Category: Action Group

Celebrations as Moseley Road Baths exceeds Fundraising Target

Moseley Road Baths celebrated its 110th birthday this year and received £36,495 in gifts to keep the swimming pool open!

£26,495 of this amount was via the Crowdfunder campaign which finished on Wednesday 6th December, and £10,000 was from Awards for All to train members of the local community as lifeguards.

Moseley Road Baths had been identified for closure by Birmingham City Council, but a loud and vocal community campaign – with the support of national and international heritage organisations – led to a reprieve in the summer of 2017.  Since this decision, the Moseley Road Baths Community Interest Company (MRB CIC) has been developing a workable model for swimming and hopes to be about to take over operational responsibility for water activity from April 2018. The money from Awards for All and the amazing support from the Crowdfunder will play a large part in this.

There has been celebrity as well as community support throughout this campaign, which was launched by comedy character Barbara Nice. Joe Lycett, Adil Ray (Citizen Khan) and Annette Badland all contributed to and publicly supported the crowdfunder. Annette even appeared at the Baths for photographs and an appearance on Midlands Today! Benjamin Zephaniah tweeted his memories of the building and his support for our campaign.

One of the MRB CIC Directors, Kat Pearson, led the crowdfunding and said;

“We are overwhelmed by the final Crowdfunder total and at the level of support we’ve had throughout 2017. This isn’t just about the money we’ve raised, it is a demonstration of the strength of feeling throughout Birmingham and further afield that this pool is an asset which needs to be kept open. We are also incredibly fortunate to have received the Awards for All grant which will enable us to start training lifeguards and other volunteers as soon as possible.”

Details of the Crowdfunder:

  • 345 people donated a total of £26,495- including £8,750 from Birmingham City Council’s Community Innovation Fund.
  • Not including this match funding this is an average pledge of approximately £51.
  • The most popular donation amount was £20 (this wasn’t a pledge amount with a reward attached so is an excellent testament to the support for keeping the baths open!)
  • 39 people claimed a print as a reward and will receive either a photograph or watercolour of the Baths donated by local photographer Viv Harrison, and artist Jane Tavener (see attached).
  • 65 people will receive our specially commissioned pin badge designed by local designer Kerry Leslie.

Birmingham City Council continues to work with the group to support their plans to operate the baths as a community run pool, and also with other heritage partners such as Historic England, National Trust and World Monuments Fund to plan for the longer term renovation of this Grade II* listed building.

Life-long learning at Moseley Road Baths

Kat Pearson writes about her experiences in the campaign to save Moseley Road Baths.

When I do any event or post on social media for Moseley Road Baths (MRB), people will always talk to me about the pool being where their love of swimming began, or how their children and grandchildren are currently learning to swim there. This is part of what makes it such a special place.

Although I love swimming at Moseley Road Baths, my experience of learning there has been a very different one. I’m a part-time student studying Conservation of the Historic Environment at Birmingham City University and I’ve been involved with the Baths for over two years. My involvement started with a project writing a Conservation Plan for an at-risk location. I chose Moseley Road Baths because it’s a beautiful Grade II* listed building which is significant to the city, and as someone who’s lived in Birmingham for over 10 years I’ve always loved swimming there. For me it was also really important that I worked on a building that was under threat but had community support and an active Friends group working to save it, so that my studies could hopefully feed in to that.

After I finished my project I was asked to join the Moseley Road Baths Action Group. We are working as part of a coalition with the National Trust, World Monuments Fund, Historic England, and the Friends of Moseley Road Baths alongside Birmingham City Council to hopefully create a sustainable future as a swimming pool for Moseley Road Baths. I am now a director of the Community Interest Company (MRB CIC) that we’ve set up to enable us to take over swimming provision from the council next year, and am helping to lead on things such as social media engagement and fundraising especially for our Crowdfunder.

Being able to be involved in such a high-profile campaign working with national and international heritage bodies at this stage in my career has been invaluable to me, and I have learned so much from working with so many skilled and enthusiastic people. I also didn’t envisage when I started thinking about future options for the building as a university project, that within two years I would be a director of an organisation which is hoping to run a community swimming pool!

As our campaign to keep swimming at Moseley Road Baths continues, engagement with universities and colleges is going to be vital to its success. We are currently working with students from the ‘Ironbridge Institute for Cultural Heritage’ and the ‘Department of Film & Creative Writing’ at the University of Birmingham and they are bringing new skills and ideas to our group as well as allowing us to reach a different audience. We’ll also be looking to train and employ volunteer staff including lifeguards, and I hope that some of these will be students who can benefit from gaining experience in this amazing building as much as I have.

If you’re a student (or if you’re not!) and you want to get involved please follow us on social media or get in contact via keepswimming@moseleyroadbaths.org.uk to find out how you can help.

