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Today, we are excited to be holding our first board meeting with the new board. We will be discussing the updates on the activities for the last two months and details of how the board will run over the coming year.  You can see the list of all the Board members on our website at https://www.bearwood.cc/team/ . This is the second of three blog posts where you can find out a little bit more about them all!  Next up - Holly, a regular coworker with a wealth of experience across

We were so delighted to hold our first AGM as a Community Benefit Society - and even more pleased that we have a new board of 9 Board of Directors.  We thought that as our community of supporters and participants, you might like to know who was elected.   You can see the list and bios of all the Board members on our website at https://www.bearwood.cc/team/ . This is the first of three blog posts where you can find out a little bit more about them all!  First up - Jess who has

Bard’s Book Brings Community Together On Saturday 3rd June, around 400 people came to the Dorothy Parkes Centre to see the 400-year-old, publicly-owned copy of William Shakespeare’s works and to take part in a spectacular array of Shakespearean activities! Back in October last year talks began with the Everything to Everybody project about bringing Shakespeare’s First Folio out to Smethwick, and so after months of planning and coordination, the first Saturday in June finally

Bearwood Community Bakery is Trialling Home Delivery for a Month! We are excited to share that from the 8th - 22nd February, Bearwood Community Bakery will be trialling a home delivery option for Wednesday bread orders to addresses between the high street, Adkins Lane, Barclay Road, Rathbone Road and parts of Thimblemill Road.  A full list of postcodes included within our delivery area is listed below. This pilot will enable us to work out the initial logistics and sustainabi

Bearwood Community Hub is moving You might be a little surprised that we are very soon going to be starting a new phase,  working across various locations in our lovely community. St Mary’s is no longer available to us on the same terms as before so we have taken the difficult decision to relocate. We're hoping that by working across  Bearwood we will reach even more people, offer greater access and play a small part in supporting a thriving high street on Bearwood Road.  The

Like many, we are feeling increasingly dismayed at the rise in poverty and mental ill health where we live. We've noted a few ideas here if you are wanting to help but you're not sure how. There will be many more and if you'd like to add to this list please just drop us a line at hello@bearwood.cc . 1. Smethwick Foodbank ran out of food last Wednesday. If you are able, please consider setting up a direct debit or one-off financial donation by clicking here . To give non-peris

We are delighted that local residents Philippe and Rachel have asked to use the Community Hub to start their Bearwood Rainbow Social, an LGBTQI+ safe space for socialising and mutual support. The first session will be focused on ‘what shall we do/organise?!’ and is on Thursday 31st March - end the last Thursday of each month thereafter. Turn up at 7.30pm, it’ll be on until 9.30pm.

Bearwood Community Hub is digitising the dialogue of Women who are redefining Bearwood post pandemic. For feel-good pandemic stories and inspiration for how to seize your ‘can-do’ from Naomi St Juste, Sozan Hossain, Laura Billingham and  Ellie Shaw download episode 1 Tuesday 22nd March here: CLICK HERE Bearwood Interesting Women Podcast

Art club member Pat Nimmo tells us all about the brand new art club every Monday at 2pm at the Community Hub: Bearwood Art Club at the Community Hub, St Marys Church Mondays 2-3pm A small group of us have started to meet to make art. We are very varied in our interests and education. Some of us have have done art at college and some of us haven't. We are interested in drawing, painting, felting, collage, inks, poetry, photography, sculpture and textiles! We meet together to e

Next date: Saturday 23 April 10am-1pm! It'll be just like the last one, which was a fun morning in the sun shine: Saturday 19th March 10am-1pm We need your help to clear up and beautify the garden area outside St Mary’s Church and Bearwood Community Hub! Come along, sign up for a job and get a little bit of your high street looking greener, neater and more inviting. St Mary’s Church and Bearwood Community Hub are working together on this event and we’re hoping that plenty of

