Lockdown didn’t stop current and former students of Ormiston Shelfield Community Academy performing an uplifting song online to showcase their true community spirit.
Organised by former students Isobel Higgins and Alex Banks, the challenging project saw the pair galvanise 15 other students and staff members to take part in a video performing Seasons of Love from the musical Rent.
19-year-old Isobel, who is now studying English as well as working full-time, said the project was the ideal vehicle for rekindling old friendships.
“A small number of us remain in contact as close friends and had always had a dream of getting a group together to sing Seasons of Love,” she said.
“Being stuck in lockdown seemed like the perfect opportunity, especially given the message of the song. As we reached out to more people, this dream became a reality, comprising ex and current staff and students from Shelfield, all of whom maintain a passion for the creative arts.”
She said co-ordinating the 17-strong chorus over two weeks was challenging, but rules, schedules and deadlines for each musician and singer were all communicated via social media
“We received back a set of wonderful performances, which Alex was able to edit,” continued Isobel. “She definitely had the most difficult job and she executed it with such professionalism and positivity.
“I am incredibly proud of every person involved in the project as the outcome has been incredible, thanks to every person’s commitment to their roles in the project.”
Alex, who is studying Media Production at Birmingham City University, said she took on the task of editing to use it in her showreel as part of her degree, but said it quickly “became a joy to work on and put together”.
“I felt that I had a great deal of responsibility in this project and it challenged me greatly through time management and organisation,” she said. “This video really helped me feel a sense of togetherness during lockdown and I hope that it creates the same feeling for others, too.”
Stuart Turnbull, the Academy’s principal, said he was proud of the efforts made by the school’s past and present students.
If the residents of Pheasey in Walsall could step back seven decades in time to take a stroll around their estate, they wouldn’t believe their eyes.
What would they see? Smart young soldiers peering from the windows of the estate’s newly-built houses. Armed sentry posts and gate houses guarding access to the streets. The sound of marching boots might fill the air. And outside the Collingwood Centre, which served as a military HQ, stood a flagpole – flying the stars and stripes of the US flag.
Few people who live in this quiet suburb know that during World War Two it was requisitioned by the Government and handed to the American army.
Now a 12-month project, called The Americans Are Here, and backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund, aims to help local people find out how their homes were once occupied by GIs, and their streets were filled with jeeps and army trucks.
“We want the project to raise awareness of Pheasey’s past during the second World War,” said organiser Lee Mitchell, “because it’s something that people simply don’t know about.
“Many of the people who lived here at the time are sadly no longer with us, so we can’t rely on their memories to keep the story alive. Newer residents are gobsmacked to find out what went on here, sometimes in their own homes, when war was raging.”
The project aims to get local people to engage with local history and find out for themselves about how the American Army made Pheasey its home.
“We really want to use Pheasey’s wartime history to create community spirit, by getting local people involved,” said Lee, who is organising the project with colleague Dave Crathorne.
“It’s also about reaching out to socially-isolated people and getting local schoolchildren involved. It’s a great story that’s right here on our doorstep.”
At the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, the new Pheasey Estate was still being built. When America entered the conflict in 1942, US troops started to flood into Britain. In Walsall, the War Office requisitioned unfinished properties on the estate, creating a Replacement Depot there, as a staging post for soldiers arriving to replace those killed or wounded in the fighting. American soldiers would sail into the UK via ports like Liverpool, before trains brought them to what was then Great Barr railway station in Hampstead. The GIs would then march up the Queslett Road to Pheasey.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused some disruption for The Americans Are Here, which originally hoped to hold regularly meetings and talks, as well as practical face-to-face sessions to help people discover their area’s history. Lockdown meant that all that had to be cancelled.
But by drawing on true wartime spirit, the project has carried on.
“We launched our The Americans Are Here Facebook page to allow people to still get involved throughout the lockdown,” Lee explained. “In fact, what everyone has been going through with coronavirus has a lot of parallels with what British people experienced during the war.
“There’s an argument that in some ways it has been worse because at least during World War Two you were allowed out of your house. And the pubs were open!”
Some of today’s local pubs were regular haunts of the American soldiers who lived on the Pheasey estate, and have formed part of the project’s photographic work, which aims to bring local history alive.
“We have pictures of what the area looked like at the time, so one of the things we have been doing is tracking down the locations in those images and taking a new picture from the same perspective. It provides a ‘now and then’ version of these fascinating old pictures and really helps to bring home the fact that this happened here,” Lee said.
“We’re also trying to build links with American families whose relatives served here, and track down the families of local women who went back to the US, as ‘GI brides’, when the Americans left in 1945. There is so much to uncover.”
