmingham and Solly hle LEP as I’ve said but was also made possible with the uh funding and support of Transport for West Midlands and National Express West Midlands um the groups that we worked with on this project were the Soho Road business district who were absolutely integral in terms of bringing us uh connecting us with the shopkeepers up and down the Soho Road hansworth Association of schools black Heritage walks Network again bid Services who work with um run the de Cultural Center in hansworth local businesses so one of the bus stops if you look carefully you’ll see the barber scissors you’ll see the fabric shop you’ll see the jewelry store that’s captured in that work as well hansworth library South City College Birmingham and their hansworth campus and holly hollywood sorry Holly head school um huge amount of flexibility required in terms of the way nupa worked with each of those different groups which was really important um but ultimately we were able to deliver a terrific project that that not only saw us install the artwork but also saw um uh transport for West Midlands pull out and upgrade all the bus stops along the Soho road so it had a really tangible effect on sort of upgrading that High Street as well so not just um does it now look nice but the bus stops are safer they’re better for Access a whole load of stuff like that um so I’ve been asked to to touch a little bit on evaluation um each of these projects obviously uh had its own creative Community around it and it has its own creative outputs and it really felt like they were made with by it and for the communities that we were working with uh people love them we gathered a lot of feedback from uh online we do on online paper forms but for something like the bus stops we also use QR codes that are positioned at the bus stop so that anyone waiting for a bus can tell us well find out about what the project is and why it’s there but also can tell us what they think about it um but these projects had a bunch of um impacts that weren’t just about the cultural aspect of it that were really important to us as well well-being um so we were really interested in tracking the well-being of participants particularly as this for many people this was a project that was kind of an emerging from Lockdown project uh we found some it very useful to use uh pin wheel well well-being surveys as part of that so A simple kind of pin wheel where you can select uh various options about how you’re feeling about uh the work which we would do before and after each session but also at the beginning multiple points in the middle and at the end of each project um we looked at Gathering data around footfall along Soho road which we saw was increased and we did that by doing services with surveys with local businesses but also Gathering data with our transport Partners on bus travel During the period that the project was live we worked with the police and we looked at the fact that there was reduced crime along the Soho Road and fewer reported instances of antisocial behavior on buses now obviously um I’m saying that that’s to do with the project in the evaluation we can’t know for sure but but that’s what the data data is telling us um and a load of other outputs around as I’ve mentioned about street street INF infrastructure being upgraded um in terms of one of our initial objectives about engaging target audiences with the show I think it was also a successful way of working um these are these are again not necessarily the way that we would gather the data this is the way the data was gathered through Partners at the commonwealth games um but we found out that 47% of the audiences who came to see to the streets had never seen a hippodrome show or a China plague show before so that’s almost half of our audiences being new audiences um and uh 48% of that audience came from uh black South Asian or mixed and multiple background uh backgrounds so a high proportion of our Target audien is there and we could also see that the highest number of audiences come were were coming from the hyperd diverse low Arts engagement areas where the projects were were presented so we were really getting local people so delivering on that notion of culture on our doorstep um for us it was also really interesting in terms of uh not just the success of particip the way the participation worked and that’s sort of been built into our business model going forward but also thinking about um the way in which you can develop multiple pieces of work from one piece of Ip so even if your creative project isn’t necessarily A A heritage project are there projects that can sit around it that are about Heritage or about Heritage of of a particular place where the project is going um and um also financially so my last made it’s just to say thank you to these guys but it also opened up a whole load of new Partnerships for us and a whole load of new income streams um so yes I think that’s probably my time up that’s that’s uh to the streets thank you so much Paul like that’s amazing um it really it really speaks to how you know the the idea of culture on your doorstep for want of a better term is really important to not have the expectation that you know you want the audiences to come to you but you actually have to go to them and do the work you know and being able to embed a project like that within communities that are considered you know traditionally excluded is is a a feat within itself but what you did was produce tangible outcomes for them and a long lasting impact something that is still visible today and you can still see the Heritage so thank you so much for that presentation um just in terms of consciousness of time um we do have Stephanie in in the building um and um I’ll let you