Making the map

We are extremely grateful to our sponsors, Limoges Trust, Moseley Round Table (Moseley 316) and Birmingham Common Good Trust without whom the Moseley Village Map could not have been made.

Concept design, planning and frame: Brendan Patchell

Artist, ceramic tiles: Samantha McEwan

Instigating chair: Jan Miller

Completion chair: Carol Miller

Introduction

Moseley in Bloom (MIB) successfully participated for a number of years in the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHA) national competition to improve the environment by planting initiatives. Moseley achieved “Gold” for five years, and has been Heart of England regional winners as well as coming second nationally at the annual awards.

In the autumn of 2009, three seemingly unconnected events happened:

The Royal Horticultural Society judges mentioned that visitors to Moseley would be unaware of some of the less obvious attractions such as Moseley Bog.

In organising the Front gardens awards we realised that we were unsure of the boundaries of Moseley and had to draw our own map.

We asked Sam McEwan (a local artist trading as Krankpod) to create one new award to match the existing ones and then were most impressed when she insisted on creating a whole new beautiful set.

To avoid diplomatic problems it was decided to use artistic licence and smooth the map into a symbolic map. This then resembled an Oak tree, especially with the Alcester Road as the trunk.

The next thought was that Sam’s ceramic tile artwork would make perfect grid squares. The roads diminish from the Alcester Road’s trunk to major roads branches and then finally minor roads forming twigs. This creates a map but in a highly stylised artistic way.