Dr Richard Clay discusses the importance of the city of Birmingham to the cultural research taking place at The University of Birmingham, including an interview with Brian Gambles of Birmingham Library.
Title: The Cultural City of Birmingham – Birmingham Library
Duration: 1.30 mins
Speaker Names (if given):
S1 Dr Richard Clay – Co-Director: Heritage and Cultural Learning Hub
S2 Brian Gambles – Assistant Director, Cultural Birmingham City Council
S1 Birmingham’s enormously important to our work because of its incredible cultural riches. It has very significant archives, libraries, museums. We’re building in Birmingham at the moment what will become the biggest public library in Europe in 2013. We’ve got a major investment going on for a new Birmingham History Gallery, which will open at the same time at the Museum and Art Gallery.
S2 We believe that the Library of Birmingham project is the most significant cultural development in Europe at the present time. It will cement the cultural partnerships that already exist in the city between the public library, the museum, schools, colleges, universities, the major cultural sector and many business communities in the city as well, including the emerging creative and digital sectors. And bringing them together through a knowledge and cultural learning environment is going to make a huge impact on the city and we hope and believe change the perception of the outside world of Birmingham as a cultural city. The best illustration of the impact of some of these collaborations I think is the present project, Suburban Birmingham, where we’re demonstrating that the knowledge of collections, of research collections in the community, has a genuine social impact.
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