Welcome to Long Live The Kings, Kings Rise Academy's Local History Project in Association with Birmingham Museums Trust and Erdington Arts Forum. Keep your eye out for more photos from our school archive soon and follow our Facebook page for updates on our next project OPEN DAYS.

Check out our new Oral History Podcasts page with stories about Kings Rise and Kingstanding from previous teachers, student and community leaders.

At Kings Rise Academy, we are the very proud custodians of a 92 year legacy of schools which have stood on our site and served this community. Through wars and pandemics, joy and grief, Kings and Queens…Kings Rise has thrived. 

We are incredibly fortunate that over the years successive staff teams have kept records of attendance, photographs, newspaper clippings and even old-school ‘punishment books’! This collection of archive history is fascinating and tells a beautiful story of our school and our amazing, strong and resilient community. We now want to open these documents to the public in the hope that we can learn more about our community and so Kingstanding can come to know the important relationship between Kings Rise and the people it serves.

In 2021 our school was awarded a Gold Standard for our History Curriculum owing, to a great extent, to our work at uncovering the archival history of our school hero Mr Freddie Fineran who was a teacher at Peckham Road School at the outbreak of the Second World War. As a reservist, Major Fineron was called up to active service in 1939 and unfortunately killed in action in Sicily in 1943. The example of Major Fineron is an expression of our school values, the fundamental British Values, and always evokes feelings of pride, service, selflessness and community which are still very much present in Kingstanding. As a school we have always felt that Kings Rise’s history and the history of Kingstanding should be celebrated and this year we intend to do just that.

Working alongside Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Erdington Arts Forum, our local history project entitled Long Live The Kings will capture the story of the people of King’s Rise and the local people of Kingstanding through archive photographs, documents and oral storytelling culminating in an exhibition to take place at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in the City Centre. It will provide a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the rich stories, characters and contributions by locals over the last 92 years. The centrepiece of the exhibition, will be a photography display which reimagines some of our oldest photos set against today’s community and will provide a beautiful and moving tribute to just how diverse our area has become. 

Begin your journey into our archives below. 

PLEASE NOTE: the archive website is currently under construction with some decades' photos and documents missing. Please check back very soon as more is added all the time as we explore our archives further and add information we recieve from others in our community.