Community: Constructing Community
It’s 5.30pm on a sunny Monday evening and I’ve arrived at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre on Park Road for my weekly yoga class. But today I’m not here just to give my muscles a stretch. I’m on a mission to find out the story behind the renovations that have recently transformed the building. Gone is the imposing and rather intimidating heavy wooden side entrance; instead visitors are now welcomed through a large, central glass doorway into a glazed atrium at the heart of the centre. The changing rooms that once evoked visions of school games lessons from the 1950s now feel fresh and modern with colourful mosaic mirrors and natural stone tiles. I ask Prabhakara, the centre’s resident yoga teacher and the bendiest person I have ever met, who I should talk to about the refurbishments, and he takes me to find Dharmashura, the Director of the centre. We discover him standing on tiptoes and wrestling with a tape measure in a slightly fraught discussion about light fittings. Although the bu...