33 different faces of Digbeth

The idea of snapping faces developed during today’s photowalk around Digbeth, a district just south of Moor Street Station in Birmingham that’s a little bit arty, a little bit gritty and with a whole lot of industrial heritage contained within. Thanks to Matt & Pete’s Photo School for running the two-hour walk – more photowalk events can be found here. A night-time walk is apparently imminent.

A tour of Birmingham’s ring road (drives me to despair)

Who said local tourism had to be glamorous?

As part of the first Still Walking festival, urban planner Joe Holyoak’s Walk the Queensway tour was the first walk of the event to sell out. I’m not sure of the attraction for others but for me it was an excellent follow-up to last weekend’s Architectonic, Concrete Walls 1958-1980 exhibition of photos in Brussels (which sounds incredibly pretentious now that I write it down but more down-to-earth words will come in a future post about the Atomium).

Time travelling to Stirchley Swimming Baths

I’m interested in all kinds of travel, even the trips you take inside your head. So when the opportunity to visit a local landmark – Stirchley swimming baths where I learnt to swim as a child in 1977 – came up, I was first in line.

Or rather 20th in line. It seems I wasn’t the only one on a nostalgia trip. Here’s the queue for the Stirchley Baths Open Day. The baths were built in 1910, closed in the 1980s and are about to be converted into a community centre thanks to Tesco’s 30 pieces of silver.

The most amazing video you will ever see about Birmingham

This appears to have gone out on Sky 3, I’m not sure when, but is Pure Fried Comedy Gold.

Someone in my Twitterstream pointed it out a while ago but their video link seems to have been removed, so catch this one while you still can – it’s the only one I could find.

http://rd3.videos.sapo.pt/play?file=http://rd3.videos.sapo.pt/46H7EmOPmH01O9PQA3yT/mov/1

It features an amazing but quite scary cast of regulars of The Sportsman pub in Brum as they expound on their favourite pub subjects of cider, eating rabbits and lightbulbs, and falling off a bridge onto a railway and into the path of TWO trains.

You’ll have to watch it to get the visual punchline to the story.

Tourism slogan: “Visit Brum – if you think you’re hard enough.”

Enjoy.

The poetry of Spaghetti Junction

Yesterday I went on my third monthly Birmingham Flickrmeet for a bit of socialising and a bit of snapping, but mainly because I’ve never been to the ‘notoriously confusing’ Spaghetti Junction as an end destination. Going in a group of about 15 seemed a safe way to venture into its scary underbelly.

And, y’know what, for all that it is an edgy urban concrete jungle, it’s certainly not the eyesore that people make it out to be. In fact, I found it to be quite a poetic place in the July sunshine.

Below is a favourite photo of mine from the day (there are lots more in the Birmingham Flickrmeet pool)…

(The full set of Spaghetti Junction photos are on the Flickr photo-sharing site or you can see them on this slideshow: Spaghetti Junction Flickrmeet.)

Underneath this early 1970s construction, renowned as the bane of those who must traverse it, I also found many treasures, delights and disturbing objects:

• Teenagers fishing for perch
• Artworks on the supporting pillars
• A ‘typo’ underneath the Aston Expressway
• Vivid yellow and black striped caterpillars
• The gravestone of DC Michael Swindells who was stabbed on a canal towpath while making an arrest in 2004
• Crackling pylons
• A mother and two children out for a walk
• Three police officers on dirt bikes
• And, of course, the sweeping majesty of the roads above

There’s a travel metaphor here, I’m sure, regarding only seeing the surface and judging a book by its cover. If you can, it’s worth exploring maligned places like Spaghetti Junction more deeply. But safely.

And that’s why Birmingham Flickrmeets are so great and so useful – for when else would anyone dare wander there or, another example, the canals of Aston in the deserted industrial backend of Brum? Behind the headlines of gang warfare, you’ll find plenty of fascinating scenes of nature, urban artwork, barge life and the UK’s industrial heritage.

I’m starting to think of the Flickrmeets as an option for local adventure travel. What do you think? Underbelly tourism?

