Green Heart Books

03/05/2024

We’re looking for a friendly and experienced Coffee Bar Manager to join our Bookshop team!

This is a FULL-TIME position based in Edgbaston and offers a competitive salary + benefits.

DEADLINE TO APPLY: Tuesday 14th May

If you’re interested in the role, you can find more information about the responsibilities, requirements, benefits & how to submit your application here:

https://www.greenheartbooks.co.uk/bookshop-coffee-bar-manager

Selly Manor Museum Bournville Village Trust

21/03/2024

More exciting news!

Today was Day 1 of Project Green Heart Books as the Mark and the team got started on the work on the bookshop forecourt to make it fully wheelchair accessible.

They got down to it straightaway and were soon lifting the original cobblestones which will be salvaged and carefully stored for use later on in the design and build of the Community Garden.

The sun even came out this afternoon!

We are now, quite literally, shovel ready!

And that's not all! Thanks to your very generous donations, we've been able to pay our joiner Matt Parkes to start work on making our bespoke bookcases.

This is a momentous step and it wouldn't have been possible at all if you weren't all behind us 100%. So THANK YOU!

If you haven't yet donated to our Crowdfunder, there's still time. Every single donation, no matter how large or small, makes a huge difference to us because there is so much fit out to pay for in a 1200 square feet bookshop. Thank you for considering giving to us to help us get it all done. https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/green-heart-books-help-us-start-a-new-story-1

16/03/2024

Well, it is not often I am speechless!

But yesterday I was struck dumb when I received an email from the lovely people at The Bookseller magazine to say that I have been shortlisted in the Individual Bookseller of the Year category in the British Book Awards 2024!

I had to wait until this morning to share this news with you so that I had time for it to sink in. Not only speechless, but wordless too!

This is no false modesty. Truly, I did not see this coming. Having already been through Dickens oft quoted "the best of times and the worst of times" I really did not expect this to be the next part of our story. I feel truly humbled that our work at Green Heart Books should be recognised in this way. It is such an honour to be shortlisted in these prestigious national Book Trade Awards.

Although it's my personal name on the Shortlist, really this is an award for Peri Cimen as well, and all our wonderful booksellers who are part of our Bookshop family and part of our story.

I've taken a look at the other brilliant booksellers in the Shortlist and I am in awe. Everyone deserves to win! It's just great to know that bookselling is alive and well, and there are people out there working their socks off to bring stories to life and get the right books into the right hands. Along with all my fellow booksellers, I passionately believe there's a book out there for everyone.

Thank you to all our wonderful customers for buying books, coming to our events, cheering us on, bringing us chocolates and biscuits at Christmas to keep us going on the shop floor. This nomination is also for you too!

And a huge thank you to our wide-ranging and wonderful community of authors, illustrators, storytellers, poets, comic artists, actors, artistic directors and publishers for leading us and guiding us, inspiring us and showing us the way.

We've learned a huge amount about bookselling and how to run an indie bookshop in the last 3 years. Much of that knowledge has come first hand from our fellow booksellers across the country and from the wonderful The Booksellers Association who I do not have enough words to thank sufficiently. Meryl Halls leads her brilliant team in a thoroughly inspiring way and with so much generosity to new and would be booksellers. Being a bookseller is to belong to a great tribe where people look out for one another and cheer each other on.

Finally thank you to my wonderful husband Doug, our 3 creative children, my parents, my sister and wider family and my lovely friends. They kept the faith and never stopped believing in me even when things didn't go according to plan last year.

Please do share our goods news!

Thanks for reading this,
Sarah x

The Booksellers Association Bookshop.org UK World Book Day (UK & Ireland) Writing West Midlands Birmingham Literature Festival Birmingham Live Birmingham Hippodrome Birmingham Rep Chapter. Hachette Children's Bloomsbury Publishing UK Penguin Books James Mayhew - Author & Illustrator Jacqueline Wilson HQ The Barber Institute of Fine Arts Independent Birmingham I Choose Birmingham Selly Manor Museum Bournville Village Trust HarperCollins Publishers UK Faber Pan Macmillan Simon & Schuster Books UK

08/03/2024

Happy International Women's Day from Sarah and Peri!

