Meeting Birmingham Not Just Where It’s At, But Where It Can Be
In this guest blog, Dr Cara Courage, Culture, Communities & Place Consultant-Director, reflects on placemaking through the Future City Plan Makers Bootcamp and Conference.
The two-day placemaking event I had the honour to co-curate with Culture Central marked a critical juncture in Birmingham’s journey towards embedding creativity in urban transformation. Held against the backdrop of a city with a rich tapestry of diverse communities, and civic, public and community spaces, the Future City Plan Makers Bootcamp and Conference brought together city and UK-wide artists, urban planners, councillors, thought-leaders representatives, and community advocates to explore actionable pathways for transformative placemaking in Birmingham.
These events underscored a central premise: placemaking is a collaborative endeavour that demands an inclusive, place-based approach, integrating creative principles with community realities. More importantly, they challenged us to think not only about where Birmingham is now, but about where it can be—envisioning a city that really turns the dial on its heritage and contemporary context of innovation, diversity, and cultural dynamism.
Provocations for Progress: Designing a Forward-Thinking City
The Plan Makers Bootcamp catalysed a series of provocations, each designed to spark critical thinking and disrupt conventional placemaking approaches. These provocations emerged from candid and reflective discussions and serve as bold starting points for reimagining Birmingham’s future. They challenge existing systems and practices while inviting innovation and inclusivity in placemaking. Key provocations include:
Radical Procurement: Reimagining how resources are distributed by questioning current decision-making processes, thresholds, and contracts. How can we ensure funding mechanisms are fair, accessible, and fit for purpose, rather than acting as barriers to participation?
Bottom-Up Governance: Shifting governance models to be more proportional and context-sensitive. What decision-making structures can balance legislative requirements with flexibility and responsiveness to community needs?
Meaningful Data with Nuance: Rethinking how data is collected, shared, and used. How can we embed greater nuance into data to better understand systems, challenge assumptions, and inform placemaking strategies effectively?
Rethinking the Room: Expanding beyond the idea of simply diversifying who is in the room. How can we rethink the concept of the “room” itself — its format, function, and accessibility—to foster truly inclusive and transformative conversations?
Honest Conversations and Active Listening: Creating spaces for open dialogue, even when it surfaces uncomfortable truths. Are we ready to confront difficult answers, challenge ourselves, and adapt our approaches in response?
Connecting Independents: Recognising and supporting independent artists, businesses, and practitioners operating outside formal cultural structures. How can stronger connections and collaborations be fostered between these independents and more established organisations?
Harnessing Existing Knowledge: Building on the wealth of knowledge from previous projects and initiatives. How can we ensure that past learnings are not only preserved but actively inform future placemaking efforts?
These provocations emerged from candid, urgent, and deeply reflective discussions, made possible by the generosity and commitment of participants who brought their insights to the table and held the day accountable to the people of Birmingham.
Far from offering final solutions, these provocations serve as bold starting points for reimagining the city’s future. They encourage us to rethink how resources are distributed, whose voices are heard, and how governance, data, and systems can be transformed to reflect the complexity of contemporary urban life. They also challenge us to reconsider the very spaces where these conversations take place—both metaphorically and literally.
Each provocation invites us to confront difficult questions: How do we ensure funding mechanisms are accessible and equitable? How do we move from rigid, top-down governance to flexible, community-driven decision-making? How can we integrate nuanced, meaningful data into planning and policy? And ultimately, how do we create a city where everyone has the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from placemaking efforts?
These provocations are not just for reflection but for action. They are a call to Birmingham’s place practitioners, artists, and community leaders to take risks, challenge norms, and experiment with new ways of working to forge a cityscape that is more inclusive, innovative, and resilient.
