Category archive for: Digbeth

Last week, in an effort to contribute something constructive to the Big City Plan consultation that’s about to begin, I put forward the idea that Digbeth should have 20 buildings painted from top to bottom by artists to put it on the map, nationally and internationally, as a place where art and creativity happens. I cited the old DEP studios and neighbour on Fazeley St and the Custard Factory as great examples of this already in existence. I’d be interested in your opinions (and, if you have any ideas of your own for how Birmingham might develop them, start putting them on your blogs - they will, I’m told, be read and taken on board.)

In the comments on that post local historian and all round good bloke Richard Trengrouse sounded an alarm bell:

The draft conservation strategy for Digbeth is very much against murals or the painting of buildings. In fact it seems to imply that all murals including the one on the FOE gable end and the painted elevations of the Custard Factory should be scrubbed back to the brickwork. This not yet City Council policy but if it is not amended at this stage it could put paid to a lot of interesting developments in the area.

So I went a digging through the council’s websites and after a while came across the page for the Digbeth/Deritend Conservation Area which contains a PDF draft document for which the public consultation lasted from October 6th to November 14th. Oops. Must have missed the memo on that one. But it still makes for interesting reading. You can download it here (2.8mb) or read it in this handy embedded box:

Now I’m not expert at reading government documents but a quick search didn’t lead me to anything specific about the Custard Factory needing to be scrubbed down to the original brickwork other than this section under Loss, Attrition and Intrusion on page 34:

9. The bright painted brickwork of the Custard Factory on Heath Mill Lane and Gibb Street dominates views of the Old Crown public house as seen from beyond the conservation area boundary on Deritend High Street.

It’s worth remembering that this document has at its heart the conservation of historic Digbeth which “contains the most significant remnants of mediaeval settlement in Birmingham including the fifteenth century Guildhall of St John (now the Old Crown public house). These early townscape elements are of considerable significance in the history of Birmingham’s development and were of particular importance in the designation of the area.” So this is not so much about the future development of the area as making sure that development doesn’t destroy what is currently there. A similar conflict occurs in the City of London where the Museum of London Archaeology Service works to prevent the destruction of historically significant sites by commercial development. This is valuable and essential work but a balance does need to be struck between the preservation of the past and the move into the future. Devonshire House, a listed building, should rightly not be painted bright purple but does that mean the other buildings shouldn’t be resplendent in yellow, pink, blue and green?

This document is, don’t forget, a draft and not council policy. While the initial consultation has passed you can still contact the Planning Department with any ideas or opinions you may have. And if you decide to blog them leave a link in the comments after this post.

It’s worth pointing out that while I’ve tried to keep this post neutral any opinions you might pick up are my own and don’t represent the Custard Factory management who, for all I know, have been involved with the document from the outset. I provide this information as a service to residents and workers in the area.

The Birmingham Central blog is currently going through the council’s Big City Plan and producing some very useful summaries of the notions contained therein. Part 3 is particularly of interest to us as it deals with the connectivity issues across the city centre and the various options for the quarters under development including Digbeth / Eastside where the Custard Factory resides.

it also has some nice diagrams. If you like diagrams.

via D’log

Enterprise thriving in Birmingham, insist council and AWM is the headline of Anna Blackaby’s follow-up article to Bennie Gray’s call to arms on Wednesday. The general gist I’m picking up is while the city council and Advantage West Midlands agree with Bennie’s general thrust we don’t need to worry as everything is in hand. Which is good to hear.

It’s not my place to respond to that here - hopefully Bennie will do that himself - but we’d welcome your reactions to this. Bennie’s issued a challenge and outlined some possible solutions. The city leaders have outlined what they’re doing to deal with it (though D’log has some issues with the visibility of these projects). But a manifesto traditionally has a list of demands, some realistic, some idealistic.

What would you demand?

A couple of weeks ago Dave Peebles and myself were at a brainstorming meeting chaired by Lara Ratnaraja of Business link about the possibility of developing a “Creative Marketplace” in the region. It’s still very much in the consultation / planning stage and they’re doing a survey. If you’re working here it’s probably in your interests to get your opinions else it turn into a government funded turkey.

Here’s the blurb:

The East Birmingham & North Solihull Regeneration Zone (ebns Ltd) with our funders Advantage West Midlands have been investing in the development of Digbeth and Eastside as a Learning and Leisure Quarter and a centre for the creative industries, particularly the digital media sector. We have worked with a range of partners including Birmingham City Council, the Custard Factory, the Bond, Vivid, Groundwork, the Learning & Skills Council and others to develop a range of projects, create new workspace and provide new learning opportunities.

One of the project ideas now under discussion is the establishment of a Creative Marketplace, and we would like your input to help decide whether there is the demand for this, and if so what it should be. We therefore want to take this opportunity to canvass your views. We would welcome your responses to the following questions.

And here’s the survey.

If, like me, you hate filling out these things (though it is a very short survey, to be fair), feel free to blog your ideas and link to them in the comments here.

Birmingham-based artist Nikki Pugh recently spent some time in Japan and visited the Koganecho Bazaare in Yokohama district, a 12 week event run “as a means towards reconstructing a sense of place in a small river-side area that had previously had a national reputation for being a hotbed of illegality.”

