I worked with Writing West Midlands to engage Birmingham’s Poet Laureate, Casey Bailey to write a poem entitled, ’ for the foyer of Alumno's new development in Selly Oak, Birmingham.
Poet Casey Bailey said: “This poetry is about a journey, I know this area around Dogpool Lane well and spent my youth around here. I came to the site to write the piece, it’s full of different roads and junctions and places to travel. I felt that ‘In motion’ reflects the lives of the students living in the new building itself, they are starting a journey or maybe ending one and their lives are constantly in motion.”
The poem has been cast using materials which relate to the historic rolling mills in the Dogpool Lane area by sculptor Russell Coleman who has also produced three sculptures for the buildings’ courtyard. The sculptures relate to Birmingham’s history of jewellery making and the area’s history of heavy industry, ‘yellow metal’ production and rolling mills. Russell’s gilded sculptures combine polished stone with gilded surfaces and they sit on his ‘Total Waster’ plinths which are case from recycled blast furnace waste and recycled glass and plastic.