Foundational Principles for Birmingham’s Future Placemaking
Building on the Provocations, a set of foundational principles can be articulated to guide Birmingham’s placemaking journey. These principles are intended to act as a flexible framework that practitioners can adapt and expand upon, aligning with the unique needs and aspirations of Birmingham’s diverse neighbourhoods. They are not prescriptive blueprints but living tools designed to evolve as they are tested and refined through practice:
A Place-Based Approach: The Power of Local Knowledge
Placemaking must begin with the knowledge and insights of those who live and work in the city. The resident who’s lived on their street for forty years holds as much wisdom as the urban designer. To create a future Birmingham that thrives, this local knowledge must drive urban planning and decision-making. The neighbourhoods of the city each hold immense potential for innovative placemaking, and their unique characters should shape their future growth.Artists as Visionaries and Catalysts
Artists are not only chroniclers of present-day experiences but visionary thinkers who reimagine futures and redefine possibilities. In Birmingham, their role must extend beyond creating the physical artefacts of placemaking to leveraging their ability to see places and processes differently. They challenge conventional norms, offering fresh insights into urban development while holding complex, often contentious conversations about place. Through their creative methods, artists foster dialogue, navigating diverse viewpoints and surfacing tensions to build shared understanding. Their multidisciplinary knowledge spans planning, governance, and social dynamics, enabling them to bridge gaps that traditional approaches overlook. By embedding their expertise, artists can drive collaboration and innovation, shaping a future Birmingham defined by creativity, equity, and inclusivity.Place Stewardship and Nurturing Creative Ecologies
Formal place stewards, including councils and funders, are pivotal in fostering creative ecologies that support long-term transformation. Moving forward, these stewards must embrace participatory frameworks and equitable resource distribution to nurture environments where creativity flourishes. Radical shifts in community voice, procurement processes and governance structures, as discussed in the Bootcamp, are essential to building a resilient and inclusive urban ecosystem.
The objective of these Principles is twofold: to ensure that placemaking in Birmingham centres on inclusivity, equity, and cultural vibrancy, and to empower communities to shape the future of their own spaces. They encourage collaboration across sectors, advocate for creative risk-taking, and seek to bridge the gaps between community knowledge, artistic vision, and institutional power.
Now, these Principles belong to Birmingham’s place practitioners, artists, and neighbourhoods. They are an invitation to take ownership, develop them further, and make them their own. By doing so, Birmingham can create a shared foundation for placemaking that is not only responsive to local realities but also forward-looking, setting the stage for sustainable and meaningful urban transformation—a city where placemaking becomes a shared endeavour, shaping spaces that truly reflect the hopes and aspirations of its people.
Culture Central’s Role in Envisioning the Future
As a connector and enabler, Culture Central is uniquely positioned to drive forward Birmingham’s placemaking aspirations. However, the responsibility for shaping the city’s future cannot rest on Culture Central alone—it will take the collective effort of the entire city to realise this vision:
Creating a Knowledge Hub: Documenting and disseminating insights from placemaking projects to inform and inspire future initiatives.
Advocacy for Policy Change: Collaborating with councils to embed placemaking principles into long-term urban development strategies.
Strengthening Networks: Fostering partnerships between formal institutions and independent creatives to ensure a cohesive cultural ecosystem.
Championing Resource Equity: Advocating for funding models that prioritise inclusivity and enable all communities to participate meaningfully in shaping their environment.
Culture Central’s role is to foster these connections, create opportunities for collaboration, and advocate for a shared vision of an inclusive and creative Birmingham. By working together, the city can harness its full potential and build a future that reflects the diversity, resilience, and vibrancy of its people.
Looking Ahead: Transforming Birmingham’s Potential
Birmingham stands at a pivotal moment in its placemaking journey, with a wealth of creative potential and community wisdom ready to shape its future. The Provocations and Principles emerging from the Future City Plan Makers events provide a dynamic framework for this transformation, but the real work begins now — with all of us.
Culture Central, as a catalyst and convener, and those that have joined this particular journey so far, have laid the groundwork, but the future of placemaking belongs to everyone in this city. By taking ownership of the provocations and principles, and by working collaboratively across sectors and communities, Birmingham can forge a bold new path. This is an invitation for all place practitioners and neighbourhoods to innovate, experiment, and build on these foundations, creating spaces that reflect the aspirations and identities of their people.
Together, we can transform Birmingham into a city where creativity and inclusivity are the cornerstones of urban life, a model for placemaking that other cities will look to for inspiration. Let us meet Birmingham not just where it’s at, but where it can be — building a future shaped by the people, for the people, and with the people.
Dr Cara Courage will be leading our next WMCRU session on Cultural & Creative Placemaking with Dr Nicola Headlam on 11 March 2025 - find out more and sign up here.