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  Martin Parr

  March 2010 - November 2010

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  Martin Parr

  Martin Parr, Magnum photographer, will produce a photographic essay and archive of the Black Country. Martin's process of documenting and recording is fuelled by his noseyness and a curiosity in the everyday.

  Martin will photograph people in clubs, pubs, a sweet factory and a spice factory, metal bashing industries, markets, shops, Gurdwarras, Temples, Mosques, restaurants, cafes, bars, on canals and at weddings, St George's day celebrations, Easter celebrations and Vaisakhi celebrations.

  During his time in the Black Country, Martin will mentor 30 students from the Sandwell College Photography department who will undertake their own photograpic project about the Black Country.

  The 'Black Country Stories' project is complemented by a parallel oral history project so that Multistory can record the stories of the people Martin has photographed. We will also produce and distribute a ' Black Country Stories' newspaper.

  An exhibition of 'Black Country Stories' will open on 10 November at The Public in West Bromwich and the Sandwell College photography students will exhibit at the same time.

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• 

  Allan Ahlberg

  January 2011 - July 2012

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  Allan Ahlberg

  Allan Ahlberg, international best selling children's author, will work with Rood End and Bleak House schools in Oldbury.

  Allan was a pupil at Rood End primary school in the 1950s and they still have an archive of school log books and photographs from that time. We will use Allan's books about childhood in Oldbury in the 1950s, including 'My Brother's Ghost', 'The Boyhood of Burglar Bill' and 'Woof', as the catalyst for work with the years three and four pupils, their teachers, parents and grandparents. We will also invite local artists to support Allan on this project.

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• 

  The Sandwell Imaginareum

  How many stories does it take
  to fill an Imaginareum?

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  The Sandwell Imaginareum

  How many stories does it take to fill an Imaginareum?

  The Sandwell Imaginareum is a new Multistory project that will be an online, accessible archive of local imaginative and creative life. It will be a repository for local stories, oral histories, images, artifacts and cultural activities resulting from our arts programme and the work we do with communities that will be collected and curated by Multistory and the artists we collaborate with.

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  Forging Links

  July 2010

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  Forging Links

  Forging Links is a project funded by Arts Council England and Heritage Lottery Fund that will focus on the heritage of the local metal bashing trades and industries of Sandwell and the communities that have been shaped by them; bringing this rich heritage to a new generation.

  Sandwell Museum Service and Sandwell Community History & Archives Service (CHAS) hold an important and diverse collection that relates to many hugely significant Sandwell based companies who have made an impact on both the national and international business worlds. Forging Links aims to bring this collection to life and bring it to the attention of a new generation and the wider community.

  The project will enable a group of young people to work with several artists over the course of twelve months, from July 2010, to discover and explore different ways to interpret Sandwell's collection for a new audience; and explore life as an industrial worker; and capture the intangible heritage of community memory and emotion through film, photography and audio recordings in order to reveal a social and human context for the collection.

  The young people will present their interpretation of the collection to local people at the Sandwell Arts Festival in July, 2011.

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• 

  Longhouse

  2010

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  Longhouse

  Longhouse is dedicated to the professional development of artists working in the public realm. It provides knowledge, support and funding to artists by offering a range of professional development opportunities; these include seminars, forums, site-specific learning, case studies and action research as well as online resources.

  This year Longhouse will be commissioning the following opportunities.

  Spring 2010: 5 Action research bursaries

  Summer 2010: Black Country creative advantage (BCCA) is a partnership between the Centre for Art, Design, Research and Experimentation (CADRE), at the University of Wolverhampton, and Multistory. Artists, researchers and local people will come together to investigate how decisions are made locally about regeneration and to find out more about the developments taking place in West Bromwich. The programme is based at the Black Country Research Centre, a stall in the indoor King's Square market in West Bromwich and investigations will take place between May to September 2010, culminating in a conference event in October to share our findings.

  Autumn 2010: Interrogation:West Bromwich

  A follow up to the success of Interrogation:Walsall in 2009 (www.interrogation-walsall.blogspot.com) investigating the impact that artists can have in one place in one day.

  And look out for our guest editors on the Longhouse website; over the course of the year, 4 artists will take over the website for a month long 'residency'.

  www.longhouse.uk.com

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  Digital Content Development

  (DCD)

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  Digital Content Development

  DCD will support Multistory in creating The Sandwell Imaginareum; a digital archive of Sandwell as it is today.

  The Digital Content Development (DCD) programme is an Arts Council England, West Midlands programme to encourage arts organisations in the region to develop imaginative, bold and ground-breaking approaches to the creation of digital content that will develop and deepen engagement with new audiences.

  DCD will enable Multistory to explore the different ways to collect and present stories, objects, processes and feelings that already happen as part of the delivery of our arts programme, in a digital format. The research will enable us to understand how people will access a digital archive and to find out what they want the archive to look like and what type of information to include.

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  VaST

  The Value of Small Things

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  VaST

  The Value of Small Things (VaST) tests new approaches to managing cities, and their neighbourhoods, more equitably and sustainably.

  VaST will adapt innovative international practice to a British context, drawing on work with vulnerable communities in South Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe as well as the UK. The importance of good governance is widely recognised but securing a legitimate voice for citizens in the urban planning and management process remains very difficult.

  The VaST programme has emerged as a result of three key contextual observations; the growing interest in localism; the role of art and culture in regeneration; and the merit of converging knowledge across disciplines. Using the interdisciplinary expertise of Multistory, Nabeel Hamdi, François Matarasso and Jeni Burnell of Architecture Sans Frontières-UK, this project seeks to work with partners across the public, private and voluntary sectors to address that challenge.

  Phase one, to take place during September 2010 to March 2011, will pilot the concept for the first time in Britain in order to lay the foundation for a much larger programme.

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  Digital Stories

  Everyone has a story to tell

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  Digital Stories

  Everyone has a story to tell. Technology now allows anyone to tell it in their own way.

  Multistory wants to provide many different ways for people to tell their stories. 'Digital Stories' will give people the opportunity to make short films using personal photographs, sound, images, objects, recordings, memories. Multistory wants to get people's stories heard, to pass on skills, to capture everyday living, in all its different ways, across the Black Country.

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  Beyond Bricks

  November 2009 - August 2010

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  Beyond Bricks

  Beyond Bricks is a programme of creative participatory projects taking place in the Urban Living Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder area of Birmingham and Sandwell up until September, 2010.

  Beyond Bricks recognises the importance of arts activity and its role towards empowering local people to respond to local issues and the social, economic and environmental changes taking place within their community.

  A diverse range of artists and residents will work together to help foster community cohesion and strengthen connections with one another. The high quality arts projects taking place during the next few months will reflect the ideas, talents and aspirations of local people.

  The programme is funded by Urban Living and Arts Council England, West Midlands.

  www.beyondbricks.net

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Recent projects

• 

  What is Happiness?

  Working across the four Black Country boroughs Multistory will work with different community groups to find out what happiness means to them.

  
  Read more
• 

  The Value of Small Things (VaST)

  The Value of Small Things (VaST) tests new approaches to managing cities, and their neighbourhoods, more equitably and sustainably.

  
  Read more
• 

  Beyond Bricks -Lozells & East Handsworth

  The Beyond Bricks programme is an exciting programme of temporary creative activities taking place in Lozells and East Handsworth.

  
  Read more

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