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Creating a Creative Birmingham

Birmingham is the beating heart of creativity in the Midlands and England, our history and our heritage spans literature, art, music, performance and film and our present creativity is cutting edge, inspiring, and bold.​

​Home to a thousand trades, including many creative trades from artisan jeweller to freelance performer, the creative sector is fundamental to our economy and the livelihoods of many households across the city.

​As a city, we aspire to be bolder in creating a better future; Birmingham City Council, along with partners is setting out to refresh our strategic approach to creativity in the city, starting with the Big Creative Birmingham Conversation to help shape our vision and ambition that will underpin a new creative strategy.

What was the Big Creative Birmingham Conversation?

This was a month of conversations and engagement with citizens and communities about what creativity means to them and our city.​

Across the month, conversations were held face to face and on-line using different types of engagement events that helped provide different perspectives on the direction of creativity in our city.

The aim if the conversations was to inform the development of a new statement of intent for creativity in Birmingham that will set out the vision and ambition for the city as it starts work on a new creative strategy for the next decade.

The ideas gathered from this engagement and the statement of intent can be found in the documents below. The first document is a synthesis of the evidence given to us by our citizens, gathered from all of the various engagement events. It is divided in themes and engagement types. The second document is a summary of the highlights of the work, and it contains the statement of intent that will guide the next strategy.

The next steps

Just because the initial series of engagement events have finished does not mean that the work has finished. We are currently running a Seldom Heard Voices engagement, in which we specifically work with less vocal groups to gather their ideas and opinions. Furthermore, we have community researchers working alongside us to gather ideas from people in different areas of the city, so if you see them, do stop and let them know your thoughts!

Contact us

If you would like to get in touch with the team, contact us by email via bigcreativebirmingham@birmingham.gov.uk


Page last updated: 14 November 2022

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