Simon Jones: Birmingham given admiration from near and far

Sep 5 2008 By Simon Jones

Last weekend a friend of mine who I had not seen in a couple of years came down from Manchester to attend the Moseley Folk Festival.

Having been born and growing up in Moseley the event was somewhat of a corridor of familiar faces for her and I am convinced she spent the first half of Saturday saying “God it’s been ages, how are you doing?” over and over again. I am also pretty certain that she spent her remaining time telling me how much she was glad to be back and how much she missed Birmingham.

A sincere and heartening comment coming from someone who moved away some years ago and has made a very successful life for themselves in another major UK city.

Its true, civic pride is not a prevalent force in the majority of most English psyches.

However, Brummies can unfortunately too often be the trendsetters in self depreciation and it’s a nasty habit that’s hindering us celebrating our achievements in the way we should, and indeed have every right to.

The more people we can get to take notice of what we are getting up to in this city then the more chance we have to get the necessary recognition of both our national and international neighbours.

And why do we want such widespread public attention? In 2007 31.9 million visitors came to this city spending a total of £4.4 billion, do you see where I’m going with this?

Perhaps it’s born from an apathy that you get when you live somewhere for a while but the continued achievements of Birmingham have gone unnoticed, or at least under-appreciated, for far too long now. We have a major international airport catering for over 9 million passengers from all over the world every year, a superb rail system that is about to get the £598million face lift it so rightfully deserves, a vibrant creative industry that brings in nearly 10 per cent of the city’s overall economic revenue and lets not forget, more people living in any one single UK city outside of London.

Birmingham is a very different place from Prince Charles’s “monstrous concrete maze, where only the cars can find their way” and its time that we all stood a little taller and shouted a little louder to remind people of that fact.

One of the easiest ways to quite literally make a big song and dance about this city is in the festivals and large scale events in our yearly calendar. These vehicles can motivate the general public, getting everyone together in combined celebration, and can give us a prominent platform from which to show the rest of the world why we are the heart of the country not only in location.

Gigbeth 2008 is coming in early November and is taking over 10 venues in Digbeth with a big outdoor stage at Millennium Point. Organisers have secured a line up of headliners that is extremely commercially competitive and should get the entire city talking about it in one shape or another.

It is events like this, and the other projects that are designed to give something to the city as a whole, that if supported will give us a strong enough collective voice to get the name Birmingham heard much further and much wider.

It cannot be left to the politicians alone to champion our home turf and we all need to get on the bandwagon and become ambassadors spreading the good word on a personal level.

So let’s look at what we have coming up in the diary that could make you feel as proud of being a Brummie as everyone was in Moseley last weekend. Who knows, you might just enjoy yourself in the process.

* Simon Jones is creative director for Custard Factory Spaces.