Personally I like the overview of Spaghetti Junction as well – not the M6 route so much, but the maze of dipping, curving through-roads. It’s kind of like driving your own car on a roller coaster and perhaps even it looks a little bit like a ricketty fairground ride in some of the photos – like this one from Pete Ashton:

So, if you’re in Birmingham on (I think) the second Sunday of each month, bring your camera and join a Birmingham Flickmeet – or look for one in your own town – you never know what you might see.

But I think if you came to Birmingham and did this, it would signify a traveller rather a tourist moment – as Benedict Allen said in this earlier post:

“It is crucial to record. The difference between a traveller and a tourist is that a traveller simulates that experience (for others) and records it.”

My postcode has a brand new blog – thanks to The Archers

Is it local journalism? Probably not but it was amusing to see how The Archers* triggered a chain of events resulting in a new hyperlocal blog and a deep funk theme tune for my own small but dear postcode in south Birmingham. How it happened in a minute, but first, please welcome:

fuckyeahstirchley

And a round of applause for my B30 neighbour @graphiquillan who set it up, and the various contributors and curators who have made Stirchley look rather interesting if not downright pretty.

How B30 was reborn online on the night of 10 June 2010:

• A London chum of mine texted to say Stirchley had been mentioned on The Archers* that day. Kudos for Stirchley from Radio 4 and the longest running soap opera in the world!
• I duly sent a message to Twitter to alert the Birmingham massive (well, a few Twitter followers).
• Graphiquillan suggested there should be a tribute site called ‘fuckyeahstirchley’ and before my train had pulled into Birmingham from London, she had set it up and invited several contributors.
• FuckYeahStirchley then went live with the tagline: ‘Stirchley. You know, the one that got a mention on The Archers.’
• The content flowed in: recent pictures, old images, reminiscences… who knew there was so much out there on little old Stirchley.
• There was Cartland Road in a rainstorm, shots of the cream-and-blue 45 bus, a Co-op milk float (the Co-op dairy is no more), 70s actor Robin Nedwell who was allegedly born here, the now-closed public baths, the DIY stores, and much more.
• Someone else from Twitter then grabbed the audio from the show and the original Archers Stirchley namecheck was posted. Here’s the infamous line: ‘I think Jack liked having another Brummie in the village – someone to reminisce about Stirchley with.’ [Insert your own unknown suburb in here to imagine just how exciting this is.]
• Then @PeteAshton, also of B30, went one step further and put it to music – posting ‘The inevitable Archers Reminisce About Stirchley megamixmashup thingy. With beats.’ – listen all the way to the end for a lovely TeamAmerica-Stirchley-Archers signoff flourish.
• It got picked up by a writer on the show and distributed to The Archers community on Twitter at 6am the next morning: ‘Peggy Woolley mashed up by the Stirchley massive: http://bit.ly/arjMaj via @peteashton#archers‘.

And so the circle was complete. That’s how we roll in Stirchley (non-marina end). Fuck yeah.

+++

*The Archers (from Wikipedia): The Archers is a British soap opera broadcast on the BBC‘s main spoken-word channel, Radio 4. It was originally billed as “an everyday story of country folk”, but is now described on its Radio 4 web site as “contemporary drama in a rural setting”. With more than 16,000 episodes, it is both the world’s longest running radio soap and, since the axing of the American soap opera Guiding Light in September 2009, the world’s longest running soap opera in any format.

Birmingham’s UK City of Culture Bid 2013 is #intheroom but is it #inthebag?

Seven years ago, in 2003, I watched a news item on Birmingham’s bid to become European City of Culture on the tellybox. I wasn’t surprised when we lost out to Liverpool after listening to a list of big arts organisations ‘to name but a few’. It was a weak presentation that was all ‘tell don’t show’.

And, to be honest, the new bid to become the first-ever UK City of Culture in 2013 seemed to be going the same way.

I don’t pretend to know much about these Council-led things, but I do know that the Council and mainstream media seemed to be saying the same old things as in 2003. For example, while I like and admire The Dhol Blasters, they’re surely not news in terms of the city’s cultural growth – and yet here they are, rolled again yet again for local TV’s limited idea of how to demonstrate Brum culture.

But then today Brummies spoke up in their hundreds via the Twitter hashtag #intheroom. They wrote about what it was that they loved about their city, their cultural pioneers, their ideas about culture and why ultimately Birmingham should win.