A HUGE thank you to everyone who has so generously donated to our Crowdfunder to date. We appreciate every single donation received and are so thankful to have such a lovely, generous and warm bookshop community to support us. We feel truly treasured. Thank you!

We've received a generous donation from Friend & Supporter & award-winning author Jonathan Coe, the bestselling author of 'Bournville' and 'Middle England' amongst many other donations.

Here's a memory photo taken of Sarah and Jonathan on the publicity tour for 'Bournville' where Jonathan's publicist gave Sarah a bar of Bournville chocolate and said she felt like it was giving snow to an Eskimo since we could see the chocolate factory behind us!

Lovely memories and many more exciting times ahead for us all as we journey together into the future with 2 dynamic women at the head of our bookshop team!

Here's our Crowdfunder link again in case you were saving your giving for the weekend!
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/green-heart-books-help-us-start-a-new-story-1

Writing West Midlands Birmingham Literature Festival Friends of Stirchley Library Selly Manor Museum Women's Prize James Mayhew - Author & Illustrator

07/03/2024

Happy World Book Day (UK & Ireland)!

Today is the day we begin Crowdfunding to help us reopen our doors in Edgbaston Village.

We'd love for you to consider donating the cost of a book (£9) if you are in a position to do so.

We’d also like to say thank you all so much for your support this past week. We're overwhelmed and overjoyed with the excitement you have shown in person and over social media.

Please donate here:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/green-heart-books-help-us-start-a-new-story-1

Thank you!

Green Heart Books (the team behind The Bookshop on the Green) are fundraising to help cover the costs of relocating to Edgbaston Village.

01/03/2024

Thank you for the amazing outpouring of love and enthusiasm to our announcement that we are opening up again in Greenfield Crescent in Edgbaston Village in June.

For those people feeling a little bit sad that we weren't able to find anywhere suitable in either Bournville or Stirchley, we just want you to know that we did look extensively. Peri & Bradley even went door to door in Stirchley but there was nothing available that ticked our boxes and which we could also afford.

Just before Christmas, Peri gave me this gorgeous notebook for new adventures and it sums up really well our situation. In this case, "abroad" being Edgbaston!

Very exciting times ahead with so many plans in the pipeline. We feel confident that you are all going to love it as much as we already do!

And we're excited and incredibly thankful to have this wonderful opportunity to make good things happen and to bring the magic!

Much love to all in our wonderful Bookshop community,
Sarah x

28/02/2024

ANNOUNCEMENT!

We've been working incredibly hard behind the scenes and we have some wonderful news to share with you all – we've finally found a new, accessible premises!

We will be moving to Greenfield Crescent in Edgbaston Village and opening our doors on Wednesday 12th June.

On World Book Day, Thursday 7th March, we’ll be launching a Crowdfunder. We’ll be asking you to donate the cost of a book (£8.99) if you can to help cover some of our fitting and relocation costs.

Read our FULL newsletter announcement here: https://mailchi.mp/d544877a4043/the-start-of-a-new-story-for-green-heart-books

Please like and share this news with friends. We can’t wait to see you all soon!

Chapter. Birmingham Literature Festival Writing West Midlands Loaf Selly Manor Museum Stirchley Library Friends of Stirchley Library Bookshop.org UK The Booksellers Association

28/02/2024

Professor Damien Page Deputy, the Vice Chancellor at Buckinghamshire New University and Professor of Education, recently shared the following on X/Twitter:-

Dostoevsky argued that a society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals. I love Dostoevsky but I think he was wrong. A society should be judged by how it treats its libraries.

In the UK, they have been decimated, more than 800 closed in a decade. These are not just buildings, not just a local service, not just a line in the public accounts. Closing a library is closing the potential for learning for those who would benefit from it the most.

As a working class child, libraries were places of wonder, imagination. A space of possibilities, new worlds, inspiration. A place of words: words of hope, love, theory, ideas, origins. Row after row of transformation and new futures. Picture books and philosophy, manuals and poems, stories and histories. Powerful. Magical. Alchemical.

