Community Power Podcast Series 2 Episode 10: Empowering local writers in Firs & Bromford

Episode 10: Empowering local writers in Firs & Bromford

Chris Allen

Hello and welcome to this week’s Community Power Podcast, a series being brought to you in partnership with Local Trust. My name is Chris Allen, and in this series, we’re showcasing some incredible projects, focusing in particular on what happens when you give local people the resources, the power and the assets to make a difference to their neighbourhoods. With me, as ever is series producer Beth Lazenby. A rather creative project for us this week, Beth? 

Beth Lazenby

Yeah, a really exciting project this week, Chris, which has helped lots of local people to become published authors around the Firs and Bromford area. So we’re going to be chatting to John, who is one of those authors and a partnership member, and also Phil, who is the leader of the writing club, about how they’ve gone about setting this up. 

Chris Allen

Indeed. And first of all, I asked Phil to tell us about the Firs and Bromford Big Local area. 

Phil

Well, it’s it’s a wonderful place, Chris. Lots of…so diverse. It’s unbelievable. And we all rub along really nicely, and it’s great. Everybody’s got their own little ideas, little things they want to do. And the nice thing about the partnership – the Firs and Bromford Neighbours Together – is that that gives everybody that opportunity to do that. The hub here is a really good place to start, and from here, it sort of radiates out all around the area. And we’re hoping to extend that now, up until the first estate, and create another sort of a hub up there. But there’s that much talent on this estate, on the two estates that like, it’s unbelievable. I mean, we could talk for four or five hours on all the different things that are going on and people doing their own little thing, but we’re all starting to come together now, and that’s the important thing. That’s the thing about creating the community, isn’t it? 

Chris Allen

I love the way there you talk about everything positively. You know, let’s not deny the fact that we’re in an area of disadvantage within Birmingham. But every word you said there was positive. I know the whole approach of the programme has been around asset based community development, looking at what’s good, how you build on it, not what’s wrong, and how do you fix it? 

Phil

Yeah, now you’re quite right. I mean, there’s no I don’t believe in negativity. I think all that does is is makes you feel ill, rubs you up the wrong way, and gives everybody the wrong impression. And yes, in the past, we’ve had issues and problems, but we sort it out Bromford and Firs style, that’s the way I say. And we’ve got a good working relationship with a lot of the services around. They try the best, bless them. But who knows a community better than the people that live in that community? It’s not the buildings and it’s not the spaces, it’s the people that make a community, isn’t it? And they have their own laws and their own rules and regulations, and everybody, everybody sort of adheres to it. They enjoy themself, they they have a good time. And if they have any problems, the nice thing is, they know where to come if they have any issues. And that’s what it’s all about. That’s what community is about. It’s a big family, isn’t it? 

Chris Allen

And one of your great ideas was this creative writing group. Where did that come from? 

Phil

Well, well, that started years ago. It’s been a I’ve had a bee in my bonnet about it for a very long time. That that the publishing world is so up your nose, really, if that’s the word, if that I can use that as a word. 

Chris Allen

Elitist, is that it? 

Phil

Yeah, I think that’s a good word. Elitist. Yeah, I should have thought about that first, really that. But now it is very elitist and or it seems to come across that way. And I think that everybody has got a book in them. That, that old saying about everybody’s got a novel in them. I think it’s quite right. Some are good, some good novels, and some are not quite so good. But why shouldn’t they have as much chance as everybody else? You know, we don’t expect everybody to be JK Rowling or, you know, it was a fella that lived up the road that wrote Lord of the Rings. Tolkien. There you go. We’re not looking for those. We’re looking for people who have a passion and they’ve got a story to tell. And whether it be poetry or whether it be in our group, for example, we’ve got a children’s writer, we’ve got a social history writer, poems. You name it, they can do it. 

The one big issue has always been that the publishing world can be very, very elitist, and I know through what’s happened to me in the past, there’s nothing worse than getting a rejection letter, right? Nobody likes to not be liked, do they? We all want to be liked and to put your heart and soul into something, and then have some guy who doesn’t even know you, who’s never met you, all of a sudden, he decides on whether your books good or not. The people that decide whether your books are good or not are the people that buy it and the people that read it and but you need to give people the opportunity to do that. And how can we do that? How can we not? How can we get across these barriers? If there are people out there who seem to think, no, it’s not worth it. 

Chris Allen

So John, what Phil’s saying there, you have to be pretty brave to give this a go, don’t you? 

