I have to be honest & admit that I did not like Birmingham when I first came here. It is a place which can seem grim, but it did not take me long to learn to appreciate it. Although Birmingham has a large contingent of over 50,000 students, with 3 major universities, 2 university colleges & 15 other colleges besides – it is easy to not think of it as a ‘University City’, but a Universal City. This is a city that truly embraces cultural diversity & pedestrianism. What many people completely miss is that behind the old and often derelict factories that pepper the edges of the city, Birmingham was the seat of the industrial revolution – with both the steam engine & the spinning mill invented around the area. Statues abound of Matthew Boulton, a Birmingham born manufacturer that worked with and invested in James Watt to dramatically improve the steam engine efficiency, which development was instrumental in propelling the Industrial Revolution.
One of the best traits of Birmingham is its central location. You perhaps find yourself the occasion to visit Birmingham due to an exhibition in the National Exhibition Centre, which hosts many major events including Crufts, National Graduate Recruitment Exhibition, BBC Good Food Show & the Clothes Show Live. Many major cities are reachable with a 2 hour journey on the train.
Birmingham is best summed up in the words of Bill Clinton, "I was astonished… when I saw how beautiful it was. The buildings, the art, the use of water, it is an extraordinary jewel of a city."
Personal Favourite
Certainly my favourite part of Birmingham is the network of canals. You would not expect this from a city as land-locked as Birmingham, but Birmingham has more canals than Venice. Once the main artery of the city’s industrial network, it is now a quaint relic that attracts joggers and ducks alike. Traversing Birmingham you seem to stumble in to and out of the interwoven canals in the strangest of places.
A good way to appreciate the beauty of them is to sit by the bars & restaurants in Brindleyplace or The Mailbox, a stone’s throw away from Broad Street – and simply enjoy the view with your meal. After a hearty meal you can start burning off the calories immediately by exploring the canal area. These sites are well sign-posted & there are maps all along the way to guide you to where you want to go. Harder, but not impossible is to find the canal boat tours (try Sherborne Wharf), which for a sum will bring you on a little cruise around the area. There are some boaters that operate parties & gatherings on the canal boats too! Brindleyplace is also home to the IKON Gallery, a compact contemporary gallery housed in an old neo-gothic school.
Music, Theatre, Entertainment & Culture
If you are a music lover, Birmingham is your heaven. It has been the birthplace for bands such as Duran Duran, UB40 & Electric Light Ochestra – so it comes as no surprise that there are a range of venues that cater for all sorts of different tastes – with the Symphony Hall & Town Hall often hosting not only classical symphonies & oldies, but have also been the platform on which more recent talent such as Michael Buble, Guillemots & Rufus Wainwright have performed. Incidentally if classical does rock your boat, the International Concert Season tickets are heavily discounted for students. The National Indoor Arena and the National Exhibition Centre both have brimming calendars of poptastic goodness, & Carling Academy catches the rest of the crowd with bands like Less Than Jake, Jason Mraz & The Fratellis. Smaller, more intimate venues are peppered throughout Birmingham, with Jools Holland’s Jam House tucked away in the otherwise quiet and tranquil corner St Paul’s Square, the Birmingham Conservatory showcasing new upcoming talents, & then there is The Yardbird, a jazz bar right next to the Central Library.
In terms of theatre the 4 main offerings are The Repertory Theatre (colloquially known as The REP), The Old REP (they are different!), Birmingham Hippodrome & the Alexandria Theatre. I would say The Old REP is smaller, more experimental & home-grown, The REP in the middle of the scale, whilst the Hippodrome is usually the venue for the touring productions. Alexandria Theatre more often hosts touring one-off performances.
Cinemas are also aplenty, with many of them offering good student discounts. My favourite has to be the MAC Centre in Cannon Hill Park, purely because of the eclectic & international range of films they showcase. This is followed closely by The Electric, a homely relic of a cinema to enjoy a film.
In fact, there are so many venues & events around that I can sit here counting them until the cows come home. The best thing you can do if you want to catch something is to pop in to the tourist information centre or Central Library to pick up the What’s On magazine, which does a complete listing of every event that is happening in and around Birmingham – whether it be films, exhibitions, comedy, theatre or gigs. You will be spoilt for choice!
