Birmingham: The second city of culture or void of artistic importance?

16th Oct 2009

James Sant ques­tions whether Birm­ing­ham is the Venice of England

IN Shane Meadow’s Midlands-set films one encoun­ters a black and white, desat­u­rated tableau. The char­ac­ters are impov­er­ished and so is the exter­nal land­scape. Vis­i­tors to Birm­ing­ham, then, are prob­a­bly unhinged when they encounter some­thing different.

How­ever, they pre­sum­ably feel sat­is­fied as their prej­u­dices are con­firmed on approach­ing New Street Sta­tion: the prison greys, crum­bling con­crete, and scur­ry­ing rats con­firm a Meadow-esque city por­trai­ture. Yet another face of the city awaits. The ren­o­vated Bull­ring Mar­ket is a com­pos­ite of bright hues, glass facades, inno­v­a­tive archi­tec­ture, sug­gest­ing the city has one foot in the future, not in the grave. The jury is out, though: its detrac­tors call it an expen­sive face-lift that betrays its real ugli­ness. Vac­u­ous beauty per­haps comes to mind.

If some­thing more edi­fy­ing is required there is the Museum and Art Gal­ley which offers the largest col­lec­tion of works by Edward Burne-Jones; mean­while the Ikon Gallery boasts some of the most cor­us­cat­ing exhi­bi­tions out­side Lon­don. If the Rep The­atre is too bland then numer­ous fringe the­atres are dot­ted around, the venue above the Old Joint Stock Pub being pop­u­lar. The refur­bished Elec­tric Cin­ema is a wel­comed anti­dote to the mul­ti­plexes – and if the Birm­ing­ham accent is an affront to priv­i­leged ears the Sym­phony Hall may be an attrac­tive rem­edy. Alter­na­tively, the relo­cated O2 Acad­emy on Bris­tol Street pro­vides a plat­form for the con­tem­po­rary sounds of the unheard.

Birm­ing­ham is not a pol­ished gem – but at least it is brighter than the impov­er­ished per­cep­tions that are per­pet­u­ally recycled.

Birm­ing­ham born and bred Noël Byrne  argues for Medi­oc­rity over Originality

I’M a Brum­mie, and grow­ing up as a Brum­mie is hard. You’re stuck with an accent that no-one would ever want, whilst the city’s two main foot­ball teams excel in medi­oc­rity and its two main cul­tural exports seem to be Duran Duran and Howard from the Hal­i­fax ads. I feel that this all stems from Birm­ing­ham itself and its mul­ti­ple, mis­guided efforts to ‘rein­vig­o­rate the city’s culture’.

Some may praise the rede­vel­op­ment from an indus­trial behe­moth into a more com­mer­cial and user-friendly city as a key fac­tor for its regen­er­a­tion, but is knock­ing down grimy fac­to­ries and replac­ing them with an Aldi here or a Top­shop there a mas­sive cul­tural step for­ward? Even the few clas­sic build­ings that are left intact, such as the Town Hall, are plas­tered with wide-screen TVs so the unwashed masses can watch snooker in pub­lic. Ever seen the For­ward statue in Cen­te­nary Square? Cur­rent Birm­ing­ham stu­dents prob­a­bly haven’t, since it was burned down by chavs a cou­ple of years ago, whilst its replace­ment was the gaudy , ‘blinged-out’ gold Boulton-Watt-Murdock statue.

Music venues like the soul­less new O2 Acad­emy have money poured into them, while older venues with gen­uine his­tory and char­ac­ter, like the Rain­bow pub, are being threat­ened with clo­sure by a Birm­ing­ham City Coun­cil which isn’t even trusted by gov­ern­ment watch­dogs to rebuild the city’s sad, grey pub­lic library. How can a city sur­vive cul­tur­ally when its orig­i­nal­ity is destroyed in favour of mediocrity?