Birmingham: It’s Not Shit

Stereotypical French Headline Here

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Ethel St in town is fast becoming Brum’s French quartier, there are two baguette shops, Chez Jules and a Café Rouge. Okay it’s not much, but you can bet it’ll be in the Big City Plan v2. In fact I’m almost tempted to open a tabac in the vacant shop, and sell only fags and stamps (how the hell do they survive?).

I also got this email the other day from a genuine French, asking for Brum-related advice. Now, I wouldn’t normally do this kind of thing, but do you fancy helping them out (bonus points for pointing out Françis-esque stuff, or weak onion and snail puns).

“I’ve just seen ur web site and it makes me laugh — plus I am going to move to birmingham from france next september (erasmus programm blah blah blah)– so I though maybe YOU’d have good advice for me such as : where should I try to live and what’s gonna be fun there?

julia”

Is second place good enough to aim for?

I was surprised, and a little bit flattered I’ll admit, to be asked to be on the panel for Birmingham Future’s (Big Brand) debate “Is Birmingham A Second City?”, along with Ian Taylor, commercial director of Marketing Birmingham and David Clarke. Exalted company, but both very nice as it turned out.

Here’s the ‘debate’ proposition (much longer and more detailed version here in the Birmingham Post):

“Birmingham was the original hotbed of entrepreneurialism, innovation and cutting-edge technology, our ‘City of 100 Trades’ was a proud forerunner in the Industrial Revolution. Since then, we have suffered an image crisis – maligned in the media and the butt of many jokes despite huge strides in improving the built environment, infrastructure, amenities and leisure offer for the city’s inhabitants and visitors. So what can we, the next generation of city leaders, do to change these outdated perceptions of our city? Is the Second City banner, coveted by a number of other English cities, a positive or negative for Birmingham? If not the Second City, then what are we? The First City for Innovation? The Youthful City? Diverse City? International City?

In this, the second Big Future Debate, you decide! Join your fellow Future members, our panel of influential and passionate ‘Brummies’ and those charged with marketing our city to have your say on the image of our city locally, regionally, nationally and globally.”

I like talking, and sprouting out vague opinions without much firm backing, but I’d never done a “panel” before. Debates I’d done at school, but this was a little different — no proposition to argue for or against, and as it turned out not much argument at all.

It went ahead a little like a version of Question Time, but without the nervousness caused by boom mics hovering over the pre-selected questioners. Tim, the chair, was very good at the “bloke with the striped shirt, no, the expensive striped shirt” thing, and other panel rousing duties.

As I say, I don’t think there was anyone in the room, or at least no-one who spoke, that thought that “second city” was the best marketing strategy for Brum. A few people thought that the physical size of the place was worth pushing, but as a tweet put it to me before we started “aspiring to be a second city is like aspiring to be a middle child; overlooked and needy for attention”. (There wasn’t any online coverage, next time? would be good, but I’d asked for any input via twitter before and got a couple of good lines to claim as my own.)

It was interesting to hear that Marketing Birmingham are focused only on “visitor attraction” to the city, not marketing it to us residents - and that Ian himself admits that some of the stuff they push at Americans in particular is cringe-worthy. They deliberately pick different tactics for different markets, as you would expect.

Ian was critical, as was I, of some of the council’s communication about the city to its residents (self-styled Red headed Canadian Debra Davies was in the room), a point raised a number of times from the floor was that Brummies didn’t bother to defend their town to outsiders. I do think this is a lot to do with how little we get to hear about stuff that is going on, the council website is a joke to navigate (new one coming soon…) and the Forward newspaper is dull (having only council PR in it really) — I’m a Brum addict and find it hard to bother to read it before lining the cats’ litter tray.

David Clarke made some very good points about the pride of Brum’s population, but his most interesting contribution (sorry, to my trivia-obsessed brain at least) was that Birmingham was the first place to have One Way Streets — invented by his grandfather no less. Could this be our USP?

I made a weak witticism about penguins when Torquay was mentioned (they have a lot of penguins) “where are our penguins?” I asked. I meant it metaphorically, but also what city wouldn’t be better with penguins than without?

So “where are our penguins?”, diversity (cosmopolitan to use the MB phrase) and youth apparently, but they are such abstract concepts and so obvious that almost all brands go for them.

Birmingham’s reputation is changing, but at best we’ve got a blank canvas at the moment. The city’s job is to allow the people to breathe and perhaps create something that people want to visit and live in.

Brum Guide - it’s wiki’d

Brum Guide might look a little bit (or indeed a lot) like Wikipedia, but it’s just for us – it’s to create a guide to Birmingham written by Brummies (and honourary ones), or it will be if we fill it up.

You see it’s a wiki - which means anyone that can see it can edit it, can add pages, can fix mistakes (my poor spelling for example) and we can build up a guide to Brum that contains all the little bits of fun and facts that only we Brummies know.