We often get asked ‘what’s this coworking thing?’ Sally explains a little bit more with some wonderful examples from today’s session. As we wrote a while back, it’s definitely not just a desk, as lovely and important as our desks, refreshments and human company are! When we were designing this space as a community, one of the things on the wish list was the ability to connect, grow, support each other. And that’s what’s happening. As I write on 3rd Feb, just reflecting on the

Would you be intersted in a weekday arts and crafts group? Perhaps one where you bring your own work, to get on with alongside other people? Where you can share techniques and learn from others? Perhaps you'd like to hear from guest speakers? Maybe you used to go to the St Mary's art club and miss it? Andrea Bonnell from Birmingham Museums Trust is going to help us get something started on Monday 7th Feburary at 2pm. Will you come along to share what you'd be interested in. W

For our next coffee morning we will be setting up as a temporary museum! 10am, Tuesday 1st February, Bearwood Community Hub. Rosie Barker from the Birmingham Museums Trust (who oversee Thinktank, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Soho House, Sarehole Mill and more), will be coming along to our coffee morning in a bid to find out a little bit about what we like about museums and what stops us going. And she’ll be bringing with her some ancient Egyptian artefacts! Join us and

From time to time we try and share a little bit about how the Hub ‘works’. We get quite a few questions about how we’re linked to St Mary’s Church so today Sally is going to give you a bit of insight into our partnership with St Mary’s Church, whose building we are using and - we hope! - helping to be custodians of. If you want to know more, just come along to a coffee morning, walk or lunch, or pop Sally an email at hello@bearwood.cc It all started in 2018 with a phonce call

Happy New Year to you all. We can’t wait to see you again! With the Covid-19 Omicron variant continuing to cause problems, we are making some changes to our programme. We are very aware that there is no firm guidance from government as we write, but we also feel it’s important to ensure that we can continue our activities as safely as possible while we await more guidance and to hear more about the evidence of the risks. Here is a list of how we’ll manage our different Januar

We’re delighted that we are going to be opening up our Bakery creche so that it’s a small Stay & Play session for local parents and babies/tots! Every Monday and Wednesday the wonderful Naomi St Juste from Juste4Kids sets up a pop-up creche in our Community Room, ably assisted by local volunteer Deanne. This enables some of the bakery team to participate when they wouldn’t otherwise be able to due to a lack of affordable childcare. It’s small and cosy, we’re only opening up 5

On Tuesday we had our second coffee morning at Bearwood Hub which enabled us meeting lovely people. It was great to share a cuppa with Vildan’s homemade cookies alongside a friendly chat. Thank you everyone who joined us. You are all most welcome on Tuesdays between 10 -11 am ! Vildan and Fatma   “I’ve moved back to B’ham! Great to meet friendly faces and of course great BAKES! ” Shallo “Very friendly and welcoming. It was great meeting new people and sharing experiences with

Ever wondered how the bakery works? Well, not like a normal one! We work within school ours so that our volunteers can participate. That's why the bread isn't ready until 2pm - but so very worth waiting for! The team have devised their ways of working in the kitchen - who takes what role, who prefers to focus on which breads, who does the opening and closing checks (and cleaning!) and who packs and labels the bread. In about 4 hours the team are producing about 30 loaves ever

Image description: around 20 people sat around a large table, waving happily at the camera, smiling and eating. A mix of ages and nationalities, with a large selection of food to choose from. One of the projects that has developed most naturally and (excuse the pun) organically, is our Bring and Share Lunch. The bakery team and other volunteers and staff needed to eat. So we ate alongside each other. Then we started to share the fresh bread, and our homecooked and shop-bought

We have been so grateful for the companies and individuals who have supported the set up of our bakery , including Incredible Surplus  and the lovely folks at our local Cooperative Food  store. One of those is the inspiring Wildfarmed .  Wildfarmed make very special flour. Through the varieties they grow and the way they grow it, they are showing that food production can be done with compassion for our planet. And what's more the flavour from these varieties is out of this wo