Her report on her findings is well worth a read as she draws parallels between the work being done there with the development of Digbeth, specifically how art and artists are used in the transitional period, and notes differences in the approaches taken here and there.

I suppose the comparisons inevitably start with the two geographies: Koganecho and Digbeth are comparable in size and both located just outside of the main focus of the city centre (although I find this concept is less applicable to cities in Japan and I imagine Yokohama is on a much bigger scale). Is it worth also mentioning here that both Yokohama and Birmingham are/were/might be second cities? Not sure…

Where Koganecho has seen the decline of its, um, ‘entertainment’ industry (the area is cited as having hosted some 250 brothels in its heyday), Digbeth is home to many empty factory units caught between industrial decline and the promise of better property prices ahead in the wake of the area’s transformation into the Cultural Quarter.

Both are, to their own extents, suffering from a decline in their economies and the loss of the communities that thrived off these. What generally remains are people without the links to, and vested interests in, the infrastructures and interactions going on within the area. Given the population density of urban Japan, that’s a lot of people that don’t really care that much. Imagine if you could mould just even a tiny fraction of that attention!

There are exceptions of course, and, not surprisingly, artists and entrepreneurs started to move in and take advantage of the available space. It’s my feeling that in Digbeth’s case, this has come down more on the side of the entrepreneurs and large institutions (the Custard Factory empire, colleges, universities and media companies) and artists have found either the rents or leasing terms to be difficult to work with. (Again, a mediated perception…)

My major concern about the regeneration of Digbeth/Eastside is that it always seems to be so incredibly top-down: funders specify what they want in return for their money and the appropriate components are parachuted into place. I’ve already highlighted that my perceptions of Koganecho Bazaar are highly mediated, but I came away from it with the overriding feeling that it was very much bottom-up in its approach. It felt like it was providing spaces for people to get on with their thing, rather than shaping and controlling what that thing might be.

That’s just an excerpt from the introduction. Go read the whole piece.

Dave Harte is moving jobs from Digbeth to the Jewellery Quarter and gives a ten point link-baiting report on the Custard Factory quarter. Here’s the headlines, reprinted without context:

1. Less galleries, more cafes.
2. Shut the Custard Factory newsagents.
3. Build another carpark.
4. Calm the traffic on Heath Mill Lane.
5. Make Fazeley Street the main route to Digbeth.
6. Signposts Please.
7. Start selling stuff people need.
8. Open a restaurant.
9. Move the bus stops outside Digbeth Cold Storage.
10. Gentrify/Don’t Gentrify - make your mind up.

For the rationales, and the opportunity to tell him he’s right or wrong, go check his blog. There’s some good stuff in the comments already.

The Digbeth Olympics took place on Sunday and evidence is starting to emerge online. This video of the cardboard coracle racing is a highlight.

Meanwhile Digbeth Is Good has a great roundup of photos of events including Pico Prix Racing, Custard-filled Wellie Racing and the Snail Race. Nice to see escapee Seamus McPingu had a good time too.

Developers Dig Digbeth is the title of an upbeat piece in Property News that looks at the various developments planned in the area. The general theme seems to be that, apart from the Custard Factory expansion and Coach Station which are well underway, there’s a lot in the pipeline but it’s going to be a while before it comes to fruition. The piece also touches on the debate on whether to keep the character of Digbeth or start from scratch. Here’s a quote:

“It’s important that Digbeth is not over-planned, otherwise it will suffocate – it has an edge that all cities should have,” adds Clive Dutton, director of planning and regeneration with Birmingham City Council. “The trick will be allowing the place to thrive without losing its character.”

But there is debate. “Digbeth has a lot of potential but it mustn’t get hung up on its buildings,” says Martin Weaver, managing partner at property and construction consultancy Rider Levitt Bucknall. “We should keep what’s good, but don’t just keep everything, otherwise it will never work.”

But the key to the successful regeneration of Digbeth will be to maintain the balance between old and new.

Walk among Digbeth’s eclectic mix of Victorian industrial buildings and offices, and railway arch properties squeezed under the railway viaducts that criss-cross the area, and you realise that it has the potential to become Birmingham’s version of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. It can offer a similar fashionable edge to Manchester’s redeveloped industrial buildings and mills and be home to young up-and-coming residents and companies.

Photo of Digbeth taken from Property Week story. Link via Digbeth is Good.

Now Fazeley Studios is about to open for tenancy it was nice to be reminded of the Stay Away From Lonely Places, part of 2007’s Fierce Festival / Architecture Week that comprised a guided walk around Digbeth narrated by Nicole Blackman.

While things have obviously changed a bit since it was recorded (this, after all, being Birmingham where nothing stays the same for long) the guide is still a fun and informative listen as she talks you around the history of the Custard Factory Quarter (as we’re now calling it).

The sign on Floodgate Street stayed up for quite a while and caught the eye of many a photographer scouting the area. The above is by H4NUM4N. I was reminded of this by Gr8noise’s blog post which has more links should you want to investigate further.