Redeeming Our West Midlands Communities

ROC in the West Midlands - the story so far...

The official UK-wide launch of Redeeming Our Communities began in the West Midlands at the NEC arena in Birmingham in 2006. With over 7,000 in attendance from around the UK, this began a wide-spread movement of people inspired to work in partnership to see their communities transformed.

A few years later, a number of people from Birmingham were amongst the guests at the Echo Arena for the launch of Redeeming Our Communities: Merseyside on June 16th 2009. Debra Green, National Director of Redeeming Our Communities, was then invited to meet some church and civic leaders in Birmingham. It was decided that the time was right for a launch of ROC in Birmingham, which happened on 16 November 2010. Read more about this exciting event here.

We've seen exciting developments since this event including the opening of ROC Café Cobridge in Stoke as well as a developming relationship with the Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service. Our ROC Regional Representative, Gordon Blake, has been busy spreading the ROC vision and keen to see more developments across the West Midlands before the end of 2011.

An update from Gordon Blake, ROC West Midlands Representative:

I have met with leaders from churches in the Bordesley Green area who are keen to get together to run a project in that area and we are looking into the potential of a ROC Café in Bordesley Green, making use of a church cafe already running in the area, there are still meetings to be had to establish whether they can provide sufficient people to run one successfully.

I have got involved in a project already running in the Stockland Green area, Erdington: this is a community outreach project making use of a local park and lake and involves the running of a Kayak Club, a local sailing club and potentially basketball coaching all based around Brookvale Park. As part of this project we are looking at the potential of a ROC Café also in the park to bring people in but also to signpost them onto more long term options for them. Take a look at this link to Brookvale Park Fun Day. ROC will be there to discuss with partners and churches the plans for a ROC Café.

One of the people who has got involved in this project is part of a community project in Perry Barr, Living Stones Embassy, and he is interested in getting involved with Brookvale with a view to starting a ROC Café in Perry Barr.

However following on from the above projects I have now been approached by people outside of the Birmingham area. In the last few weeks I have had conversations with someone looking to start a ROC Café in Wolverhampton, this project is in very early days so stay tuned for more information.

I am also in conference with a church in Coventry they are in the process of mapping the services provided by churches across the Coventry area and inviting others to join with them to launch ROC in Coventry, hopefully this will begin in September.

Behind the scenes I have been speaking with a number of organisations looking to develop partnerships that will help to add structure and value to ROC projects across the midlands providing long term solutions for the issues that we are looking to address.