Globe sculpture installation in the heart of Birmingham.
For families or culture vultures looking for a day well-spent this Black History Month, The World Reimagined is bringing the ten globes from its Birmingham trail into one place for the first time to create a unique, educational experience.
Located on The Balcony at The Bullring from 17th-31th October, the groundbreaking free experience will explore themes ranging from Mother Africa to Still We Rise and Expanding Soul with an enormous range of interpretations and creative styles. The sculptures are an invitation for people, families, businesses, and communities to talk together about how they understand their history; how the past — particularly the UK’s relationship with the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans — shapes the future; and how to act for social change to make racial justice a reality.
Birmingham’s sculpture trail has been created by the artists Create Not Destroy, Jay Percy, Donna Newman, Kassessa Gandara, Tamika Galanis, Gabriel Choto, Gayani Ariyaratne, Pauline Bailey, Jess Perrin, and Glory Samjolly.
Currently a walkable trail across Birmingham from the Legacy Centre of Excellence to the Hippodrome, the globes will now come together on The Balcony at the Bullring for the end of Black History Month to allow visitors a unique opportunity to view and enjoy all ten large scale artworks at once.
As people visit the Globes, they will also be able to explore an online collection of short, accessible stories that bring this history and its modern day impacts to life. Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, this unique collection features contributions from historians, museums and heritage organisations, including Professor Kehinde Andrews, the British Library and Know Your Caribbean.
Supported by Birmingham City Council, the Globes will be at The Bullring over the half term holidays. For parents looking to introduce their children with the history and cause of racial justice, The World Reimagined also offers free online resources for artistic and creative activities they can do at home to start the conversation. The resources build on its Learning Programme that has been delivered in more than 200 schools over the last year, which saw many schools in Birmingham create their own smaller Globe sculptures.
With community organisations across Birmingham also hosting their own events and activities as part of the programme, The World Reimagined is one of the largest art education projects for racial justice the UK has ever seen. Bringing together art, education, activism and community, it captures a unique moment in time to examine a shared history, helping audiences to better understand what it means to be British.
Michelle Gayle, co-founder of The World Reimagined, said: “It has been so exciting to see how people have responded to the globe trails. Over half term, we want to make it as easy as possible for people to feel the collective power of these
incredible, thought-provoking and inspiring works of art. They invite us to understand it is not ‘Black history’—it’s all of our history. And all of us have a role to play in the work of making racial justice a reality. So we hope you will visit the Globes when they are all together at The Bullring”
Cllr John Cotton, Cabinet Member for social justice, community safety and equalities added: “The World Reimagined is a fabulous piece of public art; informative, creative and telling us about part of our history we all need to understand. There has been a great response to the sculpture trail and it will be incredibly powerful to see the globes in one space during half-term.”