Castle Bromwich Community Website

Just been to the website set up for the above and it appears that it has not been updated since February. My teenage son expressed an eagerness to play at the Community Festival with his band and filled out the application. He was totally blanked - the blank from hell! By the time I followed it up and asked why no response had been forthcoming he had gone off the idea and had moved on to another project.

I really believe that Castle Bromwich is failing a lot of it's youngsters and that is why we so many misguided kids are wondering the streets. Very few of them are bad apples, most of them have remarkable talents but they will never be motivated when our own festival organisers cannot be bothered to inject enthusiasm into their own project.

Hello Big Duke McKenna. I can only apologise again for the delay in responding to your son's application. As I explained at the time this was due to a glitch in the system which meant that his application was not forwarded from the server. As soon as you pointed out the lack of response we investigated and we contacted your son and in deed, confirmed our acceptance of his Act.

The Festival is organised and run entirely by a small group of volunteers, all of whom have other responsibilities and commitments. Not one of them receives any payment and most of them invest many hours and their own money into the project because like you, they believe that many young people and also many of our older residents have some remarkable talents and a lack of opportunity.

If you check out the Festival website at www.castlebromwichfestival.co.uk you will see that the Festival Organisers have invested a great deal of enthusiasm and time into their project. We are always open to new ideas and suggestions but as it is an unfunded volunteer formed and led charitable organisation it may take us some time to put into place any suggestions put to us. Not because we don't have enthusiasm, but because we have to invest many hours and endless energy into raising money, sourcing and applying for grants  and making things happen and there are just not enough hours in the day to do everything we would like.

We would be more than happy for you and others to join us and help make things better for everybody in Castle Bromwich. A new website for the Castle Bromwich Community Project will be launched shortly which will detail some of the other projects we are working on with young people and older members of the community alike.

Thank you for the response castle-bromwich.

I would like to get involved in things in Castle Bromwich but have always felt that those on the council were self-interested. I find Castle Bromwich to be a rather snobbish and racist area and have not wanted to associate myself with such people, not including you in this statement. I appreciate that volunteers are heavily relied upon to make so many things happen in the region but cannot excuse the fact that on all of the occasions where I have tried to explore potential avenues for my son I have run into excuses and unanswered questions. If the volunteers cannot cope with the huge amount of work that they are being asked to do then surely more volunteers are needed. I have not seen adverts asking for volunteers in places where I would expect them to be and the Gazette is more interested in selling advertising space and telling us war stories (which are great but more balance is needed).

The Castle Bromwich Community Project and  the Castle Bromwich Community Festival have absolutely nothing to do with Castle Bromwich Parish Council or Solihull Council. They are completely independent. We are not being asked to make anything happen in Castle Bromwich by any of the statutory agencies, we decide what we want to do based on what residents tell us is important to them and what we think we can achieve. As a charity we do not try to provide what should be being supplied by statutory agencies, we have neither the resources, capabilities nor the ammenities. 

I can understand your frustrations regarding your son. I share them. I have spent the last 6 years trying to get my own son's needs met, being given promise after promise followed by excuse after excuse when the promises are not fulfilled. 

I hope we're neither snobbish nor racist. I face a lot of prejudice in my own life and know how difficult it can be to tread a different path. We are going to be tidying up the graveyard at St Mary & St Margaret's Graveyard Monday - Thursday 11.30am - 3pm w/c 9th August. If you're not working at that time, why not come along and talk to us and judge for yourself? I have placed adverts for volunteers via Volunteer Bureaus, it is slow going but we are making gradual progress.