Digbeth is often called Birmingham’s Creative Quarter. It’s home to The Bond, the £18m media hub where Joe Lycett’s chat show is filmed. It will soon be the new HQ for BBC West Midlands. And for many residents, the area will be strongly associated with The Custard Factory, the complex of offices, independent shops, restaurants, and bars that sits next to The Old Crown pub.
As a teenager, the Custard Factory seemed to me and my friends like a beacon of cool — a mecca where creative people gathered to make art, sell second-hand clothes, and throw parties. I had my first ever night out there at an underage party at the Medicine Bar. My older sister did her work experience at the vintage clothes shop Urban Village, an assignment that seemed to consist mostly of sitting outside on a Vespa smoking weed. This was the early noughties and the Custard Factory had retained a laid-back approach.
Today, things are a little more professional. There is a swish reception on the ground floor lined with solid wooden desks and tall potted plants. Large yellow letters stretch across its window, spelling DIGBETH in block script like a stamp. The area is brighter, more recently painted and polished.
It also feels a little uninhabited. The place hasn’t yet turned into a bland, homogenous zone filled with chain shops, like London’s Spitalfields Market. But it’s lacking a certain energy, that once made it interesting and exciting, since it was bought up by the London-based investment and asset management company Oval in 2017. As one former tenant put it: “The whole place seems to have lost a lot of vibrancy.”
