Community Spirit in the BID

It has been my pleasure to be part of the Community Building working group over the last 4 years and at the turn of the year I was privileged to take over from Richard Guy to lead the group.

An obvious challenge over the last 2 years for us, how do we continue to grow the Colmore BID Community while many still are working from home?

We started last year with several online events, delivering our popular Wellbeing Fortnight and weekly yoga – delivering over 70 wellbeing sessions in 2021 which were well attended.

Colmore History week returned for the second year with a new digital magazine and podcast. We look forward to developing this project in 2022 with in person events within the BID.

After delivering an extensive online programme of events for the first half of the year we noticed our numbers dropping as people hit Zoom Fatigue. Unable to sustain the engagement for online events but not enough people in the District to be able to run events successfully in person we decided to take a summer hiatus.

We made the decision to proceed with our annual Community Games, albeit later in the year than we are used to. We had over 50 people registered to take part in over 6 sports in Birmingham Cathedral Grounds. It was wonderful to see the business community back out enjoying time together and competing for the Community Games trophy, which happened to be won by the Colmore BID security team, the Colmore BID Board team did come in second and Hays… well we took part.

In September Colmore BID had our first float at Birmingham Pride and we joined tens of thousands of people in the march to support the LGBTQ+ community alongside Alliance Network. We were joined from companies across the Colmore Business District and would love to see the support for this grow.

As the darker days set in, we started planning for Christmas. In 2020 we had no choice but to move our annual Christmas Lights Switch on to a virtual event but in 2021 we delivered bigger and better than ever before. Our Christmas Lights switch on was part of the launch of the opening of Christmas in Cathedral Square where we were joined by our own Alex Tross, Leader of Birmingham City Council, Councillor Ian Ward and cast members from Birmingham Hippodrome’s pantomime, Goldilocks and Three Bears pressing the plunger and lighting up the area.

We have already strengthened the working group and I`m really excited about the opportunities to build networks and continue to grow the Colmore BID Community.