Archive TestbedNewsPaganel SchoolShades of BlackThe Queen's Jubilee (2022)

Platinum Street Celebrations in Stechford

As part of our Archive Testbed grant from The National Archives, we’ll be at the Platinum Jubilee Street Party 5th June 2022, 12 to 6pm, Victoria Road, Stechford. We’re working with Community Champion and ‘Home’ project star Mrs McGhie-Belgrave MBE to create an event to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. We want to support Mrs McGhie-Belgrave to have a street party with her friends and neighbours – she’s a real lynchpin in the Stechford community and works with loads of locals on her community garden (her front and back gardens). Please contact us if you want to join us or to find out more.

‘Paganel Archives after-school team will support and document the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in Stechford including a street party and working with community group Shades of Black, arts organisation Friction Arts and Stechford primary schools. Paganel Primary School is the first, and still the only, state primary school with an ARCHON-registered repository archive and has been maintained with the People’s Heritage Co-operative since it started in 2012. Paganel Archive after-school team have found images from Birmingham Archives and Heritage that have been used at Corpus Christi Primary last week. We have revisited the Paganel Archives’ own collections and develop activities that document our community, community champions like Mrs McGhie-Belgrave MBE from Shades of Black, and our relationship with the Queen using artwork, film and photography. This project builds on the success that Paganel Archives has had in engaging with a school community.

It’s a great opportunity to test the use of archives with young people, to develop a sense of community, and to document Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee in Birmingham.’

Richard Albutt, Chair, People’s Heritage Co-operative

Paganel Primary Archives after-school team will also document the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in Stechford including the street party.  We’ll be working with Shades of Black, People’s Heritage Co-operative, Stechford and Corpus Christi Primary Schools.

As part of this project we’re working with Shades of Black over the next few months to make a permanent shed space where community members can work with Mrs McGhie-Belgrave on her gardening projects, to include a display of her correspondence with Her Majesty, over the years.  The project is part funded by ‘Playing Out’, Lottery Community Fund and The National Archives Jubilee Testbed fund.

The Archive Testbed grant encourages services to develop projects using collections relating to past coronations and royal events to celebrate Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June 2022.

Mrs McGhie-Belgrave with portraits created by Young Artists at the Edge, Digbeth, for the Platinum Jubilee