Nightlife
Most of the clubs congregate around Broad Street, & the Chinese Quarter. Here again, you are spoilt for choice with clubs specialising in everything from retro disco to jazz, rock to garage, drum and bass to house – and everything in between. Not content with that? To supplement the clubs are the plentiful pubs and bars that operate alongside them.
Shopping
When people talk about shopping in Birmingham, they often point to the haphazard triangular area of High Street, New Street, & Corporation Street. Here you find the infamous BullRing shopping complex, not only one of the biggest, but also the busiest shopping centre in Britain. Between the streets and the shopping centre, they will cover almost every big name label & department store you can think of.
If like me you’re sick of seeing the same old shops offering the same old goods everywhere you go, some smaller, more unique shops can be found hidden away in the little passageways that lead off New Street. Don’t be fooled by Needless Alley’s seemingly bleak name and desolate entrance, a few good and interesting boutiques lie up that narrow lane. You can also venture further out to Colmore Row, where near Snow Hill Station’s entrance you will find Great Western Arcade. A lovingly preserved Victorian building, it houses a small but good selection of gift shops & boutiques. It is also a perfect home for Birmingham’s Mr. Simms Olde Sweet Shop – where you can find great British classic sweets such as Toffee, Pear Drops, Sherbet Blocks and Rhubarb & Custard.
Food
It is not just the range available that is wide and varying, food in Birmingham is also incredibly specialist. In most cities you will have to content with generic Chinese takeaways, in Birmingham alongside the everyday fare of sweet and sour chicken, you can find different distinctions of Chinese food – for example Sichuanese, or Cantonese. There are not just Japanese restaurants, but teppanyaki grills & sushi bars.
One cannot mention food in Birmingham without mentioning the Balti – a curry dish born and bred in Birmingham. The most traditional Balti Houses are found between Sparkhill & Moseley, but you will find this dish loitering around in most pub menus.
If you’re feeling like you need to celebrate an occasion by spending some money on good food, San Carlo is a well reputed Italian restaurant up Temple Street, another little alley leading off New Street. It is especially recommended should you be a seafood aficionado.
My favourite restaurant however, has got to be La Bastille, a petite, no-fuss French place near the law courts. The atmosphere is lovely, & though the waiters tend to be slightly inattentive, the food is simple & tasty. If you’re feeling the pinch of the credit crunch, ask for their student menu & enjoy a cheap 2 course meal for just £6.50.
Around & About
There is nowhere better to learn about the industrial history of Birmingham than the Black Country Living Museum. Tucked away in Dudley (roughly 10 miles from the city centre), it tries to bring the past to the present with more than just static exhibitions. Here you will get a chance to ride on a tramcar, see the coalmines & enjoy a silent film. Costumed performers demonstrate the old crafts of metal-working, glass cutting & sweet making & there is even a chance to experience school the old-fashioned way.
Arguably Birmingham’s best known resident today is JRR Tolkien. He grew up in the areas of Hall Green (previously known as Sarehole) & drew a lot of inspiration from his surroundings. The Black Country has been said to be the inspiration for Mordor, just as Sarehole Mill, a stone’s throw away from where Tolkien lived as a boy, was the inspiration for The Shire. Sarehole Mill today is a free museum that operates from the months of April to October.
Birmingham is also the birthplace of Cadbury’s Chocolate. To satisfy your chocolate cravings you can visit Cadbury World in Bourneville, to find out more of the history of Cadburys & the making of chocolate. My favourite exhibit is the very end, where they show a medley of advertisements from past to present.
Bored of the city? Why not visit a castle? Warwick is less than an hour away by train. It boasts a quaint little town centre, & a castle on a hill originally built by William the Conqueror. Here you can examine the backdrop in which the British aristocracy lived in & watch a falconer at work. Those with a fascination for the morbid will like to know that Warwick Castle has a few ghost stories to it’s name. Like all respectable castles, it houses a dungeon & an apparently haunted tower.
Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon is also nearby. There you can visit the numerous museums, gardens, & monuments dedicated to the life & work of The Bard. The most curious of this has to be Nash’s House, the plot in which once stood Shakespeare’s retirement home. It was demolished by its’ last owner due to his irritation with the constant stream of tourists. In it’s place is a garden instead. You can also pop in to watch the Royal Shakespeare Company’s perform their latest theatre reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s plays in their headquarters. Be warned though, that tickets are usually not easy to get at short notice. If you’re really desperate to see a particular production, you can either find some stamina to drag yourself to the early morning concessions queue, to get the limited number of concession tickets that go on sale on the day of performance for as cheap as £5. Otherwise you can try your luck with the returns queue that from my experience starts about 3 hours before show time. From Stratford, the picturesque Cotswolds villages are also close by.