John

I wouldn’t call it brave. You’ve got to be a little bit on the you want to do it side. You know, when I first met Phil, I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to actually come to the first meeting. I didn’t know what it was all about. But when I met Phil, and he started explaining what was his hope for the writing group was going to be in the near future, I sort of got interested in what he was doing. And what he said made a lot of sense. Myself, I’ve been writing since in the early 60s, and I’ve had rejection letters as well. And believe you me, there’s nothing worse than, like he said, than a rejection letter. You feel like as I was in my time with a typewriter, picking a job and putting it somewhere and forgetting about it, right? But over the years, when I’ve started writing fairy stories for my daughter, and that grew in its own right. 

Chris Allen

Is that where you started? You were thinking of your daughter and fairy stories, that’s where you got the appetite to write? 

John

Yes, I started writing fairy stories for my daughter, based on one little fella, and his name was Binky. He was a little gnome, and he lived in the world at the bottom of your garden. And I convinced my daughter that was true, because at the bottom of our garden, I had a great big rhubarb bush. And when I took us, brought around from nursery, my wife brought around from nursery. We always told her, if she’d been a good girl, she’d find some sweets under the rhubarb that Binky had left her. And in the same vein, I had a small greenhouse where during the winter months, I had a Tilly lamp to heat it. And we told her, if she went to bed, good girl, that light will stay on, because that’s where Binky is living. 

Chris Allen

And it helps her imagination. It would have, you know, helped her probably become a story writer herself, you know. 

John

She has had a go at it. It just developed from there. And I started thinking about writing poems. That was the next thing I started doing. And then eventually, other people started through Claire, mainly as she grew to about 10 or 11 years old. Through Claire, her local school, got in touch with me and asked me to go up and read a couple of stories a couple of afternoons to a class. And that lasted for about three or four months, basically because I ran out of stories. And this job was advertised for housing caretaker, so I thought I’ll give that a go. So we were living at my mother-in-law, so I give it a go. And it was you lived on the job that was rent free accommodation at the time, and that’s where my book came into it. 

Chris Allen

I know we’ll talk about it. We’ll talk about, we’ll talk about your book in a minute, because, you know, I got some knowing Birmingham. It gives me some personal echoes there as well. So you got to a point of thinking I don’t know if I’m going to join his creative writing group. You chatted to Phil. He’s a bit persuasive at times, but you still need a bit of courage to come through the door and start putting pen to paper. 

John

I suppose you do, because when, when we first started, and it tickled me, because he used to say to us, ​“right for your homework.” And I thought to myself, I’m 76 I’m not a kid, you know, I don’t need homework. But he’s he was all to all of us, and he was great. And from there, you wouldn’t believe the stories that’s actually been written by members. I mean, we’ve got one young girl, she’s absolutely dyslexic, and they told her when she was at school, she’d never do any good at all. And yet, she just had a book published with the help of Phil. Through Phil by joining the Writers Group. I cannot praise it enough. It’s brilliant for Bromford, brilliant for the Firs and along may it reign. 

Chris Allen

Well, you know, that’s great testimony indeed. And let’s jump to your book, telling your story of life, your best friend, Birmingham. Because I know Birmingham from the sort of late 80s. Yours you just read late 70s, but it’s a similar kind of story, really. There pictures of the Bull Ring or whatever it rang. It rang true to me. But reading it through, it’s just your personal memories, but your personal memories that are so positive and colourful, if I put it that way. 

John

Yes, they are colourful. It’s the way we were. The chap, my best friend Ted, he was so gangly and so laid back. It was unbelievable. The two of us together, we just sort of gelled right, practically, I won’t say day one, but week one, we gelled. He came onto the estate as a relief caretaker. I was head caretaker, and we just gelled from there, and eventually he actually moved on to the estate and became my assistant caretaker. And from that, we were in each other’s pockets every day, every evening, on patrols, all through the power strikes, all through the lot we had. We had tremendous fun, as well as hard work. The work was always done. Every little bit. Everything had to be done. But when Ted started, he started getting a little bit ill. We used to tell each other, we used to remind each other what had gone on. And I used to jot them down. And from there, ​“It’s been reported”, was born. 

Chris Allen

And that’s your book. And we’ll put a link in the show notes the podcast here, so that people can order it, as I did. It’s very easy to get hold of, and it tells a great story. And also, you know, you had then that dilemma, because you loved your job quite clearly the way you tell the story. But then you had that dilemma, am I going to keep this job, or am I going to basically have a garden for my daughter to play. 

John

That was right, yeah. We lived on the first floor of a block of flats, and below the below the flats was a great big expanse of grass where the kids used to play. And my daughter, one day, I was sitting on the wall outside, watching parents with the kids, and there was a little cry from upstairs. I looked up and underneath the the balcony, there was a gap of about five or six inches, and my daughter was trying to squeeze her head through calling ​“daddy, daddy, can I go and play? Come and come and play”. And that set my mind, thinking these kids are playing on grass. Mine can’t, not unless mum comes down with her right? So no that’s not right. She needs a garden to play in. So I approached my immediate superior. There was a maisonette opposite, and he said he’d help me get it because it would be right opposite the block. Wasn’t any problem with the situation where the caretaker lived on the estate, it was. 

