My City

Back in the autumn, arts organisation Maokwo put out a call for participants to take part in a series of creative workshops exploring the theme "My City" across Coventry, Wolverhampton and Birmingham. As it seemed to slot together nicely with some of the themes the Stories of Hope and Home group have been exploring, I decided it would be great for some of us to take part. I'm glad we did: we had some great sessions together, and some beautiful words and images were shared. For me personally, while I was partly facilitating others from the group taking part, it was also nice to be there as a participant: to reflect on and creatively express my own experiences of the city I now call home. The image which kept tugging at my mind, and which hopefully comes through in the image and poem below is how Birmingham is beautiful rather like the underside of a tapestry.

The (online, obviously!) exhibition launched today and is available to view and I'd definitely recommend checking it out (and checking back as they are going to be adding to it in the weeks to come) https://maokwo.com/mycityexhibition

Birmingham 

My Birmingham 

The Birmingham 

That embraced 

And adopted me 

Is 

Beautiful 

I am not naïve 

I know 

It is not 

Picture postcard pretty 

Like 

Bath or Buxton or Bury-St-Edmunds 

But 

It is 

Beautiful 

In all its cultures 

And its colours 

And its confused complexity 

You see 

Birmingham is beautiful 

With a hidden 

Unexpected 

Beauty 

Like the underside of a tapestry 

And 

To see it 

And 

To know it 

Is both 

A privilege and a choice 

An invitation offered 

But 

One which you are free 

Not to see 

Because 

It must be 

Lifted up 

By those 

Who made it 

And who make it 

and who remake it 

Those who sew 

Their very being 

Into 

The fabric of this place 

This sacred space 

This tapestry of stories 

Where 

The stark and the silvery 

The bright and the burnished 

The dazzling and the dark 

Make their mark 

Intertwined 

Not by some divine design 

But 

By each of us 

Unravelling spirals of silken secrets 

Stitched together 

From 

Each fragile thread 

With fraying edge 

Tangled strands 

Of lives 

Loosely looped, 

Stretched taut and tied, 

Tenuously, 

Tightly, 

To oneself and one another 

Thus creating 

A kaleidoscope of colour 

Uncovered 

By courage and compassion 

And somehow 

Unplanned and unpretentious 

There is beauty 

In 

This mess of colourful strands 

Held together 

By histories, humanity, and hope 

As its beauty 

Hangs 

By a thread 

So no 

It may not have chocolate box charm 

Like 

Bakewell or Bamburgh or Bourton-on-the-Water 

But Birmingham 

My Birmingham 

The Birmingham 

That embraced 

and adopted me 

Is 

Beautiful

(Also feel I owe a shout out to my mum and sister who helped provide some of the alliterative place-names when my mind drew a blank!)