Beneath the surface of today’s Pheasey Estate, evidence can still be found of the area’s wartime past.
“There are lots of stories of local people decorating their homes and finding graffiti on the walls beneath their wallpaper, left by American troops,” Lee said. “One person found the tread marks from a jeep.
All of this history is just under the surface, waiting to be found”. The idea of The Americans Are Here is to make local people aware of their heritage, and help them discover it for themselves.
“It’s so important that this kind of history isn’t forgotten. It helps people better understand the area they live in, and how it played a part in world events.”
We need you!
Are you a Pheasey resident, school or business?
Would you like to find out more about the area in which you live, work or play?
We are looking for people of all ages to join us in discovering Pheasey’s fascinating past during World War Two, when it was home to American soldiers.
Rob, Isabel & Toby Pearson Get To Grips With A Construction Project
Philosopher George Santayana once remarked that ‘a child only educated in school is an uneducated child.’
With lockdown removing most children from the classrooms, home schooling has been the ‘new normal’ for many.
“Opportunities to learn surround us in everything we do – it doesn’t just happen in school,” explained Head Teacher Helen Wright.
“Give a child your time and attention and they will learn and remember more than they will ever in the classroom.”
Parents across the country have risen to the challenge and we catch up with a couple of local dads in charge of lockdown lessons.
Rob Pearson swapped his day-to-day job as a building maintenance systems engineer for teacher when schools closed down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
His daughter Isabel, who attends Park Hall Infants Academy, enjoyed daily lessons from dad, while his school teacher wife Cassie continued her day job.
As well as the 3 Rs, Rob and Isabel enjoyed regular nature lessons – signing up for a five-week bird-watching survey with the British Ornithological Trust (BTO) and planting flowers and tracking them as they grew.
There was also plenty of play-style learning to help keep Isabel’s three-year-old brother Toby occupied, too.
The pièce de resistance for Rob was the science lessons – making different paper aeroplanes and measuring how far they fly, and building a wind turbine out of tin cans.
“I’ve been wanting to make one for a couple of years and as we had the chance to do it, we made it one of our projects,” said Rob, who was placed on furlough in April.
“Isabel helped where she could, with the gluing, looking at the instructions, and holding the pole in place, but I did the cutting and twisting the blades because the edges were sharp. It’s still in the garden now and looks great. I’ve enjoyed doing it for the past few weeks.”
It was DIY and science that Stuart Webb’s children enjoyed when he supervised their lockdown lessons.
The Aldridge dad of two, who works as a service manager for Walsall Council’s leisure services department, worked throughout the lockdown period, but was able to do the lessons when he took annual leave.
Martha, aged eight and in year four at Cooper & Jordan School, and her brother Henry, who is 11 and in year six at the school, have spent most of their time being supervised by their mother Kelly, who works at Bloxwich Leisure Centre as swimming instructor and receptionist.
But Stuart, who admitted he felt guilty about not being able to dedicate the same time to doing lessons with his children because of working, he ensured he did his bit on his days off.
His favourite project? A challenge from the school to create something from marbles – with his children, they collected old timber from the garage and other bits and bobs to make a pinball machine, which worked brilliantly, he said.
“We came up with the idea and they both did the sawing, drilling and hammering to make it – the kids absolutely loved it,” he said.
In fact, Martha enjoyed woodwork so much she enlisted Stuart to help her make a birdhouse from offcuts of wood.
Stuart also enjoyed a wind power science experiment that the children were asked to do at home, with cardboard, string and a hairdryer.
“We’ve also been on plenty of walks and bike rides, while Henry has been able to practise some cricket as the nets opened at Aldridge Cricket Club,” he added.
Stephanie Hasketh Wears A Face Mask For Lip Reading
Walsall is a creative place. From artists, musicians and writers to the skilled craftspeople who helped spark the Industrial Revolution, Walsall people have always had a creative spark.
And in Walsall Creative Factory the borough has a project that exists to feed that creativity, bringing people together, helping them to learn new skills, brightening up their communities and express themselves.
Walsall Creative Factory is a collective of skilled artists and craft experts led by Deb Slade, who has 27 years of experience working in community arts.
Supported by funds, including cash from the Walsall for All government grant, their role includes reaching out to vulnerable, isolated people, as well as helping community cohesion by supporting residents who use English as a second language – using crafts as an entry point to help them engage with the community and each other.
The group moved into their own premises, a former hairdressers’ shop in Westbourne Street, in February last year, providing a place for people to get together and show their creative side.