Did you know? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) studied in Birmingham University as a medical student.
Published in the April 2009 edition of British Council's ClubUK Magazine
One of the best traits of Birmingham is its central location. You perhaps find yourself the occasion to visit Birmingham due to an exhibition in the National Exhibition Centre, which hosts many major events including Crufts, National Graduate Recruitment Exhibition, BBC Good Food Show & the Clothes Show Live. Many major cities are reachable with a 2 hour journey on the train.
Birmingham is best summed up in the words of Bill Clinton, "I was astonished… when I saw how beautiful it was. The buildings, the art, the use of water, it is an extraordinary jewel of a city."
Personal Favourite
Certainly my favourite part of Birmingham is the network of canals. You would not expect this from a city as land-locked as Birmingham, but Birmingham has more canals than Venice. Once the main artery of the city’s industrial network, it is now a quaint relic that attracts joggers and ducks alike. Traversing Birmingham you seem to stumble in to and out of the interwoven canals in the strangest of places.
A good way to appreciate the beauty of them is to sit by the bars & restaurants in Brindleyplace or The Mailbox, a stone’s throw away from Broad Street – and simply enjoy the view with your meal. After a hearty meal you can start burning off the calories immediately by exploring the canal area. These sites are well sign-posted & there are maps all along the way to guide you to where you want to go. Harder, but not impossible is to find the canal boat tours (try Sherborne Wharf), which for a sum will bring you on a little cruise around the area. There are some boaters that operate parties & gatherings on the canal boats too! Brindleyplace is also home to the IKON Gallery, a compact contemporary gallery housed in an old neo-gothic school.
Music, Theatre, Entertainment & Culture
If you are a music lover, Birmingham is your heaven. It has been the birthplace for bands such as Duran Duran, UB40 & Electric Light Ochestra – so it comes as no surprise that there are a range of venues that cater for all sorts of different tastes – with the Symphony Hall & Town Hall often hosting not only classical symphonies & oldies, but have also been the platform on which more recent talent such as Michael Buble, Guillemots & Rufus Wainwright have performed. Incidentally if classical does rock your boat, the International Concert Season tickets are heavily discounted for students. The National Indoor Arena and the National Exhibition Centre both have brimming calendars of poptastic goodness, & Carling Academy catches the rest of the crowd with bands like Less Than Jake, Jason Mraz & The Fratellis. Smaller, more intimate venues are peppered throughout Birmingham, with Jools Holland’s Jam House tucked away in the otherwise quiet and tranquil corner St Paul’s Square, the Birmingham Conservatory showcasing new upcoming talents, & then there is The Yardbird, a jazz bar right next to the Central Library.
In terms of theatre the 4 main offerings are The Repertory Theatre (colloquially known as The REP), The Old REP (they are different!), Birmingham Hippodrome & the Alexandria Theatre. I would say The Old REP is smaller, more experimental & home-grown, The REP in the middle of the scale, whilst the Hippodrome is usually the venue for the touring productions. Alexandria Theatre more often hosts touring one-off performances.
Cinemas are also aplenty, with many of them offering good student discounts. My favourite has to be the MAC Centre in Cannon Hill Park, purely because of the eclectic & international range of films they showcase. This is followed closely by The Electric, a homely relic of a cinema to enjoy a film.
In fact, there are so many venues & events around that I can sit here counting them until the cows come home. The best thing you can do if you want to catch something is to pop in to the tourist information centre or Central Library to pick up the What’s On magazine, which does a complete listing of every event that is happening in and around Birmingham – whether it be films, exhibitions, comedy, theatre or gigs. You will be spoilt for choice!
Nightlife
Most of the clubs congregate around Broad Street, & the Chinese Quarter. Here again, you are spoilt for choice with clubs specialising in everything from retro disco to jazz, rock to garage, drum and bass to house – and everything in between. Not content with that? To supplement the clubs are the plentiful pubs and bars that operate alongside them.
Shopping
When people talk about shopping in Birmingham, they often point to the haphazard triangular area of High Street, New Street, & Corporation Street. Here you find the infamous BullRing shopping complex, not only one of the biggest, but also the busiest shopping centre in Britain. Between the streets and the shopping centre, they will cover almost every big name label & department store you can think of.
