Neighbourhood Creatives

What have we been up to so far?

Throughout 2025, we spent time getting to know Washwood Heath & Ward End and meeting with a range of people and organisations from the area. Following on from these conversations, we co-designed 3 artist residencies with 4 local partners, including Braidwood Trust School For The Deaf, Hodge Hill College, Hodge Hill Arts Forum and the Washwood Heath Adaption & Sustainability Hub (WASH). Each partner worked with an artist to offer a range of regular creative workshops and activity for their participants to engage with over several months.

You can find out more about the partners and their residencies by checking out the next three tabs in this block.

Each residency has generated artistic outputs, which our 3 artists will spend summer 2026 sourcing inspiration from and reflecting on their time within the community so far, to build a ‘library of ideas’, which will inform the final pieces of public artwork and how we could work with the community to deliver these in 2027.

Neighbourhood Creatives Arts Festival 2026!

Let’s get-together from 26th-31st October 2026 in Washwood Heath and Ward End for a week-long arts festival, filled with family fun activities and performances at different venues across the area – all events will be free!

We’ll be popping up at:

• Lakeside Cafe, Dolphin Women’s Centre
• Ward End Park Car Park (the courts)
• WASH Project, Ward End Park House & Allotments
• Ward End Wellbeing Centre
• The Unity Hubb
• Ward End Library

Everyone is welcome – whether you live locally or a little further afield.

Head over to our festival page to check out the programme of events and book your free tickets.

If you fancy being kept up to date on what’s happening, what’s coming up and how you can get involved with the Neighbourhood Creatives project, please click here to fill in a short form with your contact details.

We’ve partnered with the Washwood Heath Adaption & Sustainability Hub (WASH) who are a new environmental project delivered by Norton Hall aiming to connect with nature, enable climate change action, and create more green jobs for local people. From running allotments, to forest schools for young people and outdoor learning programmes, WASH has a range of activity which promote local communities to come together to understand and care for their green spaces.

They’ve been working with Birmingham-based Artist & Curator Nilupa Yasmin to design a series of creative workshops that encourage their participants to explore themes of ‘community space’ and ‘sustainability’ through crafts-based activities alongside learning practical green skills, hosted in their allotments at Ward End Park House. Participants have created nature-inspired artworks including block-printed tote bags, textured collage and acrylic panel mosaics.

‘I’m excited to be part of this project and to spend time creating with a community that’s passionate about coming together and building something meaningful. Collaborating through craft and conversation is central to my practice, and I’m really looking forward to what will unfold during this residency. Creating space for genuine exchange and shared making is something I care deeply about. It’s also a pleasure to be working with China Plate again, they consistently champion socially engaged work that puts people and process at its heart, and they meaningfully support artists working in community settings. I’m really glad to be on this journey with them once more.’ – Nilupa Yasmin

To find out more about WASH and their upcoming activity in the area, please visit: nortonhall.org.uk/wash-project

To find out more about Nilupa, check out her artist profile.

We’ve partnered with Hodge Hill Arts Forum – a grassroots organisation who are passionate about making arts and cultural activities accessible to their local community. The residency has built upon their existing programme of ‘Arts Cafés’, which invite residents to bring along a craft and share this with other people in the group, with the aim to encourage social interaction and build connections between participants through creative writing activities.

Hodge Hill Arts Forum’s Co-ordinator Lucy Poulson has been working with Writer & Theatre Deviser Rochi Rampal to explore what it means to be part of an artistic community in Washwood Heath through weekly drop-in sessions at their base in Ward End Fire Station. Participants have also been on trips around Birmingham, including a visit to see Please Do Not Touch at the Birmingham Hippodrome – a new show written by former Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey and produced by China Plate & Belgrade Theatre in association with Birmingham Hippodrome.

To find out more about Hodge Hill Arts Forum and their upcoming activity in the area, please visit: www.facebook.com/HodgeHillArts

To find out more about Rochi, check out her artist profile.

We’ve partnered with Braidwood Trust School For The Deaf and Hodge Hill College to deliver two half-terms of activity which bring together a cohort of Year 9 hearing and Deaf students from each school every week.

They’ve been working with Deaf artist & facilitator Maral Mamaghanizadeh to explore themes of identity, community and connection through a range of creative mediums including clay sculpture, painting, drawing and embroidery. Each workshop incorporated a British Sign Language teaching / learning activity for the students to build their knowledge and confidence in communicating with one another.

As part of the residency students also had the opportunity to head out of the classroom to explore the local area and meet our other residency partners and artists, as well as a trip down to London for the day, to visit the Wellcome Collection where the students experienced a guided tour of 1880 THAT – a new exhibition created by Deaf artist Chistine Sun Kim & hearing artist Thomas Mader that explores sign language and the right to communicate, plus an interactive workshop led by artist Christopher Sacre and a visit to Tate Modern to explore the iconic Turbine Hall building and see a few of London’s iconic landmarks along the way.

“Neighbourhood Creatives has been a transformative catalyst for our students… the project provided a rare and invaluable platform to step outside their usual circles and engage deeply with peers from Hodge Hill. It didn’t just facilitate a meeting; it created a shared language through creativity that allowed both groups to explore the nuances of community in a way that felt organic and meaningful.

Working with Maral was an exceptional experience. Having access to a professional artist who facilitated with such sensitivity and expertise provided our students with a clear role model. It allowed them to see the creative arts not just as a classroom activity, but as a viable professional path. Maral’s presence helped demystify the professional creative world, making it feel accessible and aspirational for our pupils.” – Jo Blackwood, Braidwood School

“The workshops were excellent in providing opportunities outside of the students’ local area. We were fortunate enough to visit London as part of the programme. Some students that had never even been on a train, were able to access our amazing capital city and experience real artworks in a gallery setting. All related to the content of our school workshops, providing necessary real-world context to our students.

Maral was an excellent facilitator to enable conversations between both sets of students. Having a deaf artist lead the workshops was incredibly beneficial to the HHC students, seeing a professional artist at work that does have different access requirements to them… I would love to continue Hodgehill College’s existing relationship with both China Plate and Braidwood and would feel lucky to be asked to take part in a similar project in the future.” – Molly Needle, Hodge Hill College

To find out more about Maral, check out her artist profile.