introduce yourself um and Stephanie will be talking around accessibility in in projects in Heritage projects so I’ll just hand over thank you everybody thanks for having me just want to check how long have I got because I I don’t want to run over no you’ve got your 20 minutes um and we’ll have some time at the end for Q&A okay that’s fine hi everybody um I’m Steph tyell head of arts and wellbeing for the disability charity sense I’m sat in my office well it’s not my office I’m sat in a office in Celio um where in our Center touchbase pairs um and I’m going to be just giving you a really really quick overview of a project that we’ve um completed last year with a heritage project with the National Trust um exploring um heritage heritage and arts and culture with the people we support just in case you’re not aware sens is a disability charity we’re 70 years old we predominantly started out um supporting death blind children we were set up by a group of moms and then that’s grown and evolve and we now support people with um a range of complex disabilities we um as I said we’re National and we have day Services we have residential homes we have colleges we have um we run holidays and short short breaks Children’s Program Early Intervention Program so we’re really broad charity um and yeah it’s my it’s my privilege to to lead the Arts and well-being team um into uh the offer um just before we get started are there any access requirements of the group do I need to um audio auto describe any of the um uh slides I’m showing we haven’t received any know um that’s fine okay so I sh my screen [Music] um if I go from beginning is that a full page for you no is it little page it is I can see some nods thank you so much um right let’s try again right okay there we are let’s go again is that full screen now yes hooray okay so um this uh project was a collaboration with a few different partners it was with sense uh National Trust who I’m sure you all know and uh with an artist Justin Wigan who um is was based in Birmingham but now he’s down in Cornwall um but uh Justin is a sound artist and he has developed um uh a piece of technology called plantwave which I’ll go into in a in a moment um which connects uh people and um places to um plant sounds and Heritage and it’s uh quite a new model and quite an Innovative model and something that we thought would be really um fundamental to our offer and the way the technology works we think expands the connections that the people we support have to plants and nature so the project was a twoyear uh let me just get myself set up so the project was a a two-year offer and within that program oh let me go skip ahead there we are we invited the people we support along to um uh different uh West Midlands properties with that are in the National Trust and we invited the people we support to the gardens in a way of connecting with plants and nature and Heritage of that space um this program started when we were coming out of lockdown and we really wanted to get the people we support back out into nature back out into the community and as part of the National Trust strategic plan everybody Welcome um this seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to create a new partnership and so the two organizations came together to think about how they diversify and welcome people with complex disabilities to their space and so we were inspired by the William Morris collection um at whk in wolver Hampton um and we were inspired by the kind of inside outside concept of the gardens and designs of the location and actually we thought this was a really interesting Heritage is a very um untapped um area for the people we support and thinking about how do you bring somebody like William Mor is Clos to the people we support with the plants and nature of that space um so we set up this offer um where we invited groups in uh for them to spend time in the garden and outside of the the garden we’re also inspired by the different um uh furniture that people connected to within the space and also the wallpapers that they had on offer um and this is an image of the final installation that we created but what the program um did was it offered training to National Trust staff that for for them to think about welcoming people with complex disabilities so we looked at communication awareness for death blind um people we did a breakdown of BSL um training we also looked at easy read maps um we looked at pecs as well we kind of gave a really strong breakdown of um different communication processes that um the organization would need to use to welcome the people we support um and this enabled um National Trust volunteers or National Trust staff to feel more confident in welcoming people and I think that was a really important part of the program that we were able to um give that confidence for staff to think about how everybody accessed the space so how the pro how the technology Works um if I go to the next slide so internal Garden works by connecting biometric data readers onto plants and that picks up the electrical impulses within plants the technology um plant wave that Justin uses that then turns the um biometric data from plants into sounds and into vibrations and so through a a a process of explorative workshops within uh kroom in Worcester share and whk um in uh Hampton the people we support spent time to be in the garden chill in the garden have a picnic in the garden and whichever plants they were drawn to through sensory exploration we then connected up the plants to the biometric uh data and we then cre created soundscapes if you were to put one of the pads onto your hand and onto the plant that then created a full loop of sounds and the um sounds and vibrations you would get back