Mac, Birmingham

Last updated

MAC
MAC
Midlands Art Centre - Cannon Hill Park.jpg
Mac, Birmingham
Former namesMidlands Arts Centre
Location Cannon Hill Park, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England
Coordinates 52°27′10″N1°54′14″W / 52.4529°N 1.9039°W / 52.4529; -1.9039
TypeNon-profit arts centre
Genre(s)Art Exhibitions, Indie Cinema, Live Performances, Creative Courses, Restaurant and Bar
Construction
Opened1962;62 years ago (1962)
RenovatedMay 2010
Website
https://macbirmingham.co.uk/

MAC (stylized as mac) (formerly Midlands Arts Centre) is a non-profit arts centre situated in Cannon Hill Park, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England. It was established in 1962 and is registered as an educational charity which hosts art exhibitions, Indie Cinema, live performances and Creative Courses for all ages.

Contents

The centre re-opened in May 2010 after a £15m facelift. It has four performance auditoria, rehearsal and media studios, a cinema, café, bar and art gallery. With 1,028,371 visits in 2015, MAC is the 14th most-visited free attractions in England. [1]

History

Signage from the defunct HP Sauce factory in Aston, exhibited at the new mac in June 2010. HP Sauce sign at mac.jpg
Signage from the defunct HP Sauce factory in Aston, exhibited at the new mac in June 2010.

The idea for an arts centre in Cannon Hill Park was the result of a meeting between local residents: theatre writer and director John English, his wife, Mollie Randle, and local politician Frank Price in the late 1950s. [2] Eventually 8.6 acres (3.5 ha) of land in Cannon Hill Park was made available by Birmingham City Council in 1962 for this purpose. It also housed the Cannon Hill Puppet Theatre under John M. Blundall. The foundation stone for the new arts centre was laid on 19 June 1962 by six people representing those for whom the centre was intended. [3]

In 1965 director Mike Leigh went to work at the theatre and started experimenting with the idea that writing and rehearsing could potentially be part of the same process. Between 1972 and 1987 it was the home of the former Birmingham Youth Theatre, a company aimed at encouraging and nurturing talent amongst people aged 15 to 23 who were not involved with drama or theatre. This company was founded by local teacher Derek Nicholls, who later became Director of the mac. Adrian Lester and Andrew Tiernan began their careers there.

Other artists who performed here include Yoko Ono, Kate Malone, and Ewen Henderson; and renowned musicians and bands such as Ruby Turner, Ocean Colour Scene, UB40, and ELO played at MAC in the early stages of their career. Indian classical dancer Nahid Siddiqui taught Kathak classes here, and famous Bharatanatyam exponent Chitra Bolar started teaching at MAC in 1978. Their contributions established MAC as a centre for South Asian dance and performing arts. [4]

The centre closed from April 2008 to 1 May 2010 for a £14.8 million refurbishment.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walsall</span> Market town in West Midlands County, England

Walsall is a market town and administrative centre of the borough of the same name in the West Midlands, England. Historically part of Staffordshire, it is located 9 miles (14 km) north-west of Birmingham, 7 miles (11 km) east of Wolverhampton and 9 miles (14 km) from Lichfield.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Millennium Point, Birmingham</span> Mixed Use in Birmingham, England

Millennium Point is a multi-use meeting and conference venue, public building and charitable trust in Birmingham, England, situated in the developing Eastside of the city centre. The complex contains multiple event spaces, including a 354-seat auditorium, formerly Giant Screen IMAX cinema; Birmingham Science Museum, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire's School of Acting and Birmingham City University's Faculty of Computing, Engineering and The Built Environment, part of Birmingham Metropolitan College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Wolverhampton</span> University in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom

The University of Wolverhampton is a public university located on four campuses across the West Midlands, Shropshire and Staffordshire in England. The roots of the university lie in the Wolverhampton Tradesmen's and Mechanics' Institute founded in 1827 and the 19th-century growth of the Wolverhampton Free Library (1870), which developed technical, scientific, commercial and general classes. This merged in 1969 with the Municipal School of Art, originally founded in 1851, to form the Wolverhampton Polytechnic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warwick Arts Centre</span>

Warwick Arts Centre is a multi-venue arts complex at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. It attracts around 300,000 visitors a year to over 3,000 individual events embracing all types of theatre and performance, contemporary and classical music, dance, comedy, visual art, films, talks and family events. Warwick Arts Centre is the largest arts centre in the Midlands, and the largest venue of its kind in the UK outside the Barbican Centre in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Culture of Birmingham</span> Overview of culture of Birmingham

The culture of Birmingham is characterised by a deep-seated tradition of individualism and experimentation, and the unusually fragmented but innovative culture that results has been widely remarked upon by commentators. Writing in 1969, the New York-based urbanist Jane Jacobs cast Birmingham as one of the world's great examples of urban creativity: surveying its history from the 16th to the 20th centuries she described it as a "great, confused laboratory of ideas", noting how its chaotic structure as a "muddle of oddments" meant that it "grew through constant diversification". The historian G. M. Young – in a classic comparison later expanded upon by Asa Briggs – contrasted the "experimental, adventurous, diverse" culture of Birmingham with the "solid, uniform, pacific" culture of the outwardly similar city of Manchester. The American economist Edward Gleason wrote in 2011 that "cities, the dense agglomerations that dot the globe, have been engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian marketplace. The streets of Florence gave us the Renaissance and the streets of Birmingham gave us the Industrial Revolution", concluding: "wandering these cities ... is to study nothing less than human progress."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Hill Park</span> Arts centre, theatre and cinema in a former mansion in Bracknell, England