Chris Allen

You’re accessible.

John

It was across the road. So he tried, and that the the sticking point with the council was couldn’t do it, because the phone number would have to change, right? And that was already in the telephone books of the day, so they wouldn’t let me do it. So eventually I thought, I can’t do this anymore, so I parted company with the council. I regretted it within weeks. But that’s the way it is. I had a house and a garden for my daughter, and that was it. 

Chris Allen

But the way you tell your story. It shows, you know, the fun you had doing the job, your best friend, the different scrapes you got into, you know, what gets stuck down toilets, you know, and those kind of things, as well as, as well as, obviously, the dilemmas you find as a person. It’s a wonderfully written book. Have to say, John. So congratulations on it. And you know, you’ve done something I’ve got on my big bucket list and have yet to do. So I congratulate you on that one, most definitely. 

Now, Phil, just thinking about some of the well, you must, you must be warmed by what John says there, as somebody who’s come through the group. 

Phil

Yeah, because, I mean, John was a success story right from the beginning, really. And I’ve bounced a bit off the back of that, you know, and I’m bragging a bit about that, and I think rightly so too. 

Chris Allen

Absolutely.

Phil

Because what we’ve actually done is we, we only started off with six people, and out of six people, four have been published, right? Am I allowed to say, Who? Boy, um, you know, absolutely. I mean, Amazon do, um, one of the things that Amazon do, and I think it’s brilliant. They call it, uh, self publishing. Now, now you have to be really careful with this, because this has happened to me in the past as well, when I was looking at getting my book published, that there’ll be loads of people out there. You’ll send them a copy of your manuscript, and they’ll send you back a glowing letter saying how wonderful. You never from, from self publishing groups, you never, ever get a bad review, right? Because they’ve got, they want your money. And I would just warn everybody really be very careful. It’s, it’s a brilliant marketplace, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a minefield if you’re not careful. 

Chris Allen

And they’ll be taken in, because obviously, if you had lots of rejection letters before that, you’ll be so flattered by this, you can be easily hooked in. 

Phil

Flattery will get you anywhere, trust me, I know that from days gone by. But but for me, the good thing about it is that these guys have had their books published. They are now on Amazon. They’re also on Amazon Kindle, and it’s not cost them a penny. And that can be done if you’re very careful, if you’ve got a good tech department, if you’ve got someone who knows how to get their way around a laptop and stuff you won’t pay. We get them started. We get everybody together. We get them started. Hopefully build their dream and and go for it. That’s what we’re about. Were the Firs and Bromford Neighbours Together, and the Firs and Bromford writing group were about making people’s dreams try and come true. Can’t promise everything. Can’t make you a millionaire overnight. We won’t. We might not make you another JK Rowling. But I one of the examples is John’s book is I picked that up, and it was for a long time, it’s the first book I’ve ever picked up, and I didn’t put it down till I finished it. And the missus was going mad because we’re supposed to be doing some housework. 

Chris Allen

That’s the danger of books, isn’t it? 

Phil

Yeah, but that’s the fun of books. You can get lost in a book. And, you know, we they keep talking about teaching children to it’s easy just spark their imagination, you know? And John’s already mentioned that one of our other group who’s had problems with dyslexia all her life, to be told you’re not going to amount to anything, and you know, it’s awful. But we proved them wrong. You know, might not be the best book in the world, right? My book’s not the best book in the world, but it’s mine. I’ve got it. It’s there in my hand. It’s been published, and it hasn’t cost. 

Chris Allen

It’s an achievement, and it builds up your confidence, and everything else is a bonus. 

Phil

Yes, that’s right. And we’ve got a couple of ladies in the group. One ladies wrote some fantastic poems, but when it came to publish them, she decided that, like, they were quite personal, and she didn’t want to go down that road, so she’s going to write some other poems that can be published. We get people have the option. We don’t force anybody into anything. There’s no contracts to sign. All I ask is that you turn up for an hour once a week. We have a cup of coffee and a chat. It’s not formal. It’s all laid back. 

Chris Allen

We said earlier about it being elitist, and I think in my head as well, there’s so many barriers, and I’ve had a rejection letter once years ago. I’ve written stuff there’s mainly around teaching materials and whatever, but I had a rejection letter for what I call a proper book. I know the way it felt. I haven’t gone back there again, but you’ve managed to smash through the glass ceiling, if I can put it that way. In terms of giving people confidence and saying, ​“you know, just because people have rejected you in the past, just because you come from round here, which, again, is another issue. There’s no barrier there for you”. Now, one of you, you talk about publishing now. One of your hopes, I believe, is to start your own publishing company? 

