The Free State of Digbeth

Digbeth is an area of Birmingham – the UK’s second largest city – that has a long history, fuzzy boundaries and a satisfyingly anarchic spirit of independence.

Things happen here. Things like the Digbeth O’Lympics which are taking place today at pubs around the area, which is also known as Birmingham’s Irish Quarter.

 

There’s no big corporate sponsor behind it and not a hint, thankfully, of the dead hand and deader brain of Birmingham City Council support. No, this is simply a series of frankly bizarre events that have been dreamed up and put together by a bunch of local people who like to have a good time. Cardboard coracle races, anyone? Goldfish racing? Custard-filled wellie dash?

Mostly devised on the back of beermats, the games are unique in that – as far as I’m aware – they’re one of the few big ideas dreamed up late at night in a pub that have actually got off the ground.

The Old Crown, Digbeth

Digbeth is the site of the village of  the Anglo-Saxon Beorma tribe. Known either as Beorma’s ham  or Beorma inga’s ham (“the homestead of the tribe or people of Beorma”), this was the seed from which the modern city grew.

Despite its ancient history, there’s precious little still standing from before the Victoria era apart from The Old Crown pub – originally a 14th century manor house. But those Victorian buildings are important, because they were the factories and workshops that provided the engine behind Birmingham’s growth as a major city, becoming the industrial heart of the UK.

The people who built those factories had much the same spirit of enterprise and independence of spirit shown by the modern citizens of what some like to call “the free state of Digbeth”

If you want to know what makes a city great, you have to search out places such as Digbeth. It is in these places that you’ll find the most original ideas, interesting art, the free thinkers and the dangerous minds.

You know, the sort of people who planners and bureaucrats hate because they refuse to mould themselves meekly into the meticulously sanitised and nondescript schemes of braindead city planners.

There are already plans afoot to tear down Digbeth and replace it with the sort of uniform, off-the-shelf ‘mixed use development’ that kills individuality and creativity. Just take a look at the dreadfully drab and uninspired ideas for the Beorma Quarter development.

I can’t see the O’Lympics sitting too well with the ambitions of corporate monoliths, numbskull planners and tinpot councillors who – ultimately – will do anything to crush anything they can’t control. But I can see the residents of Digbeth – the descendants of Beorma and all the other enterprising spirits who have lived onthe banks of the River Rea – giving the forces of blandness a very good run for their money.

If you want to know more check out these links:

Digbeth is Good Nicky Getgood’s round-up of what’s happening in the area.

Keep Digbeth Vibrant Rallying cry against the blandification of Digbeth. Particularly worth looking at the battle between the traditional pubs of the area and Council Environmental Health Officers who are seeking to impose Noise Abatement Orders – on the strength of one complaint from a resident who, so I’m told, has since moved away.

My Digbeth A general site about Digbeth which seems to major on the Residents’ Association.