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All around the houses

A scheme that introduces women from ethnic communities to historic buildings reaps rewards

Three groups of visitors are wandering around Birmingham's Blakesley Hall, a timber-framed building more than 400 years old. There's one school group in red jerseys, another in blue, and a mixed group of 12 women - Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Arabic and Afro-Caribbean - with their young children.

Anthea Row, who runs the city's Well-Being Workshop, says that families get a lot out of such visits, but adds that people from immigrant communities should learn something more significant about their local environment "so they can understand the nation they are in and how they contribute".

Row developed the idea for her Journeys project while running fitness sessions for a group of antenatal and postnatal women on behalf of Balsall Heath Sure Start. The women were active while attending her group, she realised, but they rarely got out of the house at any other time. Taking the women on trips to historic sites and buildings, she decided, would introduce them to the history of the region. It would also tackle the isolation they faced.

The visits started with a trip to Wroxeter Roman villa, and for 95% of the women that was their first visit to a historic site. Three years on, the visits have attracted 52 families and more than 100 children.

"I have liked all the trips," says Gurinder Kaur, mother of two. "I especially enjoyed visiting the Sikh temple and the church in central Birmingham. I'd never been inside a church before."

"Hang on to your babies, ladies," says our guide as we squeeze our way through the Elizabethan building's passages, up twisting staircases, and past tapestry-lined walls.

In 2005, Journeys won a Sure Start Partners in Excellence award for its partnership with English Heritage, which has funded some of the group's visits. "It's like everyone woke up," Row says. "There was so much common ground between us, irrespective of ethnic background. Everyone had something to say about the place and how it differed from their own culture."

"This is a lovely place, especially the herb garden," says Shabana Hussain, from Sparkhill, who has been seduced by the smell of lavender drifting over the lawns. "I will come again and get my kids to see the place."

Safina Akhtar is also planning to bring her children here. "I would like my children to know about history," she says. "It brings a lot of feelings to your heart, seeing how people used to live and eat." But, as a single parent, she is normally stuck at home and finds it hard to get out. "There is a different atmosphere here," she says. "It's so beautiful and peaceful. You can get stress off the brain."

Giving the women the confidence to come back and revisit places, or go to new places with their families, has been one of the project's benefits, identified in evaluation conducted for English Heritage. Row explains that some of the women wouldn't know how to get to these places by public transport, or would perceive barriers to doing so, and wouldn't always understand the "norms" if they went alone. "On one visit," Row says, "I went and said 'thank you' at the ticket office, so they all thought they had to do the same."

Other benefits of the trips include providing women with the opportunity to see different types of buildings - be they English castles or just houses that were different from their own - and, in particular, getting out of inner-city Balsall Heath and into the fresh air and open countryside.

"They only go to places such as the health centre and benefits office, where they are quite likely to get 'pushed around'," Row says. "It's lovely for them to go to places where they are made to feel welcome - where they can rub shoulders with people who are polite, not threatening, and people who like them."

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