New play activities for children are coming to Sandwell. A £330,000 grant will deliver free play and leisure sessions after school and during the holidays for six to 12-year-olds and children with special needs up to the age of 16. The council has recently awarded the cash to four voluntary groups who will run the free activities across Sandwell’s six towns. Murray Hall Community Trust will run sessions in Rowley Regis, The Albion Foundation in Smethwick, West Bromwich activities will be run by Creative Academies and Groundwork West Midlands will run sessions in Tipton, Oldbury and Wednesbury.

Marie Curie, the terminal illness charity, has teamed up with six West Midlands law firms to offer a free will-writing service for anyone aged over 55. Every year many of us make New Year’s resolutions  - lose weight, give up smoking, sort finances -   some of us even resolve to make a will. This year, from 16^th January-15^th April 2017, law firms Quality Solicitors Davisons, Thursfields Solicitors, Wallace Robinson & Morgan Solicitors, Woollastons Solicitors, PSL Probate Solicitors and Irwin Mitchell LLP will be helping you to keep your resolution by offering the service on behalf of the charity.  

Yardley Residents Action Group, which represents residents in the Birmingham district of Yardley and the wider community, is hoping to save two football pitches from being built on by appealing to professional clubs to buy the land. The Barrows Lane playing fields and social club in Yardley, where Midland football stars Craig Gardner and Darren Carter first played the game, are facing a resubmitted planning application by their owner the Co-op for new homes. 

Birmingham City Council is backing a campaign to get half a million people out and about cleaning up their local communities in March 2017 – building on a successful local day of action staged last November. The brand new Great British Spring Clean will roll out for the first time in 2017, with a view to it becoming an annual event helping to bring people together and clean up the country.

The Library of Birmingham and the British Library have received £91,700 of National Lottery funding to present Documenting Histories, a partnership project celebrating the important role South Asian culture has played in forming Birmingham’s history and identity. At the heart of the project is a major exhibition which will open in July, drawing on both libraries’ rich collections, supported by a programme of complementary events and workshops during 2017.

Award-winning author Sathnam Sanghera will be full of pride as his home-town hosts the Wolverhampton Original Literature Festival. The former Wolverhampton Grammar School student, who has gone on to become an acclaimed author and journalist, was thrilled when festival organisers contacted him about taking part in the event which takes place from today (Friday, January 27) to Sunday 29.