Chimney renovation became Birmingham’s staple industry in eighties, supporting over 150,000 jobs in the city, either in direct employment or related services.

Chimney project, April 1979

Started in 1978, initially a council backed job creation scheme designed to combat the horrific unemployment figures of the time. The industry consisted of the careful dismantling and reconstruction in adjacent council wards of redundant factory chimneys. As a way of teaching new skills to the jobless it was deemed revolutionary. The scheme caught the eye of the Thatcher Government who were looking to test a radical new policy, privatisation.

In 1980 the government seized all of Birmingham’s chimneys and sold them in a blaze of publicity, the classic slogan ‘If you see a chimney, sell it!’ became marketing legend. The public went chimney crazy and a multi billion pound industry was born, existing Chimneys across the city went up in value by over 700%. Soon every town and city wanted a chimney trade and Birmingham, being the birthplace of the industry was well placed to capitalise on this. It exported thousands of them around the UK. Professional services boomed in the frenzy with accountants, lawyers and consultants benefiting greatly, in fact ‘Chimney Studies’ became the most popular degree course at many universities for several years.

Sadly all good things come to an end and in 1987, the now unsustainable chimney bubble collapsed, later known as Black Monday. Chimneys became worthless overnight and the country slid into a protracted recession. Cash rich Arab investors snapped up the chimneys and for many years chimney stacks could be found dotted across the Arabian Peninsula. The chimney market has recently been reinvigorated as they are prized commodities in the emerging economies of India and China.

The last surviving chimney in Birmingham was recently sold to the city of Chengdu in China for 2 million pounds sterling and is currently being erected in the city’s main square as testament to its new found wealth and prowess.

I started to wonder why Birmingham people, above all others were directed where and when to cross the road. Pavements are lined with barriers, with pedestrians herded through elaborate chicane like crossings. It is estimated that the average Birmingham citizen spends a whole three years of their life trying to simply cross the road at the designated crossing points when in comparable cities they spent only 2 months.

ground zero

After some investigation a sinister Nazi plot was found to be the root cause of the city’s obsession with pedestrian protection….

During World War II, Birmingham became a principle target for Nazi bombing raids due to its prolific wartime industrial output. During one such raid a new, secret chemical weapon was dropped on the city. The experimental ‘doomsday’ bomb was released over the city, an odourless gas was inhaled by an estimated 80% of the population. The Nazi’s were confused as to why the gas had no immediate effect, the intention being a protracted, painful death for over 90% of the infected population. It was deemed a failure and the formula was lost at the end of the war, but details of the attack were gained from former Nazi scientists working for western governments.

A generation later the effects of the gas did began to show in the population, all the children born in Birmingham after parental exposure were, to put it bluntly, stupid. During the great road building boom of the 50s and 60s up to 50% of Birmingham’s population were killed in road traffic accidents.

Desperate to mitigate the loss of population a high level, top secret plan was formulated by an innocuous sounding but powerful department of the council, The Highways Commission. Working in conjunction with central government educational standards were drastically reduced to cover up the truth, with many teachers ‘disappeared’ and teenage girls brainwashed into believing that having as many children as possible was the only useful contribution they could make to society. By the mid 1970s with the highest teenage pregnancy, and incidentally syphilis, rates in Europe, the city’s population had recovered and average intelligence levels had started to return to the grandchildren of those exposed to the gas. Unfortunately many were still too stupid to cross the road and large barriers were erected along any road deemed dangerous coupled with a labyrinth network of subways developed to separate pedestrians from cars, by now a whole industry had developed aimed at protecting the city’s ’stupid’ inhabitants. Led by the now intensely secretive and over powerful Highways & Public Safety Directorate.

Even though intelligence levels had returned to pre 1944 levels by about 1982 due to the effects of the gas wearing off after only one or two generations, the city has continued to place protective restrictions on pedestrians, outwardly claiming the measures are there to protect the citizen. Its believed that the all powerful Highways & Public Safety Directorate is a major power broker within the city’s political structure and stolen documents hint at a secret lab in the city attempting to recreate the formula of the gas for commercial and military purposes.

Shimmering Mirage

Rambling through Digbeth’s warren of dark, decaying streets occasionally you might be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of this shimmering enclave, where the mythical ‘Artists’ are said to appear. The Emerald Factory.

A fortified factory, protected on all sides, to our eyes it may seem like another run down factory where custard was once manufactured, but sometimes as daylight recedes it becomes a glowing beacon in the utilitarian landscape that surrounds it. Wondering its dim corridors you might be drawn by singing and laughter and see ‘artists’ engaged in fevered acts of creation. These beautiful creatures are not bound by the confines of our world and many that have seen them cannot comprehend the visions they are presented with, some even go insane after encountering them, unable to adjust to the true greyness of their reality once the revelation fades.

Unfortunately most people will never see these ephemeral figures and their existence is strenuously denied by city officials. For most it is just another run down factory where custard was once manufactured.

Towards Five Ways

A memorable image of a skyline can define a city, or sometimes a memorable skyline can do the same.

Birmingham’s subways were once a ubiquitous feature of the urban landscape, now only a few remain as testament to its last great makeover in the mid 20th century – Victorian industrial slum to modern motropolis. Surviving only on the fringes of the ‘new’ city centre, they exist as permanent outcasts. The latest unfashionable past that must be swept away.

Gosta Green, under the Aston Expressway

Once a part of daily city life, like a giant assault course of steps, ramps, slopes and tunnels entwined with and encased beneath the super highways which ringed and dissected the city.

The epicenter and ultimate expression of Birmingham’s subway culture was the Bullring Shopping Centre, 20 acres of commerce entombed in a bomb proof concrete bunker criss crossed by flyovers and ring roads with the pedestrian relegated to the very bottom ring of its particular hell.

A balance existed between the everyday and the subversive within the system. In the day well lit spaces lined with kiosks, cafes and thronged with buskers, beggars and businessmen were the transient, subterranean artery’s of the city….but at night when the city emptied they took on a darker tone and became an anti utopian playground. These isolated and secret spaces were utilised by groups on the very margins of society, acting out lives deemed unacceptable or inappropriate by the everyday. Needles, graffiti, used condoms and the stench of piss were initially removed each morning ready for the day shifts arrival but are now the very essence of the surviving subways.

Marching relentlessly ‘forward’, desperate to be remade, remodelled and reshaped, so much of the city stands in slow decay. Somewhere between the current planners dreams and architects visions the past labors of this industrial leviathan lie silent.

Through these spaces we discover a city ill at ease with its past unsure of its future, informing us of a possible fate awaiting todays shining examples of urban regeneration.

An alternative view of Birmingham’s recent social, economic and cultural history.