Is there a special person, place, activity or memory that makes you smile?

Whatever it is, we want to hear about it. We are trying to find out what makes the people of the black country happy for our virtual map to show that the black country is a great place to live,work and visit.

Happiness project featured by the BBC

The happiness project has been covered by BBC Video Nation as an example of how the arts can improve mental well-being.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/features/headroom/arts_happiness/index.shtml

To be part of the map or to find out more about the project:

Text: HAPPINESS is… and your answer along with your name, age and town to 60300

(You will receive one free SMS text once we receive your message. Text messages are free to receive, but sending will cost one standard rate text message from your mobile.)

Email: happiness@multistory.org.uk

Or answer in the comment form below

The Value of Small Things (VaST) tests new approaches to managing cities, and their neighbourhoods, more equitably and sustainably. It adapts 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 civil society in urban planning and management remains very difficult. Using the interdisciplinary expertise of Emma Chetcuti (Multistory), Nabeel Hamdi and François Matarasso and Jeni Burnell (Architecture Sans Frontières-UK), this project seeks to work with Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council to address that challenge. The transect journey is the cornerstone of the VaST process that legitimises local experience and interpretations. It enables the identification of challenges and opportunities and develops an open partnership between communities, local government and private actors. VaST will pilot the concept for the first time in Britain and lay the foundation for a much larger international programme that will see the concept extended from neighborhood to the city scale. Aims and Objectives VaST aims to pilot innovative international practice in engaging civil society in urban planning and management. We will do this by:

1. Working with three disadvantaged communities in Sandwell borough to develop new methods of local governance.
2. Using interdisciplinary expertise and methods to enable local people to reflect critically on strengths and opportunities and mobilise on these.
3. Building effective partnership between formal and informal civil society with public and private sector stakeholders.
4. Developing resources to support transferable use of the new tools and methods through documentation, research and dissemination.
5. Planning an approach to scaling up neighborhood level practice to the city as a whole.

Overall Context

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. To elaborate:

1. The value of community empowerment and localism (including participatory community budgeting ideas etc) is widely supported by government and civil society. The current delivery methods however continue to have relatively low levels of success in establishing sustainable engagement and lasting change, especially in the relationship between civil society and government. VaST aims to tackle this issue by starting small and working over a period of time with communities to foster genuine and meaningful opportunities.

2. Although art and culture has become an increasingly common aspect of urban regeneration, it has been proven that the capital led, festival city approach has had little impact and relevance to the more disadvantaged neighbourhoods. VaST’s relationship to arts and regeneration differs from this approach because it has emerged from an international development and genuine participatory community arts partnership.

3. The VaST programme uniquely combines established community engagement practice from the development and arts sectors. The converging of these worlds creates unique opportunities to engage with, not only the formal civil society sector, but the wide range of people who typically choose to not engage at all with local decision making and initiatives.

Local and Partnership Context

The VaST team will work in partnership with Sandwell MBC’s Partnerships & Housing Directorate and the Sandwell Local Strategic Partnership on 3 estates, each of which has a strong local identity but suffers from post-industrial decline and subsequent social and economic inequality.

EXTENDED UNTIL 21st MARCH 2010

Home by Six is inspired by the Ernest Hemingway novel entitled ‘Six’. The author once bet he could write a novel in six words:
‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’ - he won the bet.

Created in partnership with The Community Gallery programme at Birmingham Museum& Art Gallery, the exhibition is a multi-faceted and dynamic mix of six-word stories and visual imagery, exploring themes on ‘home’ and ‘journeying home’, collected in collaboration with the Bangladeshi Youth Forum and audiences on the Birmingham to Wolverhampton Metro line. Visitors to the Community Gallery can also interact with the display adding their own stories.

Collaborators

Bangladeshi Youth Forum

Tru Dance Group, Birmingham

Fusion Dance Company,  Sandwell

Centro staff and Staff Dance Group, Birmingham

Would you like to interact with the Home By Six exhibition? Your story could be seen within the display at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.

Text: ‘homebysix’ plus your story, name and town to 60300
(calls charged at your operator’s standard network rate)
Email: send the above information to yourstory@homebysix.co.uk
Twitter: use the hashtag #homebysix
Website: www.homebysix.co.uk

Beyond Bricks is a programme of temporary creative activities initiated and funded by Urban Living and Arts Council England and delivered by Multistory. The programme will be delivered across nine neighbourhoods in the Birmingham and Sandwell Housing Renewal pathfinder area in 2010. For further information on Beyond Bricks www.beyondbricks.net

For further information about the commissions and how to apply please click on the briefs below.

• Beyond Bricks Documentation Brief (pdf)
• Beyond Bricks Evaluation Brief (pdf)
• Beyond Bricks Press & PR Brief (pdf)

See the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read: BBC Black Country - Keeping The Public happy.

You can see more from the Happiness project on the BBC Video Nation network.

Watch: ‘Happiness’ - BBC Video Nations.

Multistory is not responsible for the content of external websites.

Pictured above: Colin Wells, Chair of the Multistory Board of Trustees, collecting his Jaguar Champion of Champion Award

More than 350 guests from the business and cultural sectors joined acclaimed film and stage actor Patrick Stewart at an awards ceremony in Town Hall Birmingham last night to celebrate the Midlands’ best partnerships between business and the arts.

The 10th Jaguar Land Rover Awards for Arts & Business, presented in association with The Birmingham Post and hosted by Sarah Falkland of BBC Midlands Today, recognised collaborations across a range of categories with the Land Rover Board Member of the Year category as well as the overall Jaguar Champion of Champions 2009 award going to Colin Wells of Prologic plc and community arts organisation, Multistory.

As winner of the Land Rover Board Member of the Year category, the judges selected Colin Wells and Multistory as the Jaguar Champion in recognition of Colin’s leadership and commitment as a founding board member of Multistory – an organisation which aims to bring together communities and artists to develop creative solutions to local problems in Sandwell. Although initially recruited to the board of The Public, after it went into administration in 2006, Colin subsequently became a board member for the resulting new organisation, Multistory. The judges felt that by “sticking with it” through bad times as well as good, Colin exemplified all a good board member should be and declared him Jaguar Champion.

Pictured: Colin Wells, with Emma Chetcuti, Director of Multistory, collecting his Land Rover Board Member of the Year Award

With effect from Monday 19 October 2009, Multistory’s new address will be as follows:

Multistory
1st Floor
Landchard House
Victoria Street
West Bromwich
B70 8HY

All telephone numbers; the fax number; web and email addresses remain the same.

Chloe Brown, our Arts Manager (Regeneration and Longhouse), will be appearing on the fourth plinth in the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square in London as part of Antony Gormley’s One & Other project on Saturday 22nd August from 8am til 9am.

You can watch via the live feed on the One & Other website or on Sky Arts, and check out Chloe’s Plinther page for more info - Plinthers Page

Once you’ve watched head over to our Facebook page and join in the discussion there about Chloe’s performance.