I get excited by Christmas – as do the final year Students at Birmingham City University who’ve launched the video rich blog Turkey Brumsticks. It’ll form part of their final year journalism project. Spotted here and because of comments left here. If you see someone wondering around with camera and mic at the Craft Market it’s Turkey Brumstick – so stop, smile and share a little excitement.
Tag: upyerbrum
Quinzone, Safe Haven and Community Policing – new podcast on the Grassroots Channel
PC Bernie Flynn has been working with young people in Quinton in Birmingham consistently since 2001, merging policing with youth work. For him finding the right people for the job and giving them time to show respect and earn respect is at the heart of good community policing. Anti social behaviour in and around his patch has fallen by 40% and in this podcast he explains how that has happened.
This is the most recent in a number of programmes on the channel about the link between policing, and community including the residents who run their own police station, patrol their own streets, those who had the courage to confront pimps and prostitution and how young people act as agents for safer streets.
Birmingham Community Empowerment Network
Quinzone and Safe Haven (dead link)
Briefing on Neighbourhood Policing as a pdf
Allotment Sense
Refurbishing allotments used as a fly tipping ground and making the plots available for schools is one of the best uses I’ve come across for the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund. Of course NRF was never about things the council should do (like maintain allotments), but at least this £39,000 spend has the potential to extend sustainable life styles in a neighbourhood and create a new space for community building among the 65 plots in Stetchford.
It’s also potentially a much better take on active young people than the toddlerobics I recently read about. See also the podcast below for a good listen on allotments and young people.
Highbury 2.0
In the 1989’s Birmingham’s leaders gathered at Highbury Hall in Moseley for a summit meeting. It was the second time such a gathering had happened and Highbury 2 spawned the idea to break the concrete collar which was stranggling the growth of the city centre.
With the ring road down it is 2007 and Stef Lewandowski is now proposing a crowdsourced future for the city centre, using us and a wiki to shape where next. Highbury 2.0 has my support, how about you?