Roughly 1,000 Twitter messages were pulled in throughout the day on the Birmingham Newsroom’s blog – and the coup was that they were to be seen live by the judging panel in Liverpool between 2 and 4pm this afternoon. (Tomorrow the panel decides, winner to be announced next month.)

Some of the posts were funny, some poignant, some statistical, some just lists of great goings-on. At times, the sheer volume felt quite emotional. People were still posting Birmingham’s good points via #intheroom when I checked at 11.30pm – long after the panel had gone home to sleep on their decision.

So even if Brum doesn’t win, it was kind of a unifying experience in that it let those who joined in see what it was that others saw in their city. It made us feel invested in something that could easily be seen as a city marketing exercise. It put the voice of the people directly in front of the judges and, I think, finally managed a ‘show don’t tell’ that was possibly more powerful and moving than that of an official document of evidence (good as I’m sure it was) saying that ‘Birmingham is very, very cultural indeed, thankyou’.

Birmingham DOES have a lot going for it. Take it from me who left for 20 years down to #thatlondon but is hugely enjoying being back in the city because there is simply so much more to do these days – like seeing the Birmingham Royal Ballet perform tonight with IamPete, or wandering through a staircase in Moat Lane Car Park last week as ExCathedra choir members harmonised with the brutalist architecture until it sang back, or joining in a game of Market Pong after the fruit and veg traders have gone home.

Check the Twitterstream for more examples of how Birmingham is thriving, or the Created In Birmingham blog, or More Canals Than Venice, or LiveBrum’s listings, or Traditional Arts Team stuff where I discovered a Balkan and Israeli folk dance night in the church at the end of our road that has been going since 1972!, or Getgood’s Digbeth Is Good blog covering the arty and alternative Digbeth area, or any of the other places people search for social-cultural goings-on…)

The #intheroom display was impressive. And it seems to have been noted. Someone on Twitter reported: ‘Just had word through from the Culture team they’re #outtheroom and blown away by the response online’.

We’ll see soon enough how blown away they were, I guess. But it may be that if Birmingham does win the UK City of Culture 2013 title, that it might just have been the people of Birmingham who have swung it for themselves.

The Other Birmingham

It’s been a bit quiet here of late – and that’s because there’s lots going up at my first Tourist Vs Traveller experimental microsite, which has an ever-changing name but is currently called The Other Birmingham.

What started out as a feature on ’24 Hours in Birmingham, Alabama’ (yawn, stretch, seen all that before), has become a twin city matching experiment, looking at what we – that’s Birmingham UK, my current hometown – have in common with our industrial namesakes in the US, how we might be doing things differently and maybe even using some of the matches for ideas and inspiration. I did all the big fancy thinking about it in an earlier post for the interested.

This time around, I just want to point out that there are a good few matches on there already and more to come. So far, I’ve twinned:

• Bus stations
• Roller derby
• Problematic highway exchanges
• Coworking spaces
• Skylines
• Iron statues

This is probably only of interest if you live in either city, but hey that’s what niche travel journalism experimentation is all about.

For Brummies, Bhammies and ‘none of the above’, it would be lovely if you could follow the Birmingham Match Tumblr for more posts as they come in – roughly one a week at present – add this link as an RSS feed in your reader, or ask me what you’d like to know about the ‘other’ Birmingham.

Thanks and ta ra a bit.

Birmingham, meet Birmingham!

The great thing about not having a traditional print commission is that:

• you can publish the end article in a format of your choice.
• you can don’t have to write for a set demographic.
• you can have an altruistic motive because, let’s face it, payment for travel features is so 2008.

So, last month I spent a day in Birmingham, Alabama. Being from Birmingham, West Midlands, I thought it would be a funny stop-off point and that Brummie folks back home might like to read about their namesake.

But the traditional print idea of ’24 hours in Birmingham, Alabama’ for a regional Midlands audience didn’t do it justice. And, for the three reasons above, my travel feature has transmuted into more connective material.