Think of it like helping to write a Lonely Planet guide - but you didn’t have to explain the currency or weather, just add things that you know about Birmingham. I always marvel at how much there is to learn about the city, how many great places to visit you don’t know about, how much interesting stuff goes on outside our own little enclaves and the city centre.

I’ve started with a few little bits that I’ve copied and pasted from stuff I’ve already written - can you can too if you don’t mind it being part of the guide.

To add something you just do a search - if there isn’t a page related to what you’ve searched for you can start it off. You add the location on a map too - which is all cleverly geo-tagged and will allow clever people to build up map-type things.

Humour me, go and add something, edit something - it’ll only take a minute (you don’t even have to register).

Building sites

Whether it’s the dark and stormy nights meaning we all stay in blogging and coding, or Brum being particularly interesting at the moment, or (as I suspect) the drunken fun of blogging meet-ups forging new connections, there are an absolute ton of new Birmingham-related blogs and sites springing up. The collective noun for a group of Birmingham websites? I’m plumping for “a brewery”.

Blogging Brum is a group blog set up by Mark Steadman - the idea is that bloggers that blog in, but not about Birmingham have a space to talk about the city. It seems to be taking off, and is also a useful hub for blogging meet-ups. I almost wish I didn’t have a load of Brum blogs to write for already so I could join in.

Birmingham Bloggers is an aggregator pulled together by Paul Bradshaw, posts from all the Brum-blogs he can find pop up in the timeline. The site also has a brum twitter aggregator. In a similar vien is Brumspace - from Pete Lewis et al-  which has blog aggregating and a chatspace. There’s also Planet Brum.

WTFisBrum? is Pete Ashton’s brumular take on WFTistwitter? Upload talking-head videos answering the basic question “What the fuck is Birmingham?”

Some changes at upyerbrum, where the front page now does an Ajax-y news river thing and new stories flow past. It’s also getting a bit more use now, which is all the better.

Live Brum isn’t quite ready yet, but I’ve had a look and it has the potential to be the listings site for Birmingham. If Josh Hart can get the information in, the site has the potential to get it out in any form you may desire.

Of course there be more, link us up in the comments…

Put roof here

Birmingham New Street to be redeveloped, originally uploaded by new folder.

“Plans are sketchy but seem to include a high roof.”

Costa Book of the Year award within grasp for Catherine O’Flynn

Having won the Costa first novel award, Catherine O’Flynn’s What was Lost is now in the running for the Costa Book of the Year award. The winner will be announced later today at a posh do in that London.

This morning, BBC Breakfast had a feature on Catherine, who talked about her inspirations which include growing up in Nechells and a fondness for gas towers; and also a chat with her Birmingham-based publisher, Tindal Street Press.

Fingers crossed for Catherine for tonight’s award!

Hughes in Pictures

Alex Hughes’ weekly cartoon.

You won’t get me I’m part of the union

This evening I attended the first Birmingham Bloggers’ meet (at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath)  - it was organised around this Facebook group. Despite the cameras and laptop in the picture we didn’t talk too much about technology, or show off our gadgets (although I will admit to posting the photo via my iPhone while I was there).

It was a nice fluid evening, with people dropping in and out,  having opinions and all of us desparatley trying not to have an agenda of any kind. I did however find out that Neve Campbell is always drinking in Kings Heath and that Debbie Harry is up for a balti.

Stef (on the left with the nice cannon camera) recorded part of the conversation and promises to podcast it should anyone be even vaguely interested.

There will no doubt be another, pop over to Facebook, or drop me a line an I’ll give you a nudge.

You might as well do the white line

Drinkers at Moseley’s famous Prince of Darkness faced a ’sobriety’ test by police - with fines and warnings for anyone committing the crime of being ‘drunk in a pub’ according to yesterday’s Sunday Mercury (sorry, last online story on the Mercury site is 30 Dec). Keith Marsden, the landlord, had to get his regulars to walk along a chalk line - to prove they were sober enough (in November, but the Mercury have just caught up).

They pub had already been sent a letter warning them that “there is clear evidence in the premises…of numerous people who are drunk/intoxicated” (The Stirrer).

To my mind a pub isn’t doing its duty if people aren’t tipsy, and the patrons of the Prince aren’t any drunker than elsewhere, and Moseley’s more cerebral drinkers (Councillors, MPs, er me sometimes) might be a bit of an easy target for this bizarre law - I’d like to see the police take this line in the Australian bar up Broad St of a Saturday night.

Lost wins

Congrats to Cath O’Flynn who has won the Costa first novel award. Yay!

What Was Lost, was named winner of the 2007 Costa first novel award after being longlisted but not winning the Booker and the Orange prize and shortlisted for the Guardian’s first book award.