Phil

Yes, that’s what what we’re looking to do, is set up our own publishing house. So basically, what we can do, we can do everything for them. You know, we’ve already had one book signing, and that was quite popular. We’re hoping to get and do another one for our summer event, which will be on the green outside here in the summer, August the fifth, Saturday, August fifth. So come along. Let’s take away all this stigma now, because I’m so sick and tired of living on our estate where we’re classed as poor people. We’re not poor people. We’ve got everything everybody else has got. We just haven’t had the opportunities. 

And when they when you hear all these people that think they know better than everybody else, and saying, ​“oh, we need to take the art to the masses”. Well, bloody do it. Don’t, don’t do it just for a certain amount of people, or for a few people, or don’t come on our estate, saying ​“we’ll do that for you, but it’ll cost you this”. If you really want to bring the art to the masses, get down here and do the performances for free. Get down here and show people what what they can do for free. And everybody deserves a chance. Don’t you think, Chris? Indeed, you must have started somewhere? 

Chris Allen

Absolutely, but you’ve given people a chance. That’s the the thing here. You’ve given people a chance and got them to think it’s possible, when, actually, a lot of times, they may think it’s impossible, and people outside might think it’s impossible. 

Phil

We’ve opened a channel for them. They have to do all the work. You know, I give them the option. If they don’t, if they choose, if they just choose to come along and have a cup of coffee and have a chat and talk about books, and that’s all they want to do. That’s fine. That’s great. You’ll get more out of people with a carrot than you ever will with a stick. As my old granny used to say. 

Chris Allen

That’s great. And John, you obviously lost your your good friend Ted and so but the book remains. 

John

The book does remain, and his children. He’s got a son and a daughter and a couple of sisters and a couple of brothers. They’ve all read the book, even the vicar at his burial. Jenny, the daughter, keeps telling me that I brought her dad back to her, because every time she reads it…She grew up with us, so she knows that everything in the book, and I must stress this, absolutely, none of it is fiction. It might be stretched a little bit, but it is not fiction. Everything in the book is absolutely true and happened, and believe you me, it was the best time of my life, and I’m so grateful I had a friend like Ted. I really am. 

Chris Allen

It reminded me of another book I very much value, a guy called Mitch Albom is the is the author. And he wrote a book called ​“Tuesdays with Morrie”, a while ago, and it was his conversations with his tutor who was dying. And the phrase that came from that book, that your book reminded me of, actually as well, is that ​“life ends, but friendships don’t.” 

John

That’s correct. Life does end, but friendships go on forever. You’ll never forget a good friend never and you cannot. You can have all the riches in the world, but if you haven’t got a damn good friend, no good for you. You need a friend to share your happiness with. 

Chris Allen

John Phil, thank you both very much indeed. All we need to do now is me to get me a book out and you can sign it for me. 

John

Thank you. No problem at all. 

Phil

What about my book? 

Chris Allen

That’s John Brookes-Wiggitt, and yes, he signed his book for me. His book is ​“It’s been reported”, subtitled, ​“work can be a belly laugh”. Also, Phil Hawkins in the background there – actually he didn’t produce his signed book for me. But anyway, I’ve got one signed book, and that was really nice. What were your thoughts on that, Beth? 

Beth Lazenby

I thought lovely to hear about the personal relationship, and how that has been turned into a book that’s been published, and the confidence boost that that’s given John and all of the other people who’ve been involved in the project. And I think it’s just a lovely example of where community groups, when they’ve got the time and the resources to look into how they get around some of the blockers for certain arts projects, for example. They can really help communities to break through those glass ceilings and see that their voices are really powerful as well. So yeah, I was really moved by that. 

Chris Allen

Now, in the book itself, it reminded me because I was in Birmingham a few years after he wrote it, but, or that he’s talking about. But I know those high rise buildings, and I know the smells in the lifts, and I remember those. And he said the family of his great friend Ted as well, you know, it had brought him back alive for them. So again, there’s a personal aspect which was really, really important, right? Where can we find out more? 

Beth Lazenby

So we’ll publish all of the information that you need to know about Firs and Bromford Big Local and where you can order both Phil and John’s books in the show notes. 

Chris Allen

That’s fair. Let’s be fair to both of them, shall we? Thanks, Beth. And yeah, we look forward to joining us next time on the Community Power Podcast, brought to you by Local Trust, discovering what happens when you give local people the money, the power and the assets to make a difference to their neighbourhoods.