They provide places of welcome, inclusion and social cohesion across three sites in the heart of the vibrant community of Winston Green, an inner city part of Birmingham that represents over 25 ethnicities and languages.
Most of the staff and volunteers live locally, and are passionate about seeing their neighbourhood transformed. We met up with some of the people who work there: Ola, who was involved in the youth groups; Ella, who supports with public communication and creative arts; Alex, who hosts art and creative spaces; and Paul, who hosts blacksmithing workshops and fixes things that need fixing. We sat at a table at Newbigin House, where they hold community meals and monthly community events, such as funfairs and festivals, as well as kids’ clubs and a weekly youth group.
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Newbigin Trust runs lots of projects and events at Lodge Road Church Centre, Benson Community School and Newbigin House. No project is too big or small, whether that’s helping neighbours in a time of need, hosting a pop-up activity to develop skills, or hosting a sustainable project that runs for months. “That’s how Newbigin is really, things spring up,” says Ola. “Someone suggests something, and it just grows.”
Newbigin have run kids clubs, youth clubs, women and family advocacy hubs, a job club, a Persian LGBT group, trips with families and children during the holidays, introduced alpacas to the neighbours, provided social support for housing and benefits, supported people to health appointments and to navigate the healthcare system, hosted spaces for art, music, knitting, fixing and riding bikes, dancing, fishing, urban gardens, skateboarding, a foundry for blacksmithing, and a daily community cafe for a coffee or bite to eat. All of these projects have been initiated by the residents of the community, with support from Newbigin Community Trust. “Being here definitely makes you do a lot of things you thought you would never do,” says Ola. “From helping animals give birth to going canoeing. I thought I would never go on the water.”
They run frequent community events, often outdoors. Most recently they had a Creative Showcase in the Lodge Road centre, which included bands playing, choirs singing, steel pans, food, blacksmithing demonstrations, and more. “The whole place was full to the point where there was people standing outside,” says Ola. “All that you could hear was ‘this is amazing’.” Like all community organisations, this comes with it’s fair share of challenges. “If you get funding, it’s all the bureaucracy and all the hoops you have to jump through” says Paul. Alex recalls a time before Thatcher’s era when there was a lot more funding available. “It’s very old school, what we’re doing,” he says, “I get the impression when I was younger, I saw more of this kind of thing.” Paul agrees “Crunch the numbers on what Thatcher took away… how much has it cost society in crime and all the other things? It’s all connected. It’s part of the big picture.”
“All you could hear was ‘this is amazing.’”
Funding or lack thereof in the community directly leads to another challenge that Newbigin has. “We get people that have just come out of prison, and people that have got drinking issues,” says Alex. But like in all things, Newbigin responds to these challenges with care and creativity, and as a result, very rarely need to turn people away. “People come from difficult home situations. So they need access to where you can get some peace and safety.” The community has creative responses to a range of social issues, like knife crime in the area; transforming knives into sunflowers and works of art with a blacksmith, or bringing in alpacas so that people can enjoy the therapeutic qualities that animals bring. “Everyone loves the alpacas,” Ola says.