If like me you’re sick of seeing the same old shops offering the same old goods everywhere you go, some smaller, more unique shops can be found hidden away in the little passageways that lead off New Street. Don’t be fooled by Needless Alley’s seemingly bleak name and desolate entrance, a few good and interesting boutiques lie up that narrow lane. You can also venture further out to Colmore Row, where near Snow Hill Station’s entrance you will find Great Western Arcade. A lovingly preserved Victorian building, it houses a small but good selection of gift shops & boutiques. It is also a perfect home for Birmingham’s Mr. Simms Olde Sweet Shop – where you can find great British classic sweets such as Toffee, Pear Drops, Sherbet Blocks and Rhubarb & Custard.
Food
It is not just the range available that is wide and varying, food in Birmingham is also incredibly specialist. In most cities you will have to content with generic Chinese takeaways, in Birmingham alongside the everyday fare of sweet and sour chicken, you can find different distinctions of Chinese food – for example Sichuanese, or Cantonese. There are not just Japanese restaurants, but teppanyaki grills & sushi bars.
One cannot mention food in Birmingham without mentioning the Balti – a curry dish born and bred in Birmingham. The most traditional Balti Houses are found between Sparkhill & Moseley, but you will find this dish loitering around in most pub menus.
If you’re feeling like you need to celebrate an occasion by spending some money on good food, San Carlo is a well reputed Italian restaurant up Temple Street, another little alley leading off New Street. It is especially recommended should you be a seafood aficionado.
My favourite restaurant however, has got to be La Bastille, a petite, no-fuss French place near the law courts. The atmosphere is lovely, & though the waiters tend to be slightly inattentive, the food is simple & tasty. If you’re feeling the pinch of the credit crunch, ask for their student menu & enjoy a cheap 2 course meal for just £6.50.
Around & About
There is nowhere better to learn about the industrial history of Birmingham than the Black Country Living Museum. Tucked away in Dudley (roughly 10 miles from the city centre), it tries to bring the past to the present with more than just static exhibitions. Here you will get a chance to ride on a tramcar, see the coalmines & enjoy a silent film. Costumed performers demonstrate the old crafts of metal-working, glass cutting & sweet making & there is even a chance to experience school the old-fashioned way.
Arguably Birmingham’s best known resident today is JRR Tolkien. He grew up in the areas of Hall Green (previously known as Sarehole) & drew a lot of inspiration from his surroundings. The Black Country has been said to be the inspiration for Mordor, just as Sarehole Mill, a stone’s throw away from where Tolkien lived as a boy, was the inspiration for The Shire. Sarehole Mill today is a free museum that operates from the months of April to October.
Birmingham is also the birthplace of Cadbury’s Chocolate. To satisfy your chocolate cravings you can visit Cadbury World in Bourneville, to find out more of the history of Cadburys & the making of chocolate. My favourite exhibit is the very end, where they show a medley of advertisements from past to present.
Bored of the city? Why not visit a castle? Warwick is less than an hour away by train. It boasts a quaint little town centre, & a castle on a hill originally built by William the Conqueror. Here you can examine the backdrop in which the British aristocracy lived in & watch a falconer at work. Those with a fascination for the morbid will like to know that Warwick Castle has a few ghost stories to it’s name. Like all respectable castles, it houses a dungeon & an apparently haunted tower.
Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon is also nearby. There you can visit the numerous museums, gardens, & monuments dedicated to the life & work of The Bard. The most curious of this has to be Nash’s House, the plot in which once stood Shakespeare’s retirement home. It was demolished by its’ last owner due to his irritation with the constant stream of tourists. In it’s place is a garden instead. You can also pop in to watch the Royal Shakespeare Company’s perform their latest theatre reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s plays in their headquarters. Be warned though, that tickets are usually not easy to get at short notice. If you’re really desperate to see a particular production, you can either find some stamina to drag yourself to the early morning concessions queue, to get the limited number of concession tickets that go on sale on the day of performance for as cheap as £5. Otherwise you can try your luck with the returns queue that from my experience starts about 3 hours before show time. From Stratford, the picturesque Cotswolds villages are also close by.
Did you know? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) studied in Birmingham University as a medical student.
Published in the April 2009 edition of British Council's ClubUK Magazine