But the coronavirus pandemic has required Deb, the team and a host of volunteers to show a different kind of creativity – as they worked out ways of helping Walsall folk express their artistic side in their own homes.
The result has been a variety of lockdown-busting creative platforms.
“We have tried to still use the building, almost as billboard to let people know what’s going on,” Deb said, “and for some of our users we’ve stood at the door and talked to them, also bringing activity outside, weather permitting,
“But we’ve also set up six different platforms to help us interact with people and provide projects and ideas to get them creative during the lockdown.
“So, for example, we have a ladies’ chatroom, where our users can just chat away to each other, that has been really quite a lifeline to some more isolated people.
“We’ve used WhatsApp for our youth club – it’s not used for ‘chatting’ in the same way, but we’ve used it to provide a weekly craft project along with delivering packs of materials, which has some educational value.
“Then another example would be our Cultural Dialogue Group, on Facebook, which has been really interesting because it is mainly two groups of women – Asian ladies and Polish ladies – who have been looking at cultural things together.
“So, we’ve managed to use digital platforms to carry on reaching out to people.”
Another way that the Creative Factory has overcome lockdown is to send out regular, simple packs featuring arts projects to challenge users to try new things.
“We have been using Facebook and delivered activity packs to local children in our neighbourhood every three weeks or so, giving ideas on something they can make, and even developed our usual Open Mic night into a virtual online event,” Deb said.
Now, as lockdown eases, the team behind Walsall Creative Factory are considering how to reopen their premises and start working face-to-face with people again.
“Some of our more vulnerable clients have struggled a little more with lockdown, so over the last few weeks we have been considering how to safely start bringing people in again, so that they can see someone,” Deb explained.
“That has either been one-to-one, or two-to-one if they have a carer or helper who comes with them. We’ve also been making packs and delivering them to people’s homes.
“The next step will probably be to open up to four or five people at a time, with everyone wearing masks and observing social distancing. We’re working our way through that now.”
One of the crafts that has been a big success during lockdown is crochet – with users working on a joint project to help brighten up a dull fence outside Caldmore Community Gardens.
The idea is to join clients’ crochet work together into large panels, which can then be weather-proofed, before being attached to the fence.
Similarly, the team has a plan to decorate hoardings at a building site neighbouring their premises with six-foot-tall crocheted flowers.
This kind of colourful thinking has seen the ideas coming out of Walsall Creative Factory help people through the difficulties of the pandemic.
“I think that Walsall is a naturally crafty place,” Deb said, “and I think that during lockdown people have perhaps rediscovered some of the skills they have. We’ve seen it with some of the cards that people have been making and sending to their loved ones, and the artworks that have been created to support the NHS.
“Craft is a great way to relax and unwind too – being creative is therapeutic, and helps people deal with the frustration of lockdown.”
The collective skills of the team and their clients have also contributed directly to the fight against COVID-19, by making PPE supplies.
“We heard that because of all the PPE that NHS staff are having to wear, it can be quite hard to tell what their individual roles are, so we were asked to make some coloured bibs that would help distinguish between them. In the end, we made more than 70 bibs, which went to the Manor Hospital.”
The team has also been asked to make facemasks with windows in them, to help Walsall’s deaf community lipread safely during the pandemic. It’s another crafty challenge they are accepting with relish.
The borough’s workplaces are starting to get back to business. Shops are reopening. Manufacturers’ machines are starting up. Office workers are returning to their desks. Walsall Creative Factory is one place that has been busily turning out its vital product – creativity – throughout the lockdown.
Our July editions of The Pioneer Magazines and Great Barr Gazette are hot off the press and will be dropping through your letterboxes in the next few days. But, if you don’t receive a copy of our printed magazines or you just can’t wait to see what’s inside, follow the link to your favourite edition and read it online!
These issues are positively brimming with local stories about local people including students at Ormiston Shelfield Community Academy, dads doing home schooling and the amazing work of our NHS Workers, Key Workers and volunteers who have made such a difference during the pandemic.
As always, we are extremely grateful to our Advertisers who even through this terribly difficult time have continued to advertise with us, ensuring that we were able to put our magazines together which we know are eagerly awaited by our readers.
Lockdown didn’t stop current and former students of Ormiston Shelfield Community Academy performing an uplifting song online to showcase their true community spirit.
If the residents of Pheasey in Walsall could step back seven decades in time to take a stroll around their estate, they wouldn’t believe their eyes.
Our July editions of The Pioneer Magazines and Great Barr Gazette are hot off the press and will be dropping through your letterboxes in the next few days. But, if you don’t receive a copy of our printed magazines or you just can’t wait to see what’s inside, follow the link to your favourite edition and read it online!