Created In Birmingham pops up in the Bullring
A pop-up shop for artists in Birmingham has opened in the Bullring. Alison Jones takes a look.
We had somebody walk in and say ‘It is just like walking into a blog’,” reveals Chris Unitt, online champion of Birmingham’s creative and artistic community – and temporary shopkeeper.
The customer’s response shows that Chris and his team have achieved their ambition in making the Created in Birmingham (CiB) shop in the city’s Bullring “the physical manifestation of the website”.
That award-winning Created in Birmingham online platform was started back in 2006, by Pete Ashton, as a way of both celebrating and publicising the activities of the city’s creative community – its artists, entertainers, writers and designer-makers.
Chris, one of the leading lights in blogging/social media in Birmingham and MD of digital agency Meshed Media in Fazeley Studios, first edited CiB in 2008 and then returned to the job last October, determined to put things on a more commercial basis.
Meshed Media had been working with Bullring on its Life Feel Better campaign, its feel-good arts and events project which is running throughout the year.
“They were talking to me about what was going on in arts and culture and I floated the idea of a pop-up shop for independent artists and they offered me a shop unit.”
The vacant unit, roughly opposite the Apple store, was offered rent and rates free. It meant the people CiB had been championing could come out their workshops and spare rooms and instead of selling their wares at festivals or online would have the opportunity to do it in Birmingham’s retail mecca.
The offer was made at the beginning of February and CiB set itself a target of having the shop “popped up” and running within three weeks,
A call was put out through the website for people to bring in their work. Others, like Smile, the Birmingham-based design and branding agency which make visually arresting prints and street signs and whose rise Chris had been following over the past couple of years, were approached directly.
The shelves were stocked and the walls filled in what he describes a “fairly organic” process.
“We have been responding to what people have been bringing in rather than sourcing and we have been impressed with the quality, considering it was an open call. The standard has been fantastic.
“The ones I have been most pleased with are the ones I’ve never heard of. We have been writing about the creative interest sector (in CiB) for more than three years and it just goes to show that there are so many people in this city creating stuff to a really good standard that we have never come across.
“We also get a lot of students coming in who are just getting their careers started and who wouldn’t normally have an outlet.”
The result has been an eclectic mix of jewellery, prints and posters, photography, badges, zines, handmade cards and some clothes.