South Hill Park is a 24-acre (9.7 ha) English country house and its grounds, now run as an arts centre. It lies in the Birch Hill estate to the south of Bracknell town centre, in Berkshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motionhouse</span>

Motionhouse is a dance-circus company based in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. Founded in 1988, Motionhouse operates under the direction of Louise Richards and Kevin Finnan MBE and the company aims to create startling, passionate dance theatre that fuses images, action and dynamism to surprise, challenge and delight their audiences. Imagery, theatricality and immediate impact combine with modern, contemporary dance and a focus on accessibility. Motionhouse also draw on theatre, circus, acrobatics and film to create performance spectacle with meaningful and resonant content which speaks directly to people through imagery and physicality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leeds Playhouse</span> Theatre in Leeds, England

Leeds Playhouse is a theatre in the city centre of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It opened in 1990 in the Quarry Hill area of the city as the West Yorkshire Playhouse, successor to the original Leeds Playhouse, and was rebranded in June 2018 to revert to the title "Leeds Playhouse". It has two auditoria and a studio space, hosts a wide range of productions, and engages in outreach work in the local community.

This article is intended to show a timeline of events in the History of Birmingham, England, with a particular focus on the events, people or places that are covered in Wikipedia articles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birmingham</span> City in West Midlands, England

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in Britain – commonly referred to as the second city of the United Kingdom – with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper. Birmingham borders the Black Country to its west and, together with the city of Wolverhampton and towns including Dudley and Solihull, forms the West Midlands conurbation. The wider metropolitan area has a population of 4.3 million, making it the largest outside of London.

The culture of Plymouth is a social aspect of the unitary authority and city of Plymouth that is located in the south-west of England. Built in 1815, Union Street was at the heart of Plymouth's historical culture. It became known as the servicemen's playground, as it was where sailors from the Royal Navy would seek entertainment. During the 1930s, there were 30 pubs and it attracted such performers as Charlie Chaplin to the New Palace Theatre. It is now the late-night hub of Plymouth's entertainment strip, but has a reputation for trouble at closing hours.

The Midland Group was an organisation that presented new art in Nottingham and the East Midlands between 1943 and 1987.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birmingham Arts Lab</span> Arts centre in Birmingham, England

The Birmingham Arts Laboratory or Arts Lab was an experimental arts centre and artist collective based in Birmingham, England from 1968 to 1982 – an "arts and performance space dedicated to radical research into art and creativity". Loosely organised and biased towards the obscure and avant-garde, it was described by The Guardian in 1997 as "one of the emblematic institutions of the 1960s".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lincoln Performing Arts Centre</span> 446-seat multi-purpose auditorium

The Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (LPAC) is a 446-seat multi-purpose auditorium, designed for live arts performances, conferences, and film screenings, in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, and part of the University of Lincoln.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bournville Centre for Visual Arts</span> Former art school in Birmingham, England

The School of Art, Bournville was an art school in Birmingham, England. It was located at Ruskin Hall on Linden Road in the area of Bournville. It became part of Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD) at Birmingham City University when it merged with the university in 1988 when the latter was still Birmingham Polytechnic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birmingham Ormiston Academy</span> Academy in Birmingham, West Midlands, England

Birmingham Ormiston Academy (BOA) is a regional academy for digital, creative and performing arts located in the centre of Birmingham, West Midlands, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HOME (Manchester)</span> Art centre in Manchester, England

HOME is an arts centre, cinema and theatre complex in Manchester, England. With five cinemas, two theatres and 500 m2 (5,400 sq ft) of gallery space, it is one of the few arts organisations to commission, produce and present work across film, theatre and visual art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre in Birmingham</span>

Birmingham is an important centre for theatre in the United Kingdom. The earliest known performances in the city were medieval pageants and miracle plays. Birmingham's first permanent theatres and theatrical companies were founded in the 1740s, drawing both actors and performance styles from the fashionable theatres of London. During World War II, the Birmingham Blitz forced all performance venues in the city to close; most would stay closed throughout the war. The postwar introduction of television led to further theatre closures.

John English, OBE, MA, was a theatre director, actor, writer and entrepreneur in Birmingham, England, and the founder of the Highbury Theatre, the Midlands Arts Centre, as well as being one of the founding members of the Little Theatre Guild of Great Britain.

References

  1. "Annual Survey of Visits to Visitor Attractions: Latest results". VisitEngland - Tourism business research. British Tourist Authority. 2016. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  2. "Remember mac – 48 years of history". Archived from the original on 21 April 2013. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
  3. "Midland Arts Centre Foundation Stone Laid" . Coventry Evening Telegraph. England. 20 June 1962. Retrieved 3 June 2024 via British Newspaper Archive.
  4. "History". Midlands Arts Centre.