Have you got Big Brum Love?
The Big Brum Love tour will do what it says on the tin: a massive celebration of love for all things taking place in the city centre from 1pm on Saturday March 31st.
Teach me about Erdington
‘I grew up in the New Forest, and I’ve absorbed something of the stories of the kings, the ghostly nurses and the World War bombs. However, the Still Walking festival has brought home to me how little I know about the city and culture of Birmingham – even though I have lived and worked here for […counts on fingers…] 15 years now.’
The Art of Walking
Hamish Fulton sees his lengthy marches across the world as being his art form. He doesn’t alter the landscape in anyway way, or leave anything behind. The art is the walk itself.
Look Around You
One thing we rarely do when we’re in the city is stand still and look at it—unless you are smoking in a doorway or waiting for a bus. Why would we? We’re trying to get somewhere. And if we are on the move, we are traffic and have to keep an eye on the road, not the horizon.
Birmingham’s Surprising Vistas
Does Birmingham-as-elsewhere only happen at sunset? Does it require a little red-sky magic to make it happen?
Birmingham Graphic DNA: Digbeth Found Fonts
Still Walking isn’t afraid to visit the grittier side of town if there’s something interesting to be found there.
Still Walking in Time Out
‘Critics are quick to dismiss Birmingham as an architecturally unrewarding place to visit. It’s true that it has been built up, replanned and torn down more than almost any other place of comparable size in the country, but its compact centre, 2,000 listed buildings and the sheer ceaselessness of its regeneration make it an exciting place to walk.’
Time Out
Getting in the Saddle for Radial Truths
Radial Truths will be a three-hour cycling tour exploring what’s left of Birmingham’s cycling industry, and in many cases, that’s an archeological exploration.
Testing Testing
I assembled a small group of people to give the tour some volume, amongst them James Kennedy (who will be blogging about the festival) and Euan Ferguson—up from London to cover the Birmingham tourist experience for Time Out. We set off into a wintery Birmingham to be shown Mark’s discoveries.
Still Walking: the genesis
I joined Kira O’Reilly’s Silent Walk – a performance piece in which a group are led in silence into the streets and allowed to find their own direction and leader. Both direction and leader constantly alter over the course of an hour. My usual role is tour guide, but here I held back to watch what was happening. The tour faltered twice – once to watch water bubbling through the pavement (a broken water main). No one seemed to want to leave. The second was outside the police station on Digbeth High Street… interesting.