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) northwest of Birmingham, 7 miles (11 km) east of Wolverhampton and 9 miles (14 km) southwest of Lichfield.
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.
The University of Wolverhampton is a public university in Wolverhampton, England, located on four campuses across the West Midlands, Shropshire and Staffordshire. Originally founded in 1827 as the Wolverhampton Tradesmen's and Mechanics' Institute, the university was subject to a series of merges, incorporations, and expansions with other local colleges, one of which occurred under the supervision of Prince George, Duke of Kent.
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.
Cannon Hill Park is a park located in south Birmingham, England. It is the most popular park in the city, covering 250 acres (101 ha) consisting of formal, conservation, woodland and sports areas. Recreational activities at the park include boating, fishing, bowls, tennis, putting and picnic areas.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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".
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.
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.
Birmingham Ormiston Academy (BOA) is a regional academy for digital, creative and performing arts located in the centre of Birmingham, West Midlands, 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.
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.