 

All eyes on 27th June…

Hope for Moseley Road Baths?

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Many thanks  to everyone who signed Moseley Road Baths Action Group’s petition to help save swiming at MRB – well over 2000 signatures now and still rising!

We downloaded the petition on 10th June in preparation for a meeting on 27th between Ian Ward and a coalition including National Trust, Historic England, World Monuments Fund, Friends of Moseley Road Baths and Moseley Road Baths Action Group.  Earlier that day a proposal will go to Birmingham City Council’s Cabinet for approval to keep the baths open until March 2018 to allow the coalition time to find a way to a way to secure the future of our much loved pool.

We’ll find out when we meet with Ian Ward whether or not this proposal has been successful but we’re remaining positive that we’ve made a strong case for keeping swimming at Moseley Road Baths and will let you know as soon as there’s any news.

In the meantime, even though we have downloaded the petition, we’re not closing it yet and we welcome more signatures and comments!

Sign the Petition

Read the BBC News item

Read the Birmingham Mail Article

 

Action Group progress and how you can help!

It’s been a while since we were in touch with some of you, but we can tell you a lot has been going on in our efforts to save Moseley Road Baths.  Here is an update from Karen Leach from the Moseley Road Baths Action Group.

Emblem (Rachel)

There is very much a chance that we can be successful in keeping Moseley Road Baths open for swimming and restore the building, but we will need everyone’s help in doing so. After giving you an update of our recent activities, we will outline some of the ways in which you could help and ask you to respond.

In spring last year, MRBAG was awarded funds from Historic England to undertake an Options Analysis. We commissioned National Trust and Princes Regeneration Trust to produce this, and the finished version can be found here. This excellent report has pulled together all the information on the huge heritage and community value of the baths, its state of repair, likely renovation costs, examples of other successful pools from across the country and much other useful information. It outlined some indicative options from which we have been developing our preferred options.

Meanwhile, the National Trust, Historic England and the World Monuments Fund have all identified Moseley Road Baths as a priority, and have formed a ‘coalition’ to work with Birmingham City Council on potential solutions to the renovation and longer term future of the building. This coalition has now put forward a set of proposals to Birmingham City Council as to how swimming might be continued and the building rescued from its current neglected state. This includes what we need the Council to provide as their contribution to making this work.

In outline, these proposals mean:

  • The Coalition partners, led by the National Trust, will be able to help us access heritage expertise and funding for design, feasibility work and eventual restoration of the building.
  • We have formed Moseley Road Baths CIC (community interest company) to take on responsibility for keeping swimming going at some point after the current closure date of June this year. This may involve bringing in a short term non-profit operator initially, then going on to manage the baths ourselves. Either way this will involve some volunteer time. This model is working in many other pools across the country, saving them from closure. We have won further funding and support from the Bright Ideas Fund, and local social enterprise specialist Dave Lane is helping us with this task.
  • We are asking the council’s support for a transitional period while we and they prepare for the handover.
  • All coalition partners including ourselves will continue to seek funding and raise the profile of the baths. Check out the Friends of MRB’s website for further info.

 Of course in an ideal world, we would want the City Council to continue running and staffing these baths, but it is clear that this cannot happen under current circumstances and this is why our only option for saving the baths is the one we have outlined here.

Our long-term vision for Moseley Road Baths is of a lively enterprise with swimming at the heart of the mix of uses for its exciting spaces, and possibly working with the Library to make best use of space.   To be successful, Moseley Road Baths will need to draw on its importance nationally and internationally to become a ‘destination’ with wide appeal in Birmingham and beyond, while maintaining its community roots, and respecting and celebrating the heritage of the building.

We have been overwhelmed by the messages of support from both our local community and people further afield who either care about heritage or swam here as children or both.

So, in order for this to work, we will need local expertise and passion to help govern what happens; volunteer input to manage the pool; local organisations and individuals to commit to keeping on swimming here; and crowdfunding. Any of these ways of helping is fantastic!

 To help us out, please take this short survey!

In the meantime if you do Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, please check out our social media campaign for the rest of February at #keepswimmingmrb and @moseleyrdbaths.  We’re showing what support there is for the baths. You can take part by posting a selfie or what you love about the baths, or just retweeting and reposting. And please do come to our next Open Day on 18th March.

As a final suggestion, if you do want Moseley Road Baths to be saved, it would be great if you can make sure your local councillors know this, so do be in touch with them by email or phone or in person.

We are really excited (if a little daunted!) about the future and look forward to hearing from you.

Karen Leach

On behalf of the Moseley Road Baths Action Group

Members of the Action Group are:

Ashram Moseley Housing Association, Balsall Heath Forum, Balsall Heath History Society, Birmingham Conservation Trust, Development in Social Enterprise, Friends of Moseley Road Baths, Localise WM, National Trust, RnR Organisation, St Pauls Trust