Lonely survivor of the clearcutting to create the Ventureast site, photo: David Miller
In 2007 and 2008 experts from the University of Birmingham developed a project to make sure Digbeth's past is not forgotten. ‘The Eastside project’ focused on redevelopment of the Digbeth and Deritend areas of Birmingham. Experts researched sites being redeveloped for historical artefacts, record interviews and exhibit items. They gathered people's stories about this part of the city. As you can read on Rescue Geography website sometimes they've just chatted to people in cafes, but they also asked people to give them guided tours of the area, recording what they said and - using sat nav technology - where they said it. Researchers invited a photographer Dan Burwood, who took pictures of interviewees in places within Digbeth that have particular meaning to them. From artists’s statement: ‘In 2005 I started to make portraits of people in Digbeth, on the street and in pubs, pictures that evidenced a context visually, and interested me more and more in the place as I spoke to the people that allowed me to take their pictures. You could see how fast things might start to change in the area, and, as much as I was happy with some of the images, it was the stories and people I met that made a greater impression, and which seemed to be lost behind the surface of the prints, and my poor retelling of our meetings’.
An exhibition of the work in Digbeth and Eastside took place 24-31 October 2008. You can see details of the interviews here
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