Welcome to Birmingham! How local people and artists transformed Digbeth Coach Station into an award-winning gateway

Objectives

Every year Birmingham Coach Station sees 1.6 million passengers enter the city through its gates. The old coach station was criticised by both visitors and residents alike and it was decided that public art should be used as part of the redevelopment process to enhance the visual experience of the coach station. EC-Arts created and implemented the DPAP strategy in response to National Express’s need to fulfil planning conditions set by Birmingham City Council. The original brief given to EC-Arts was to produce an artistic intervention into the parameter of the new coach station in Birmingham, Digbeth which would become the ‘Boundary Installation.’ However, EC-Arts saw the potential for two other artworks, ‘Irish Quarter Visual Artwork’ which would create a visual identity for the Irish population in the area and ‘Short Film’ which would create a legacy of the public art project.

In the development at each art work a ground up research approach to understand the histories and content of the site was required. Community consultation and on site studies both informed the design process and highlighted how public art/artist involvement can feed into, and be integrated within, building developments. An important aspect of the brief was to avoid creating an irrelevant piece of art, but to let the symbolic importance of the station and the significance of Digbeth in the history of Birmingham become the influences that informed the artists public art concept.

Claire Farrell provided Governance International with this case study on 18th May 2010.