'Oss Box to show off artist's talents at Sandwell Remembrance Sunday event

Cradley Heath Creative's Oss Box will visit The Stables, at Haden Hill Park.

The event will start with a commemorative silence at the front door of Haden Hill House.

Then visitors will find the Oss Box converted into an open air stage for The Sandalwood Mouse.

It is a play written for Halesowen's Mayhem Theatre Group and it will be followed by improvisations by an accordion player.

There is an exhibition of prints by Louise Blakeway and Harry Parkes's photographs which reinterpret the Stable Block and Haden Hill House.

Vincent Thomas, an industrial artist, will make steel poppies on a mobile forge, while other artists will be drawing around Haden Hill Park.

Acknowledging the significance of the day, artist Martyn Harris is showing eight paintings of Haden Hill House.

Among the pieces is one called A Poppy Field in France as a tribute to the bravery of service men and women.

The painting will be auctioned to raise funds for the British Legion.

Cradley Heath Creative bought the Oss Box, a 70s horse trailer, in 2015 to convert it into a pop-up arts venue.

Since then it has been used for events in and around Cradley Heath.

These include for Women Chainmakers Festival as a shared food venue; Cradley Heath Christmas Lights as a shadow puppet theatre; as a mobile recording booth for people's stories about Mary Stevens Park and at this year's Sandwell Arts Festival as a camera obscura.

The group was awarded funding via the Local Area Budget funding by Sandwell Council.

This allowed the group to carry out work to enable one side of Oss Box to be lowered to make a stage.

Arty Party is the third of five events to highlight possible community use of the Stables.

The venue was made weatherproof through Heritage Lottery Funding in 2009.

The creative day, supported by an award from Creative Black Country, gets underway at 11am on Sunday.

The event will end at the stables at 3pm.