Hello Birmingham Heritage Week!
5th September 2018
Reading Time: 2 minutes
In this month’s Guest Blog, Councillor Philip Davies, City Heritage Champion and chair of Jewellery Quarter Development Trust (JQDT), gives his perspective on this year’s Birmingham Heritage Week. The event is a citywide initiative that runs from 6 – 16 September 2018 with workshops and activities across Birmingham that highlight the city’s unique history and heritage.
Those of us lucky enough to live or work in the JQ know that it’s a special place. The area has kept its links to the past while changing to meet modern needs. It’s become a great place to live, work or visit. You can also get a great cup of coffee!
A big part of this successful change is the value we place on Jewellery Quarter heritage. Whether that’s through celebrating its 250-year-old tradition of high-skilled manufacturing and design, or its buildings – or, of course, its people. As Birmingham’s living but historic ‘Creative Quarter’, we are also a flagship for our city of a million people.
The JQDT and JQBID are pleased to be a part of Birmingham Heritage Week 2018 which kicks off this week. Heritage Week links together the large number of museums, community groups and individuals who work to protect and promote a wide range of Brum heritage on a daily basis. The initiative is supported by the City Council, Birmingham Museums Trust and community partners across the city.
Here in Birmingham we have big houses such as Highbury, home of 19th-century political giant Joe Chamberlain and small houses like the Back-to-Backs on Hurst Street. In the Jewellery Quarter, our outstanding museum collections include sites such as the Pen Museum, JW Evans’s Silver Factory and the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter. Not to mention the quirky Coffin Works experience in Fleet Street which sits near the living heritage transport network that is the Birmingham canals.
You’ll also find much smaller, but no less fascinating sites thrown open across the city, such as the Wake Green Road pre-fabs on the Moseley and Billesley border. There really is something for everybody. So, as our JQ baristas say: Enjoy!
Browse the full list of Birmingham Heritage Week Jewellery Quarter events on our What’s On Page by searching for BHW.
