Amy @ The Parakeet

We design for play, freedom and creativity. Our aim is a Child + Nature friendly future. Home of #GrowingUpGreen + @OPAL_CIC Mentor for B’ham + Black Country 💚

[Sulaiman Ahmed @ShaykhSulaiman]

BREAKING: ICJ STATEMENT OF PALESTINIAN FOREIGN MINISTER

“I stand before you as 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, are besieged and bombed, killed and maimed, starved and displaced.”

“As more than 3.5 million Palestinians in West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are subjected to colonisation of their territory and the racist violence that enables it.”

“As 1.7 million Palestinians in Israel are treated as second-class citizens … in their ancestral land.”

“As seven million Palestine refugees continue to be denied the right to return to their land and homes.”

“Palestine was not a land without a people. There was life on this land, political, cultural, social and religious.
It had schools, universities, cinemas, families and communities whose lives were impacted by a promise made thousands of miles away over a hundred years ago.

A breach of sacred trust that relegated the indigenous people of the land to the status of non-Jewish communities.

According (the Palestinian people), only civil and religious rights, denying their existence as a people and their rights as a nation.

The UN enshrined in its charter the right of all peoples to self-determination and pledges to rid the world of colonialism and apartheid. Yet, for decades Palestinians have been denied this right.

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

A lovely session today with Homeschoolers in Balsall Heath exploring learning through play with @MoseleyRdBaths at @OldPrintWorks ❤️

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

https://t.co/zwOMLR55uF

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

Children living near green spaces ‘have stronger bones’ https://t.co/GkXibJegCy

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

@amahra_ He's a great kid and you're a great mom x

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

Yes!

[I Choose Birmingham @ichoosemag]

A statue would be nice @andy4wm

[I Choose Birmingham @ichoosemag]

ZEPHANIAH: "Concrete with a heartbeat"

I was born where the Beorma people made home,
Handsworth, in Brummagem.

For many of my early years
I thought this town to be a cold suburb
Of Kingston, Jamaica.

My then girlfriend Jasvinder Basra
Thought it to be a cold suburb of Jullunder, India,
And we were both right.
We, in our puppy love innocence
Knew that it was only a matter of time and space,
We Dark Matter grew up holding hands
Listening to Reggae and Bhangra
Eating channa and ackee,
And playing doctors and nurses somewhere in the future.

Handsworth does that to you,
Historic and progressive,
It wakes but never sleeps
Concrete with a heartbeat.
A private space for all its children
That is full of stars and it keeps expanding,
It is where voices from the past speak to us
Every day, lived in voices
Of working class heroes reminding
Us that we are all Brummies,
But me and Jasvinder knew this anyway.

I saw riots in Handsworth,
I saw revolution loitering on the streets
Where money had been thrown down drains
In front of people who were needy,
But I also saw energy laden creators
Bringing hope,
And building sites of new galaxies
In Brummagem, the centre of it all.

This is where I discovered the nature of the universe,
This is where I realised
That The Theory of Everything leaves a lot to be desired,
This is where
The postman taught me that everything needs poetry,
And that it is not gravity that gives us roots
But the things we do to ourselves.
But it was me that said relativity needs to relate,
Space stops everything happening to you,
And in my humble opinion
Faith and tradition will live next to progress
For as long as it takes.

Cosmology?

Well that’s all about me and Jasvinder.
It all started with us
In Handsworth in Brummagem,
Where the philosophers of Grove Lane
And the great thinkers of Soho Road
Now recite Alpha and Omega continually.

Astrophysics?

That’s about the nature of our celestial bodies
The application of our physical policies
And the intensity of our cultural intercourse,
It’s about the way we greet when we meet
And the exploration of possibilities,
And it must be known
That all scientific studies have shown that
Brummies are at home with new horizons
And a multi-layered concept of place.

Time?
Space?

Time invented itself to stop everything
Happening at once.
Space was grateful
It had been given room to manoeuvre.
They remain good friends.

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

We’re lucky to have his activism, poems, words and rhymes to share with our children and with future generations. Rest in Power Professor Benjamin Zephaniah ❤️

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

A great @OPAL_CIC meeting today with Rood End Primary in Smethwick, they have a small concrete playground and are ambitious about creating a dynamic, rich play environment for their children inspired by Morningside Primary in this brilliant Opal Vid >>

https://t.co/Xt9tvAP1ky

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

@DanWuori Birmingham UK 🇬🇧

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

How are we doing?

[Fascinating @fasc1nate]

Josie (6 years old), Bertha (6 years old) and Sophie (10 years old) worked regularly at the Maggioni Canning Company.

Work began at 4 AM, and the three would make from $9 to $15 a week.

Sophie would do six pots of oyster a day, and her mother, who also worked with her, said, "She don't go to school. Works all the time."

Through such photos, Lewis Hine documented the harsh working conditions borne by thousands of children, who were sent to work soon after they could walk and were paid based on how many buckets of oysters they shucked daily.

Mr Hines wrote of one photograph: ‘All but the very smallest babies work. Begin work at 3:30am and expected to work until 5pm.’ He covered around 50,000 miles a year, photographing children from Chicago to Florida working in coal mines and factories.

These photos helped to raise an outcry against child labor and made the American public widely aware of the scope of the problem.

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

Petition: Urge the Israel Government to allow fuel, electricity and food into Gaza https://t.co/Zfnf63LLnE

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

👇

[Femi Koleoso @FemiOnDrums]

Grateful for the opportunity to speak to @Channel4News about the importance of youth clubs. Peace.

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

@EmilyKerr36 👎

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

@TCRU_UCL Hi just checking this is not being streamed?

[Woodland Tribe @woodlandtribe]

This whole thread! Reminds us of our research trip there a few years back 🛠

[Amy @ The Parakeet @The_Parakeet_]

At the Play Kitchen, Pocket Garden and Wormery, children can learn all about the soil cycle through their play.

Today the compost connection will be on hand @MoseleyRdBaths to share the magic of worms 🪱

https://t.co/JRIJBDOlOD