Trade School + Supper Club End of Year Celebration

The evening will be a time for us to share gratitude, celebrate and enjoy the fruits of the many ways we’ve been exchanging skills, ideas, attention, energy and resources in our neighbourhood and beyond through our Neighbourhood Trade School and Supper Clubs throughout this year.

Building on from our first year of Trade School, we have seen the deepening and strengthening of relationships both within our regular community of Trade School hosts and learners as well as those who have dropped by occasionally.

We invite you to bring your family and neighbours to imagine how we can continue to host these spaces for peer to peer learning exchange, capturing and building on the beautiful energy we have created together bringing our our ideas, hopes and dreams for next year and in the long term as we turn our attention the Neighbourhood Public Square site in 2025.

Whether or not you have had any connection to Neighbourhood Trade School or Supper Club so far, you are warmly welcome to join us for a relaxed evening to enjoy great food and company, and to follow your curiousities and see what connections may emerge.

A warm welcome awaits you when you arrive at the Signing Tree venue. From the moment you arrive at 5pm until 7.30pm, you’ll be able to get yourself a drink and a snack and drop-in to one of the Trade School skills sharing spaces; which includes Woodcarving with Path-carvers, Scrapbooking with Callie, Wreath-making with Ellie and more.
At 5.45pm we will gather for a moment of welcome and gratitude sharing for the time spent regularly together at Neighbourhood Trade School + Supper Clubs over a plate of hot tasty food provided by the Signing Tree cafe, whilst FORIJ demonstrates the art of syrup-making from seasonal foraged plants, alongside conversations being hosted with local practitioners and activists Karis Neighbourhood Scheme, Slow Food Birmingham, Birmingham Settlement Warm Earth and Windsor Academy.

From 7.45pm until 8.30pm, you’ll be able enjoy some performances from Adjei Sun, Ayan Aden, Afrikan Elegance dancers. You’re more than welcome to bring children along to draw, play and dream with us too. You can also drop in at any time, leave when you need to, or come for the whole evening!

The Signing Tree Venue is based within the Deaf Cultural Centre on Ladywood Road, B16 8SZ. See the Signing Tree website for travel information. The event will take place on the ground floor, and the venue is wheelchair accessible. Please let us know of any access enquiries or needs when booking your ticket.

It’s been incredibly inspiring to learn and exchange together across the many creative and embodied ways people are reimagining, reframing and repurposing the resources we have available to us through our second full year of hosting Neighbourhood Trade School classes deepening its presence right here at home in Birmingham as well as socialising what could be possible more nationally through our presence at the Timber Festival in July.

This year we have worked together with Midland Sailing Club, Birmingham Settlement, Wild Rumpus, and many others while shifting our attention in a more focused way towards the Neighbourhood Public Square site throughour Skills for Transition programme. In partnership with Material Cultures and many other collaborators, we have collectively expanded our working knowledge of how we can use natural and bio-based materials for construction and retrofit increasing our capacities for a safe and just climate transition of our home streets and neighbourhoods.

As we prepare to wind down for Winter season and wrap up our current iteration of our weekly peer to peer Neighbourhood Trade School, we invite you to explore with us how we can capture and build on the beautiful energy we have created together, before we turn our attention to the Neighbourhood Public Square site in 2025.

Neighbourhood Trade School is based on the principle that everyone has something to share and everyone has something to learn.

What if we could activate the potential in our homes, streets, libraries, playgrounds, schools and more as places to exchange learning together in a kind, joyful, noble and intergenerational way that is available to all of us?

Together through this platform we have been exchanging skills and knowledge of many forms can make our neighbourhoods resilient to the challenges and opportunities we will face together, now and in the future.

How might the essence of Neighbourhood Trade School be carried forward by us all, beyond the regular weekly gatherings we are used to, so that we continue the exchange of skills and knowledge in our neighbourhood(s)?

We invite you to continue to share and build on this idea with us.

Host or Publisher CIVIC SQUARE