Where

Across Bearwood & Smethwick

Started

January, 2021

Team

Sally Taylor

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The Hub has been experimenting with ways of connecting with Bearwood locals who live on the same street. The priority being community-created and led activities, enabled by the Hub and/ or partners. The project is also focused on connecting with people offline. The pandemic forced the world to find new ways of working digitally. Unfortunately, this was at the expense of people that might not have access to digital devices or to unlimited data/ broadband, thus highlighting the digital poverty gap (Holmes and Burgess, 2021). As our projects list and ambitions grew we became aware of funding that had been granted to Warley Woods Community Trust to employ a sessional worker, but WWCT was unable to continue with their project because of the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.

The Hub’s role has been to strategise engagement work, creating leaflets, speaking to people door to door. Through speaking with residents we have been able to set up street litter picks in Arden Road, met community fitness and wellness instructors who wish to be more involved in our wellbeing work, signposted people to frontline services and benefits checks during crisis, signposted to Online Art Workshops, Coffee Mornings and phone performances by Black Country Touring. Approximately 45 hours have been spent on the project since December 2020.

1.

We have visited 7 streets (Arden Road, Wheatley Road, Herbert Road, Ethel Street, Merivale Road, Lincoln Road, Sydney Road).

2.

We will be visiting 5 more by the end of June 2021. The streets were either nominated online by residents or we visited them because we haven’t had engagement with those streets before. We have spoken to approximately 20 residents.

3.

“Knowing people are wanting to make a difference to the area and improve it and get people together” - Anonymous Feedback