Words by Ruby Lewis, Community Lead
My name’s Ruby, I’m an artist who works for Spectra! I joined the Spectra team as their Community Lead at the start of a very exciting process – co-designing with the community a new space to rest, play, sit, move, talk, listen, and be in and it was going to be at a brand new hospital.
This was the third build by Spectra on a hospital site and it was to be the biggest yet but first the job was to find out what people actually need and want from an outdoor space.
Myself and the rest of the team spent the next few months visiting libraries, community groups, day centres, museums, pediatric wards, and more. Everywhere we went we were asking questions and making as we did. At SAFS we used herbs, essential oils, colour, audio recordings, and printing to put together a book investigating the smells and sounds of a garden. At QAC we explored signage – how to make a place welcoming and we wrote and performed a protest song complete with signs! We built miniature fantastical landscapes from paper and words at libraries and museums and at Bearwood Hub we wove wall hangings and talked about bringing people together.
As we went along we realised the same few things kept appearing: water, play, scent, heritage, and movement, so we pulled together a team of gardeners, performers, artists and designers to pour over what we’d found and lend all of their collective expertise into creating a map which would become The Commons. A space with swirling planters, curving shapes, places of play and reflection, to hide and to perform and filled to the brim with things made by the community.
The next step was to once again begin making, to revisit the places we’d been, to show the designs and where their contributions sat in it and to start creating things for the garden. At Brushstrokes where so many participants had talked about sitting near water we made mosaics with dragonflies, parrot fish, and ducks swimming on a canal. At SAFS, who had loved colour and collage we made flags for the garden, filled with colour and shapes. At Murray Hall we made mosaics related to Smethwick’s heritage, at the libraries we painted stones shades of blue to create a water pool and then it was time to start building!
With an intrepid team the first spade was dug into the soil behind the Heras fencing and it began. Putting together planters, lining, hugelkulturing, the endless lugging of compost, hardcore, stones, gravel, sand, back and forth. The endless digging of holes and filling in of holes, the endless consumption of biscuits and tea, very tired arms, achy knees, but suddenly things were being finished – mosaics were grouted, plants were in the ground tucked in tight, a huge swirl of wooden posts, a reflection of the long year of designing, planning, building, making, all starting to come together.
It has been a real joy to work with every single person I’ve encountered along this journey. I’ve been gifted people’s time, their stories, their hopes and ambitions for the space and I can’t wait to see how it grows.
Spectra is grateful for the funding from Severn Trent Community Trust and our partners Your City and Metropolitan Hospitals Charity, core funding from Arts Council England, and support from Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust to make The Commons possible.
The co-design workshops earlier in the year were generously funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.
