Rupert Christiansen argues Birmingham has cultivated a thriving high-brow arts scene, but what it really needs is an underbelly.
"One has no great hopes from Birmingham," sighs that arch fashion victim Mrs Elton in Jane Austen's Emma. "I always say there is something direful in the sound" – and for the last two centuries, the sophisticated have echoed her sentiment and bequeathed the "city of a thousand trades" with an indelible image problem. For those who have never been there, Birmingham remains a bad joke: an ugly gritty urban sprawl of Spaghetti Junctions and industrial dereliction.
But over the last 25 years the reality has been different: alongside the renovation of the urban landscape, rich in parks and canals, some extraordinary transformations have taken place, evidence of Birmingham’s deeper historical record of resourcefulness and inventiveness. The joke is now on us: because Birmingham now looks fit to rank as Britain’s most cultured regional city.
Ever since the late 1980s when the legendary council leader Dick Knowles cottoned on to the idea that the arts offered a springboard for urban regeneration, Birmingham has been busily building itself a matchless set of venues and facilities, either new (Symphony Hall) or renovated (the Town Hall, the Hippodrome), and culminating in the creation of the astonishing Library of Birmingham – and whatever one thinks of the latter’s bizarre barbed-wire exterior, the interior is magnificent, a true cathedral of learning which has attracted over a million users since it opened last year... Keep reading on The Telegraph
"One has no great hopes from Birmingham," sighs that arch fashion victim Mrs Elton in Jane Austen's Emma. "I always say there is something direful in the sound" – and for the last two centuries, the sophisticated have echoed her sentiment and bequeathed the "city of a thousand trades" with an indelible image problem. For those who have never been there, Birmingham remains a bad joke: an ugly gritty urban sprawl of Spaghetti Junctions and industrial dereliction.
But over the last 25 years the reality has been different: alongside the renovation of the urban landscape, rich in parks and canals, some extraordinary transformations have taken place, evidence of Birmingham’s deeper historical record of resourcefulness and inventiveness. The joke is now on us: because Birmingham now looks fit to rank as Britain’s most cultured regional city.
Ever since the late 1980s when the legendary council leader Dick Knowles cottoned on to the idea that the arts offered a springboard for urban regeneration, Birmingham has been busily building itself a matchless set of venues and facilities, either new (Symphony Hall) or renovated (the Town Hall, the Hippodrome), and culminating in the creation of the astonishing Library of Birmingham – and whatever one thinks of the latter’s bizarre barbed-wire exterior, the interior is magnificent, a true cathedral of learning which has attracted over a million users since it opened last year... Keep reading on The Telegraph