in response are completely unique to that person and to that garden and so essentially what we were able to do let me just skip forward what we were able to do is create sound tracks of the people we support and the plants within the garden they connected to and we created different soundscapes for audiences to experience um uh this was some Fe feedback that we had back about um some of our services um within Birmingham going across to k um and it was uh a really brilliant opportunity for us to bring in to National Trust audiences the sent way of doing things about putting people we support first within an experience and I think that’s what was really Innovative about this offer is that often the people we support are are so often marginalized um from community activities or from Heritage that actually having um the emphasis on a non-verbal form of communication means that the people we support are the primary makers of the artwork and then that opens up conversations for National Trust visitors National Trust staff so for them to engage in the program uh I’ve got a picture of uh Justin here so this is the artist that we’ll work with that’s designed the concept so what we did over the course of the summer we ran a series of workshops and sensory walks for the people we support and they were um delivering activities that then meant that for other staff that were in the area they were able to um join in with the process and for them to experience soundscapes created by the people that we supported and so we open this is one of the National Trust volunteers based on the William Morris exploration we um shared the soundscape with the audiences and they connected in via the headphones and so first of all they were able to experience artwork created by the people that we support and then they themselves were able to have a go um in the space themselves and for them to replicate the experiences that we um that we supported also internal Garden is a form of non-verbal communication so anybody could connect with this and have a go so um and it’s quite an it was as you can see here from the picture it was quite an exciting offer it was something a bit different in terms of the use of technology or um the cuse in in which we’re promoting so people could come in experience the connections to Heritage they could see um meet some of the people we Port within the space we also um created I’m just going to skip ahead slightly we also created [Music] um here you can see some different groups experiencing these are the sensors here and this um plant wave would then turn Those sensors into different soundscapes uh let me just go ahead that’s a nice pick one of our artists so then what we actually did here was create an easy read map of the garden so the plants that were showcased in the soundscape audiences visiting the National Trust could then go and walk the same path that the people we support had created and also visit the same plants um so a particular tree or a particular shrub they could stand next to that plant and experience the sound created by the people we support or if somebody had a particular connection to that piece of Heritage um or to that um part of the garden it was emphasizing the achievements of that person and how they connected in that way I think what was also interesting was that it um it made us also think about what does Heritage mean to us and internalize in some ways some internalized ableism about Heritage and what it means to visit the National Trust or what it means to visit the gardens because for some of the people we support this was a brand new Venture for them actually just turning up on site being in the mini buus getting there maybe getting out of the mini buus going to have a cup of tea and then going home that was actually quite an important part of that person’s process and that connection and so we would really like to explore the next that’s the team us delivering the the activities um but also to think about everybody’s contribution and connection to Heritage and all forms of communication to be celebrated and so our next round that we want to go into we would like more sites to experience or training we’d like more sites to be more confident in welcoming people with complex disabilities and we’d like we’d like to explore more opportunities for different connections to come in and be celebrated um and so that’s the next part of the program that we’re looking into obviously the people we support some people have hearing and vision impairments this actual piece is um this is a subpac Fest and so anybody that does have the hearing impairment any sounds or vibrations or sound scores that would be created they can use the subpac vest to fill the vi ations um and so some people that we support they would just come and have quite a sensorial experience with the plants with the Heritage with the soundscape and they would just sit with the suback vest um and feel the vibrations of the sounds um but yeah that’s it I’ve done I’ve done a whistle Stock Tour um uh I can just well let me just whiz through quickly there’s loads of really lovely pictures here um but this this was our um actually maps are really important and we were looking at the um National Trust maps about how to access the garden and what’s important to people and so actually after the end of at the end of the project we’d created the easy read map so people could experience the internal Garden installation but then from an offshoot of the project is that people in our services actually wanted to go back and independently visit the gardens or or visit the different areas they’ve explored which is brilliant so we’ve actually been piloting easy read maps for each of the properties as well and sharing that back with