The Floating Front Room is Open

Gather together with neighbours old and new from near and far as we warmly welcome you back to The Floating Front Room, a neighbourhood cafe on the canal at South Loop Park. Whether it's your first visit or you've been a regular over the years, a range of delicious hot drinks, food, and activities await you on Friday 8th and Saturday 9th May.
Building on the history of coffee houses as sites for revolutionary organising, and the coffee shop at the heart of Impact Hub Birmingham that was built in this spirit, we know spaces like this to come together are more than the sum of their parts. However, The Floating Front Room offers a light, open, informal place in our work to take a load off, spend quality time, and help us all to stay afloat as more pressure is put onto us.
As we open up The Floating Front Room for a special two days, this will be a key space to (re)connect as we begin a new chapter of organising, learning, graft, craft, safety, care, deep reimagination and endless possibility together ahead, as we make preparations to begin construction on site(s).
Whether calling in on a walk, bike ride, after parkrun, or looking for somewhere to relax, linger, and chat, you are warmly invited to explore the first planning application for the Neighbourhood Public Square, as well as discover other ways to get involved and connect with the future of this special site—from open, shared meals together to hands on learning and building throughout the regenerative retrofit processes ahead.
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Friday will be a low-key day to come down for a hot drink, chat with your neighbours, and explore the planning application for the Neighbourhood Public Square site.

• Tasty food will be provided by Lola the Cafeboat, who will be moored right alongside The Floating Front Room on the canal!
• Pong will be serving pourover coffee with a smile, and has lots of brewing wisdom and recipes that he will be more than happy to share
• You are welcome to join us on boat the boat itself, or relax in South Loop Park, with seating available inside and out
• You can just call in to visit or pick up a drink whilst passing by, or stay for the whole day and go deeper into the plans for the site and what the future holds together
• Our team will be ready to welcome you and explain everything, including how to place your order for drinks and food, and answer any questions

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Saturday will be a more lively and playful day, with additional activities and tasty food available as we enjoy the delights of the weekend together with you all.

You can expect to find:

• Pong — Pourovers and coffee wisdom
• Lola the Cafeboat — Pizza party!
• Hector & Hugo from Minus Mob — Small batch ice cream
• Haseena & Ayesha — Bellboating on the canal
• CIVIC SQUARE Team — Chat and explore our planning application together
• FORIJ — A special tea tasting [Register your place when you book]
  Flight Club: The Future In the Hedgerow is a sensory tea tasting experience from FORIJ that invites you to reconsider what we mean by “the future” — not as something distant, but as something already unfolding in the plants, practices, and ecologies around us.
  Rooted in the understanding that plants are our first ancestors - the original systems that made life on Earth possible — this session traces a continuum between deep time and what is still becoming. The future, like the past, is already living within the vegetal world we move through every day.
  Through a curated flight of botanical infusions, each tea represents a different emergent quality — resilience, care, regeneration, interdependence, and slowness. Guided storytelling and reflection accompany each tasting, revealing the ecological, cultural, and emotional intelligence held within each plant.
  This is not a tea tasting in the traditional sense, but a slow, embodied exploration of how futures are already present in the everyday. Participants are invited to pause, taste, and reflect — experiencing the present moment as a site of ancestry, emergence, and possibility. This session also includes a short walk exploring our ecological neighbourhood.
  

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After 6 years of dreaming, designing, rehearsing, and building together, the first planning application for Neighbourhood Public Square is now live. This application is for the change of use, enabling works to repair and reinforce the existing buildings, and retrospective planning for temporary structures to learn together on site.
As part of the planning process, you can directly submit comments to Birmingham City Council, which will be fully taken into account when the application is assessed. We’d love to invite your messages of support, what the site can enable, as well as be able to address or adapt to any concerns or questions.
We know looking at planning applications can be a headache, so join us at The Floating Front Room to talk things though in person, find out how to have your say, explore the plans for the site and discover more about the journey so far to this moment.
This planning permission will be the beginning of a phased retrofit of the existing buildings of this former waste transfer station to demonstrate regenerative civic infrastructure at the heart of Ladywood, Birmingham, co-building and democratising access to the spaces, tools and resources for a bold, imaginative, distributed transition, held in commonwith the neighbourhood.
Find out more: bit.ly/ExplorePlanningCS
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The Floating Front Room is a neighbourhood gathering place, not a commercial coffee shop, and you may be surprised to find that you don't need to pay for most things.

• A complimentary drink and portion of the tasty food available that day is offered to absolutely everyone visiting The Floating Front Room as a universal principle, as part of every visit
• If you need further refreshments, additional drinks and cakes are also available for a small contribution (£1/£1.50) with card and cash accepted

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• Coffees available include pourovers / hand brewed coffees, alongside any styles that you love from your favourite coffee shops such as flat white, americano, latte, and more
• A range of teas—including herbal and caffeine-free options—and hot chocolate are also available
• Dairy and oat milk options are available for all drinks, and vegan and gluten free food meals and snacks will always be provided

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Do I Need To Bring Anything?

• We encourage you to bring your own keep cup or mug with you, if you have one. If not, we will also have reusable cups for you to use during your visit
• You may want to bring anything that will make you more comfortable during changeable weather, such as a cap, suncream, extra layers or an umbrella

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• The Floating Front Room is a dark green canal boat moored canalside at South Loop Park, Rotton Park Street, Birmingham, B16 0AB
• All paths leading to The Floating Front Room through South Loop Park are flat and accessible. Primarily food and drink will be served via a hatch in the barge to enjoy outside, however if you wish to enter the boat itself for limited covered seating, please note that access to the boat is by steep steps, so is not accessible to anyone in a wheelchair or for whom steps are a barrier
• There is no formal seating outside, but there are benches and blankets available should you wish to relax in South Loop Park
• Unfortunately we currently do not have any toilet facilities available, so please do factor this in when planning your visit
• If you plan to enjoy your refreshments in South Loop Park, please dress to be comfortable outside in weather that may be changeable
  

About The Front Room

For us, The Front Room was phase one of CIVIC SQUARE in 2020—2022, acting as the beginning of an ambitious, long-term neighbourhood platform to meet, connect and co-design together, operating as an initial 3 year prototype designed to transition into the full Neighbourhood Public Square proposal.
COVID-19 illustrated the necessity of adaptive, robust, resourced neighbourhood infrastructure, with The Floating Front Room — our on site neighbourhood cafe, operating from a canal barge — became an unexpected site of mutual aid, food distribution, and a safe(r) meeting point as the effects of the pandemic played out.
The front room of the home holds a significant place for so many cultures and communities, particularly those who immigrated to the UK in the 60s and 70s. From local savings groups to co-operative childcare, the front rooms of our homes and streets are where many people have organised, shared joy, grieved together and grown collective resilience in challenging times. We hoped to honour and continue this tradition of the front room as a noble environment to receive guests, to welcome and be welcomed, and express, share and preserve social and cultural values.
Together we have been exploring:

• What does such a space look like in our neighbourhoods and commons?
• How could it be designed, built and stewarded collectively?
• What inspiration can be taken from the way the front rooms of our homes and streets operate(d) in order to design networked spaces in our places?

Read More: Set Up Phase: The Floating Front Room (2020)

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