Are we allowed to feel gutted about cuts to an orchestra when rates of child poverty in Birmingham are so high?
Council cuts are bringing wave after wave of worry for the average Brummie. As we all tussle to sort them into some kind of order, where does a blow to the arts sit on our hierarchy of grief?
Dear Patchers — welcome to your Wednesday briefing.
Have you felt bad about, well, feeling bad about the council axing the arts? In today’s story, Kirsty Bosley considers whether or not we are allowed to grieve funding cuts to culture when children’s services are also impacted. Is there a hierarchy of grief and if so, where does caring about culture sit within it?
In other news, we are delighted to let you know that donations to the University of Birmingham’s student paper Redbrick have surged — in large part thanks to Dispatch readers. When the team emailed us about its fundraiser on Monday afternoon, they had reached £600 of an initial £2,000 target. By yesterday afternoon that had shot up past £1900. Editor-in-Chief Alex Taylor said: “We are incredibly grateful for everyone’s generosity. It really has made the world of difference.” If you have the means, you can still contribute by clicking here.
Taylor told us that the paper could (and most definitely would) accept funding from the Guild of Students while maintaining editorial independence, but the Guild currently has other priorities it needs to support. This fundraiser is a short-term measure while Redbrick implements a plan to stay in print for years to come. I hope you feel as warm and fuzzy as I do right now.
Finally, below is your Brum in Brief followed by Kirsty’s story. If you’re a free subscriber, you’ll get a little preview but you will hit a paywall a few paragraphs down. This is because we need paying readers to be able to keep bringing you the quality reporting you deserve! To read Kirsty’s brilliant work and have access to all of our writing, you can subscribe for £8 a month by hitting the green button. Thanks for your support.
Until next week. Dan.
Brum in Brief
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👮Selly Park gunshots: A resident from Selly Park says his house has been shot at twice by an air rifle with drug dealers, addicts, and alcoholics intimidating locals. As reported by Birmingham Live, residents near the Pershore Rd suburb are concerned that the problems are getting worse and that the police response has been mixed. "I'm a bit frustrated, I know it's not a high calibre rifle, but it's still a firearm being shot at our property and police sort of saying there's nothing they can do,” one resident explained. Full story here.
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👵No last orders: Ann Wilson, or ‘Nanny Ann’ as she’s better known, celebrated 50 years behind the bar at the Journey’s End bar in Yardley giving speeches and presents to customers to mark the occasion. 82 years old, she started working pulling pints in 1974. She told the BBC she had no plans to retire adding finding her niche and sticking with it have been “the key to a happy life”.
👚Vintage Pop-Up: This coming Saturday bargain lovers, hipsters, and vintage clothes fanatics are invited to Secret Space in Digbeth to get their fill of boutique brands and premium clothing finds. Promising rare treats, Y2K hits and fashion selections from both sides of the Atlantic, entry is advertised as just £1 or £5 if you want to browse an hour before crowds arrive. Tickets and details.
🍷Vin Rouge and Van Gogh: For fans of drinking and painting (and especially the two together) there are a few remaining tickets for the Rose Villa Tavern’s Sunday sip and paint event. The theme is Van Gogh with the event price inclusive of all art supplies, guidance from an artist, and a creatively-themed playlist. If you want to go but don’t fancy your skills at the very least you could blame the outcome on the plonk. Details here.
Are we allowed to feel gutted about cuts to an orchestra when rates of child poverty in Birmingham are so high?
By Kirsty Bosley
On frigid nights in a back yard between Moor Street and Park Street, some 169 years before the train station north of the Bullring opened, workers would light fires in Birmingham’s very first theatre. They’d burn for two days to warm the space at Moor Street Theatre so that Brummies could come together to enjoy the arts in comfort.
The theatre, which opened in 1740, wasn’t licensed for dramatic performances, yet art found a way. The most well-off would hand over two shillings and sixpence — they were technically paying for the music at the interval, as the plays were free of charge. The very first show, Oratorio with Vocal and Instrumental Musick, sparked a love of orchestral music in this city that continued to smoulder, long after the Moor Street Theatre became a Methodist Chapel in 1764.
Birmingham wouldn’t get its own dedicated orchestra until 1920, when a campaign by Neville Chamberlain (then Lord Mayor of Birmingham), University of Birmingham music professor Granville Bantock, and Birmingham Post music critic Ernest Newman led to Birmingham City Council putting up £1,250 to found our first municipally-funded orchestra.
That collective of 70 musicians cemented the foundation of what is now the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), the first publicly-funded group of its kind in UK history. They’re the musicians that represent our city all over the world. The musicians who fly the flag for Brum with performances everywhere from New York City’s Carnegie Hall to Suntory Hall in Japan to our own Symphony Hall. The musicians who have just been told that after 104 years of support, their funding from Birmingham City Council funding will be cut — entirely.
It’s a brutal statistic to see on paper: 100% of the council’s investment in the cultural sector will be cut by 2025. Reading it felt like a kick in the gut. “We are devastated at what the recently announced Birmingham City Council cuts could mean for Birmingham and the impact that they would have on people’s daily lives across the city,” the CBSO said in a joint statement with other arts organisations in the city after it learned it would be losing £608,000 a year in funding — namely, 100% of their council funding.
But the council boot has landed on other excruciating targets, too. Adult social care cuts, libraries closing and council tax hikes at a time where people already have to choose between heating and eating. On and on.
So many blows all at once left me shuffling grief around on an internal scoreboard. Which things should we feel most and least sad about in the wake of all of this terrible news? Are we allowed to feel gutted about cuts to an orchestra when rates of child poverty in Birmingham are so high?
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