On a stifling morning two weeks ago, I went on a long overdue exploration of the Jewellery Quarter. There was a jazz band playing in St Paul’s Square and people were already lazing on blankets on the grass. I started my journey at the stylish Saint Kitchen café. Who better to meet there than Joe … [Read more…]
In the time that I’ve lived in Birmingham there’s a place that has frequently come up in conversation/email/the twittersphere that I have never knowingly been in the vicinity of, let alone visited. Yet Ikon is one of the best regarded galleries in the region, and I finally made the trip last month to see what … [Read more…]
A very happy new year to CiB readers. As I begin my first full year living in this city I am coming to the end of the first batch of Welcome to Birmingham venues that I have researched since my move. It’s taken a while to get through them due to a rather hectic last … [Read more…]
It was a few years ago when pottering around the lovely city of Bath that I first discovered Castle Galleries. In what was probably my late teens I was beginning to come out of the mind set that all art was boring and the welcoming experience I received whilst perusing the artwork displayed is something … [Read more…]
It’s been roughly 12 years since I last attended a dance performance, I have no idea what it was but at a guess I’d say it was some form of school trip as part of theatre studies. Tonight I am breaking that duck with my first visit to Birmingham Hippodrome and, based within it – … [Read more…]
A week after I have packed my life away into boxes, only to reopen them a day later and slowly scatter them across my new home, I am on my way to The Public in West Bromwich to do some research for my first article in this series I am calling ‘Welcome to Birmingham’. This … [Read more…]
The gently upbeat BiNS makes me happy. It’s run by someone for no money (and sometimes fewer thanks) by someone with a palpable affection for their city. Forward is a council-sponsored propaganda rag with plenty of ‘good news’ but no personality and even less credibility. If it wasn’t foisted on every household in the city … [Read more…]
Birmingham made it to number 19 in The New York Times’ list of 45 Places to Go in 2012. Here’s the entry: Olive, the BBC’s food magazine, recently startled British gourmands when it declared Birmingham, England’s second largest city, the United Kingdom’s “foodiest town,” ahead of London and Edinburgh. The award came last October, just as Birmingham … [Read more…]