them so through the program through the technology through the approach it’s kind of Taken um uh it’s kind of opened up a wider conversation of access and a wider conversation of of what do different um locations different um spaces need to ensure that everybody can engage in a meaningful way that’s it that’s that’s it I could go on forever because it was such an amazing project but that’s it uh in a nutshell thank you so much stepan it was it looks like an amazing project actually it definitely speaks to the the investment principle around the use of technology to make things more accessible make Heritage more accessible and that’s like on an elevated like level absolutely absolutely and um you must be so proud of that project it would be you know such an amazing place and especially when like Heritage buildings because they’re so old and um and and and Heritage the way we think about Heritage we don’t often feel like we have enough empathy and we do reinforce ableist attitudes you know when we go so um thank you so much for that um we have got you know um around 10 15 minutes for some Q&A any questions um if anyone wants to ask any questions or feel free to drop it in the chat if you want me to read them out for you um but thank you again to the presenters um the the projects are really amazing and I think it’s just important to note that you know these are Heritage Focus projects but were not necessarily funded under this new um Heritage lottery strategy um so just to be mindful that obviously the work that’s been done has a heavy focus on inclusion access and participation but we’re not funded necessarily under the the new strategy now and but amazing inspiration for um any new projects that any of you have have we got any questions any questions around the cultivate heritage project around mosy Road baths or to the streets chying to play or to sense oh um if no one else has gone I’ll go sorry I was looking for my hand up but I couldn’t find it all right go go ahead um thank you for free presentations brilliant learn a lot um as you said inspiration Charlene um it’s a bit of a strange question really but um and for all three really but especially for Charlene um because one of the interesting things is that you um simultaneously um preserving and recycling Heritage um is there any sense either in the funding guidelines or in the projects particularly your Stephanie that nonhumans have Heritage too so like the plants are a form of Agents or a building can have agency and so that’s something that we also need to protect so because I’m trying to link the sustainability agenda with with similar things that were done so if people wanted to speak a bit about thinking about nonhuman Heritage and a sense of agency anyone want to take this one I think maybe Stephanie yeah I mean I hav’t thought of it in those terms before so I’m getting my I’m getting my mind around that but it’s thec because of the communication forms that we use with the people we po we’re always thinking about how can different ideas Concepts which includes Heritage how can that be used in a experiential way it’s no for for for our guys you know we’re not going to give a well we might give an easy read booklet or or something but we it’s we think about Heritage in the non-traditional forms and so that’s where the idea of of connecting with plants and nature and yeah we’re all sent beings um that’s where the idea came from and with this particular model it kind of equalizes access to to Heritage in that way um so that’s a big part of the an an inspiration that we want to take forward of like the kind of mindfulness of being within those spaces is is really key but that definitely that does come from a mindfulness approach but it but it’s informed by the people we support and then experiences and and leaning into how they connect with the world around them I don’t know if that’s answered your question but that’s that’s what Springs to mind yeah great and I thought of them actually as co-producers in a way that they have produced together I mean it’s lovely in that way but yeah yeah yeah that was a really interesting question I’ve never even thought about nonhuman Heritage before in that kind of way I definitely do not have the answer to that and I wouldn’t want to comment on it just on the basis that obviously Heritage Lottery you know they have quite a particular way of you know projects but it with that in mind there’s still an opportunity if you want to have a like a onetoone advice session with them um that’s something you can do whilst you’re engaging with this program so let me know if there’s a project idea you have and um we could definitely look at you know engaging with them to to get some advice some early development advice from Heritage lottery so yeah have we got any other questions I know everyone’s starting to drop off now um but have we got any more questions no I mean well we’ve got like 10 minutes added back to our our Diaries if you want to take them back but just before we go I know lots of people have fallen off now but we do have a feedback form but I will email this out to all of the people that attended but again I just want to give a really big thank you to um Phoebe and Paul and Stephanie for presenting today um such amazing projects this is recorded so this will be published um so those people that registered that weren’t able to attend can also get to see it um and get some inspiration from your project are we all right to give your contact details to to people as well if they wanted to get in touch is that okay brilliant but thank you again everyone um and hopefully we’ll see you at the networking event which I’ll tell everybody about um in an email but um enjoy the rest of your day guys thank you