To answer the three bulletpoints above:

• Chosen format: a theme blog
  I picked this because there were so many overlaps and connections, and fun stuff – from the entertainment districts of Five Points vs Five Ways, to Malfunction Junction vs Spaghetti Junction, to discussions over their version of Benny from Crossroads – that a single blog post wouldn’t have done the content justice. Similarly, a series of posts here would have been diluted by general musings on travel journalism. The end result is that a tale of two Birminghams is now a blog unto itself. Well, a Tumblr, because it was easier. It is currently named Birmingham, meet Birmingham – and I have around 32 connections just for starters.
• Potential readership: Brummies and Bhammies
  So the potential audience is 1,250,000 – that’s the sum of two Birmingham populations, although the figure would be more like 5,000,000 if counting the Birmingham metropolitan area and Greater Birmingham, rather than just the cities themselves. The readership is not tied to a demographic but to a subject of interest – our two hometowns and how we benchmark with each other.
• Altruistic aim: foster connections
  Travel journalism is a happy field. We present aspirational destinations and stories about those places that people want to travel to. At best, travel advertisers hope that readers will book their product off the back of reading a published feature. However, as I connected with Bham natives via the internet and then IRL, it seemed to me that there were more interesting outcomes than tourism. What if, for example, like an aunt at a singles party, I could introduce Birmingham to Birmingham? What if Alabama’s coworking space could connect with my local coworking space in Moseley, or Birmingham Museum of Art (AL) could talk with BMAG (UK) – could they share connections, swap ideas, learn from each other, have fun? Could businesses even start to trade, offering pathways into international expansion?

Ok, so the idea took off in my head and will probably have nothing to do with how users actually consume the content.

But at the same time, why the hell not? At the tweetup they held to welcome me to Birmingham Alabama, I discovered they’d heard of Birmingham: It’s Not Shit – one of the more well-known (and irreverent) guides to Birmingham UK. They also knew that Birmingham City Council had used the ‘other Birmingham’s’ skyline to illustrate a recycling leaflet. An easy mistake in some ways – after all, we get each other’s search results all the time. We had also nearly organised a Skype linkup last year as their BarCamp was on at the same time as ours.

So perhaps we could do something with this. Like the British Airways-sponsored MetroTwin, which connects places, sights and entertainments in London and New York, and also now London and Mumbai.

But the connections don’t just have to be limited to the touristic.

Why not ‘metrotwin’ Birmingham with Birmingham on many levels?

The information is out there on the Birmingham Match Tumblr, or will be by degrees. What people do with it is another matter.

Spending New Year at Birmingham’s shiny new Coach Station in Digbeth

Birmingham finally has a shiny new National Express coach station – and we chose to see in the New Year there last Thursday pm/Friday am. (Actually, we were jumping on local blogger Nicky Getgood’s project – she was spending 6pm-6am there collecting stories of the people passing through the new station – here’s the full story.)

The new station is still on the same site as the old Digbeth coach station but it’s enclosed, airport-style, with different gateways for different destinations.

It’s also clean, white, warm and welcoming – very different from the old, cold and black station. For a peak inside, the full set of pics is here on Flickr.

The area around the station used to be pretty bleak as well, but it now houses a lively alternative underbelly of Birmingham culture and entertainment, the antithesis to the mainstream glitz of Broad Street. If you’re killing time between buses, head cross the road to COW Vintage (pictured behind the yellow door!), a warehouse full of retro loveliness. The Big Bull’s Head, a few doors up, is the spot to grab huge platefuls of cheap and filling pub food – I can recommend the fantastic Irish Stew.

Within five minutes walk is also the revamped Irish Centre, the Custard Factory (pictured above), Birmingham’s oldest inn The Old Crown, favoured Irish pub The Spotted Dog, digital media centre Fazeley Studios, Birmingham Central Backpackers, Manzil’s Indian restaurant, Friends of the Earth cafe, Latifs – a modern-day Aladdin’s cave, The Rainbow and much more.

It’s also a hub for events such as the St Patrick’s Day parade, the Digbeth O’Lympics (pictured above), Supersonic festival, and more. Check out Nicky’s Digbeth Is Good blog for latest news.

She should also have updates as to when the bus station (and therefore Digbeth) finally gets its first cashpoint. Until then, happy new year from the bus station crew, pictured here with party poppers at the ready at 11.59 and followed by fireworks over nearby Chinatown just afterwards…

[All images © Fiona Cullinan, released under Creative Commons, attribution only, non-commercial license – contact me for other usage permissions. Words fulfilling one of my 10 New Year’s Travel Resolutions of writing about Hometown Tourism]