Kate Knowles

Birmingham

Editor at Birmingham Dispatch

Editor @brumdispatch. [email protected] Only on here from time to time. Instagram: pennycenturyy

Articles

Last minute dinner parties, Bearwood & Bollywood

1 week ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Kate Knowles

Kate's in the driver's seat today, with her editor's edition. What I did over the bank holiday: On Saturday, a disappointing weather forecast put to bed my plans to host a barbecue in my garden. Instead, I had Sam and a few other pals round for a good old-fashioned dinner party. As usual, work was so busy last week that it took me until Saturday morning to plan the menu, buy the ingredients and throw together the recipes — not the ideal scenario.
The man Birmingham tried to forget

2 weeks ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Kate Knowles

During the uncommonly cold May of 1903, a crowd of important people gathered in a room at London’s School of Economic and Political Science. They were there to hear from the aging, slightly stooped man at the front of the room. As he began to speak, the bright white and bushy mutton chops that made up for the distinct lack of hair on his head, quivered.
The future of Birmingham’s symphony orchestra is uncertain. Can grime help?

1 month ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Kate Knowles

In 2015, UK grime made an explosive return to the mainstream. Artists achieved global recognition and started climbing the charts. And as the year edged to a close, Birmingham MC, Lady Leshurr (government name: Melesha Katrina O'Garro), released the fourth part in a musical series cheekily titled ‘Queen’s Speech’.
Infighting, austerity, opportunism: this is the tale of Birmingham’s decline | Kate Knowles

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Kate Knowles

I was recently standing on a picket line at Birmingham’s largest waste depot with a case of deja vu. “We are massively underfunded. It does need changing,” Lee, a bin worker and union rep, told me. But the council’s current offer to end the strike isn’t good enough, he said. If it cuts wages the way it wants to, “people will lose their homes”. We’ve been here before.
Is this millionaire councillor lying about his address?

2 months ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Kate Knowles

I’m sitting in an Air BnB bedroom, trying to decide if I should finally start watching Severance, when I hear a key turn in the front door downstairs. I freeze, hunched over my laptop as feet ascend, the unknown visitor getting closer with each step. True, the flat I’m staying in has two bedrooms to rent, but the friendly man who let me in earlier assured me that no one else was booked in tonight. Who could it be?
The council says striking bin workers are violent. The union says that's rubbish.

2 months ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Kate Knowles

The sun rises above a Birmingham tip; striking workers crowd in front of the gates. A nearby speaker blares 90s rnb music and cups of tea and sausage baps are handed round. The scene is jovial. That is, until a group of men (number undisclosed) wearing balaclavas emerge, firing missiles (material undisclosed) at those assembled. If this seems like a scene out of a slightly odd, very low budget movie, that’s because it could well be fiction.
Ancestral land owners, gangster pop stars and everything in between

2 months ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Kate Knowles

Ancestral land owners, gangster pop stars and everything in between Isabella Calthorpe with her husband Sam Branson and father-in-law, the billionaire Richard Branson, at Wimbledon in 2015. Photo: Karwai Tang/WireImage/Getty. An editor’s edition from Kate
Making local news pay

2 months ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Kate Knowles

Dear readers — we hope you’re having a wonderful start to the week. You might have noticed things look a bit different around here lately. Our new website is now live, we’re going up in the world. What started as a one person band (that’s me, Kate) working in greasy spoons with minimal assistance is now a three-person team with a great roster of freelancers, a co-work and now a brand new website. It’s exciting.
Bins boss abroad - councillor under fire for taking trip during strikes

2 months ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Kate Knowles

Dear readers — welcome, welcome, and to those of you nursing sore heads after St Patrick’s Day celebrations, we hope this Monday briefing will be a soothing balm, or at the very least, a distraction from work. As we enter the second week of all-out bin strikes in the city, it has come to our attention that the man responsible for waste collections at the council may not even be in the country.
50 years after they formed in Handsworth, reggae legends Steel Pulse are coming home

2 months ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Kate Knowles

There’s a scene in "Lover’s Rock", an episode of Steve McQueen’s five-part series Small Axe, where the revolutionary might of reggae is laid bare. The events in the short film take place across a day and night in a West London home in 1980, during the preparations for a teenage girl’s birthday party. At that time, black people were often unwelcome in nightclubs, so West Indian communities would host house parties, complete with home-cooked food, plenty of Red Stripe and a soundsystem.