The closure of a library is a tragedy. Worse, it is educational and social vandalism. And if the treatment of libraries is taken as a measure of our society, then our society is being failed.

5:34 AM · Feb 23, 2024
·
53.8K
Views

I couldn't agree more. And I see Damien is a fellow early riser!

You can follow Damien on X here

FFriends of Stirchley LibrarySStirchley Library

27/02/2024

‘Culture and creativity matter to us because they enrich our lives and relationships, as well as feeding our minds and souls.’’

We are calling upon you to speak up about how important culture and creativity is to you.

Share your own post about why and head to Culture Central’s web page which details how you can do this: https://www.culturecentral.co.uk/

Culture Central work across the rural and urban areas throughout the West Midlands region speaking with and for all sizes of not for profit and commercial organisations, individual practitioners and freelancers who work in the sector, across all forms of arts, culture and heritage.



Selly Manor Museum The Barber Institute of Fine Arts Stirchley Library Friends of Stirchley Library CoCoMAD Festival Cotteridge Park James Mayhew - Author & Illustrator Jacqueline Wilson HQ National Poetry Day Arts Council England Writing West Midlands Birmingham Open Studios Birmingham Literature Festival Birmingham Hospice

27/02/2024

Morning update report on Saving Birmingham's Libraries campaign.

Well, a lot can happen in the space of 24 hours!

A HUGE thank you to everyone who has been in touch and engaged with the Saving Birmingham's Libraries campaign so far.

Here's a brief resume of the last 24 hours:-

1. Legal guidance on BCC's statutory duty to maintain Library Services received from Claire Ward, Head of Governance at Anthony Collins Solicitors.

2. Connection made with Kathy Hopkin of Save Birmingham campaign. We are meeting next week.

3. I've had an incredibly helpful email from Cassie Chadderton (CEO of World Book Day and Chair of Culture Central). I'm now fully up to speed with Culture Central's work behind the scenes to save Culture in WM and we will be participating in their campaign. Look out for a post about this at 17:00 today as we need YOU to get involved please!

4. Cassie has also been speaking to DCMS and Libraries Connected and will brief me as to those discussions when we meet.

5. John Dolan (retired Director of Library Services in Birmingham and current Chair of Bournville Hub) has introduced me to Ian Anstice who produces Public Libraries News and is able to advise on alternative structures and funding models for libraries. John also shared an inspirational story of best practice in Ireland where the whole Irish Library ecology was redeveloped and transformed nationally through partnership working and grassroots community involvement. That model has stood the test of time and is still thriving 10 years later. Interestingly, they took the existing Library staff with them into the new structure and most still remain in post.

6. I've had a very helpful heads up from Richard Bickle on appropriate legal structures.

7. I've emailed the CEO, Manager of Literature & Libraries nationally and my own Regional Relationship Manager at Arts Council England to tell them about the Saving Libraries Birmingham campaign and to invite them to Birmingham to meet with me.

8. I've let The Bookseller magazine know about the campaign. My hope is they will interview me about the campaign so that we can get it on the radar of the Publishing industry and book trade nationally.

And all of this amongst working on my day job, looking after 3 kids, including my boys who are doing A-levels and GCSEs this year (the double whammy!)

I did take a short cut and cook a quick and easy dinner last night!

I don't know when on earth I'm going to be doing my Garden Design course homework but fortunately I have a clear vision for that as well!

Thank you to you all. You are an incredible and wonderful community of supporters and can-do people. Together we can write a new exciting story for Birmingham's Libraries which doesn't feature cuts and closures but creativity, imagination and empowerment through learning.

Please keep liking and sharing these posts so we can spread the word. Thank you.

Sarah x

Friends of Stirchley Library Stirchley Library Selly Manor Museum Bournville Village Trust Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (UK) The Barber Institute of Fine Arts University of Birmingham Writing West Midlands Birmingham Literature Festival Aspire for Equality The Booker Prizes Women's Prize Birmingham Live Birmingham Post HEART FM