The Custard Factory is a creative and digital business workspace complex, including independent shops, cafes and bars, on the site of what was the Bird's Custard factory off High Street, Deritend, in the Digbeth area of central Birmingham, England.
Digbeth is an area of central Birmingham, England. Following the destruction of the Inner Ring Road, Digbeth is now considered a district within Birmingham City Centre. As part of the Big City Plan, Digbeth is undergoing a large redevelopment scheme that will regenerate the old industrial buildings into apartments, retail premises, offices and arts facilities. The district is considered to be Birmingham's "Creative Quarter".
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."
The Manchester Academy, originally known as the University of Manchester Main Hall, is composed of four concert venues, located on the campus of the University of Manchester, in Manchester, England. The four venues are: Academy 1, 2 and 3 and Club Academy. Utilised by the Students' Union, the venues are housed in two buildings, the original Students' Union built in 1957 and the academy, built in 1990. In 2004, after the merging of the universities, the venues carried the "Academy" moniker. Unlike other music venues named "Academy" in the UK, Manchester Academy is not owned or managed by the Academy Music Group.
Godskitchen is an international superclub brand which is associated with dance music and organises events, particularly in the UK and US. The company used to run a club night of the same name at their nightclub AIR, in Birmingham. Godskitchen has an in-house music label. This label annually releases compilation albums, in addition to supporting new artists whom they believe bring something new to the genre.
The Fly was a free music magazine owned by MAMA & Company, published monthly in the United Kingdom.
The Barfly was a chain of live music venues in the United Kingdom originally started by Nick Moore, Jeremy Ledlin and Be Rozzo on Valentine's Day 1997. Club nights and events tended to feature rock, alternative and independent music.
NX Newcastle, formerly known as the Carling Academy and the O2 Academy Newcastle, is a music venue in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It opened in the former Majestic Ballroom building on 14 October 2005 as the Carling Academy, and was renamed the O2 Academy for sponsorship reasons in 2008. The venue was managed by Academy Music Group until early 2022, when Electric Group took over the operation of the site. Following a complete refurbishment, it reopened as NX Newcastle in September 2022.
AIR is a 2,000 capacity superclub located in Digbeth, Birmingham in England. AIR started as a spray shop for buses, when in 2000 the building was bought by Godskitchen and converted into a club, originally named CODE. In June 2003, CODE closed for a complete refit and reopened in late September 2003 under the new name of AIR. Improvements included an extra room of music being added to the two already in use. Along with the club's name change, the 3 spaces inside were named the Oxygen Arena, the Nitrogen Room and the Carbon Lounge. The club features state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems. In 2002, Fergie said "It is one of the best [sound] systems I've ever played on, throughout the whole world".
The O2 Academy Bristol is a music venue located on Frogmore Street in Bristol, England. It is run by the Academy Music Group. On 1 January 2009 sponsorship was taken over from Carling by telecommunications company O2 and the venue's name changed from the Carling Academy to the O2 Academy. The academy which hosts club nights and gigs was opened in 2001, and was the third Academy venue in the UK.
The O2 Ritz (originally known as The Ritz) is a live music venue on Whitworth Street West in Manchester, England. The venue is notable for its sprung dance floor and has a capacity of 1,500.
Fastlane were an English rock band that emerged from the Surrey rock scene in 1997.
The O2 is a large entertainment district on the Greenwich peninsula in South East London, England, including an indoor arena, a music club, a Cineworld cinema, an exhibition space, piazzas, bars, restaurants, and a guided tour to the top of the O2. It was built largely within the former Millennium Dome, a large dome-shaped canopy built to house an exhibition celebrating the turn of the third millennium; consequently The Dome remains a name in common usage for the venue. It is sometimes referred to as The O2 Arena, but that name properly refers to the indoor arena within The O2. Naming rights to the district were purchased by the mobile telephone provider O2 from its developers, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), during the development of the district. AEG owns the long-term lease on the O2 Arena and surrounding leisure space.
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.
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 royal town of Sutton Coldfield is incorporated within the city limits to the northeast. The wider metropolitan area has a population of 4.3 million, making it the largest outside of London.
MAMA Festivals is a live music and entertainment company which owns and operates a number of live music venues and festivals in the United Kingdom. Founded in 2005, it has acquired many other venue-holding companies, expanding its reach significantly across England.
TheTrinity Church or Trinity Congregational Church designed by Benjamin Mountfort, later called the State Trinity Centre, is a Category I heritage building listed with Heritage New Zealand. Damaged in the 2010 Canterbury earthquake and red-stickered after the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, the building was threatened with demolition like most other central city heritage buildings. In June 2012, it was announced that the building would be saved, repaired and earthquake strengthened. The building, post its church status, has housed some commercial operations, including the State Trinity Centre; 'The Octagon' (2006–2010); and later, following earthquake repairs, a business called 'The Church Brew Pub' (2023–present).
Passport: Back To The Bars/Passport: To BRITs Week is a charity fundraising project featuring internationally famous music artists performing intimate shows in small venues in the UK. It was originally conceived and created by music executive Stephen Budd and featured 20 shows across 6 venues around the UK in a week in March 2004. These shows generated significant sums of money for two UK registered charities War Child and Shelter.
