Birmingham Dispatch

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The future of Birmingham’s symphony orchestra is uncertain. Can grime help?

1 week 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’.
With Rembrandt, a bid for relevance?

2 weeks ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Samuel McIlhagga

A selection of magnifying glasses are fanned out across a tiny table placed at the entrance. A gallery attendant kindly explains, in excruciating detail, that the prints I’m about to see are very small. I notice few visitors employing these props. Instead, almost everybody uses their eyes, crouching next to the prints we’re all here to see.
Is this millionaire councillor lying about his address?

2 weeks 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?
Sparkbrook’s pigeon plague

2 weeks ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Alex Taylor

“You’ve got it all wrong,” warns a small man in his eighties, pushing a loaded shopping trolley. It squeaks across the pavement. “The pigeons didn’t just arrive one day: they’ve always been here. We all know what they want too.” He raises a weathered hand from the sleeve of his jumper, and gestures toward the carpet of birds obscuring the tarmac of the Aldi car park in Sparkbrook. Hundreds — and I mean hundreds — of pigeons surround us, pecking calmly around my trainers.
At Reform's Birmingham bonanza, set design is the real winner

3 weeks ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Samuel McIlhagga

At the press entrance to Birmingham’s Utilita Arena, I am greeted by a large blonde American. “What’s ya name, buddy?” he asks earnestly. This should have been an early warning sign that I was leaving England’s Midlands and entering another realm: somewhere equidistant between the fever dream of Donald Trump’s White House and a stagnant Westminster.
The council says striking bin workers are violent. The union says that's rubbish.

4 weeks 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.
Richard Gamble had a vision. Now he's building a 51-metre wall of prayer by a motorway

1 month ago | birminghamdispatch.co.uk | Samuel McIlhagga

Dear Patchers — today’s story is about a 51 metre tall Möbius strip in honour of God planned for the outskirts of Birmingham. Don’t know what a Möbius strip is? (read on). If completed it will be taller than both the Angel of the North and Rio’s Christ the Redeemer. What, you may ask, is this gargantuan monument? A ploy by the mayor Richard Parker to win the esteem of the architectural community? Some kind of Brummie gathering point to replace the Spaghetti Junction?
Ancestral land owners, gangster pop stars and everything in between

1 month 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

1 month 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

1 month 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.