In doing so I noticed this from the debrief statement:

“In order to learn from Saturday’s events it is firstly proposed to have a structured multi-agency debrief and secondly to bring in an independent expert in event management and crowd control, to review the Safety Advisory Group’s processes and procedures and make recommendations for the future.”

Excellent.

I agree with you, Pete, that the City Council is completely obsessed with big. It’s been the same for years.

Millions of pounds have been wasted on trying to convince people that we’re “a great European city” or “a global city” instead of simply allowing the city to speak for itself and to be seen for what it is: a post-industrial conurbation with a buzzing ethnic and cultural mix that should act as a powerhouse for creativity and enterprise. Despite the massive expenditure, these campaigns have always been spread too thinly over too many markets to have any useful effect.

Just look at the mediocrity of ArtsFest: it may be Europe or Britain’s or the world’s BIGGEST free arts event, but it still sucks.

Just look at Marketing Birmingham. A basically pointless exercise in generating press releases about how much press coverage their press releases are getting.

And look at the fiasco of the noise abatement nonsense in Digbeth. At one end of Eastside they’re trying to close down pubs that act as the seedbed for local music, local culture and local talent on an ongoing, day to day basis. At the other end they hire a whole bunch of extremely popular pop stars for a day and then expect only 5,000 people to turn up to see them. Their only excuse, I suppose,was that the event was held at Millenniumn Point – another white elephant on the sacrifical altar of bigness.

What’s to be done about it? How about ignoring the buggers and setting up an alternative co-operative of the talents to promote and foster smaller, more realistic initiatives that can survive without the dead hand (and deader brains) that come with Council involvement.

I know for sure that not nearly enough is done to encourage the city’s writers not to mention artists, designer/makers, musicians,film makers, creatives generally etc.

Digbeth and Eastside should have some kind of special development area status and measures that encourage landlords to rent out their otherwise abandoned “landbanked” buildings at peppercorn rents to encourage Birmingham to become a city of a thousand digital trades.

Take the formerly run down area of Temple Bar, Dublin as the model – it was squatted or rented out at such peppercorn rents and became a place where young people could experiment/make mistakes/collaborate.

From out of this grew a major tourist atraction and income engine for the city. Birmingham can do the same but it has to lift its head up out of the clouds and really show some vision.

My opinion is that Birmingham is trying to out do those cities around us. Thinking of the Manchesters, Leeds and Liverpools.

I think it’s ludicrous that a Christmas Light switch on has such a huge billing… Who turns lights on in the middle of the day?

As for some comments on invigorating shoppers… Did they really think about the demographic they were appealing to with JLS? Having been involved with one of their gigs during the summer, teenagers go mad for these.. Teenagers don’t take you can’t go in to easily… Hence the problems…

It’s my humble opinion that it’s good the fences fell otherwise there would have been deaths and serious injuries.. Tie into that the launch of the Christmas market… Leads to chaos.

As with many people though, Birmingham can do big as it showed with the Half Marathon a few weeks ago and many free gigs in the past. Is Millennium Point really the right place though?

Once upon a time Christmas lights switch-on was about lighting our streets with festive cheer but lets face it we all know it’s now a commercial event to stimulate early spending and council’s across the country are now in the pocket of the retailers.

There was a time when the Christmas lights switch-on involved a celeb from the The Rep’s Christmas show or a Dame from one of the Pantos, that was the hard sell. But no one was causing a crush to see Mathew Kelly or the Snowman. Who is the lights switch-on really for? Do the Birmingham retailers see the teen market who attended Saturday’s event as big spenders? Taking a child to see the ‘magic’ of the lights is definitely a thing of Christmas Past.

I note that people are putting the boot into BRMB for this, on this forum and elsewhere, which is slightly unfair. I must stress, by the way, that I have no current connection with BRMB. I think the other local stations must be feeling somewhat relieved it wasn’t their name on this fiasco. Schadenfreude comes to mind, and the thought of BRMB’s rivals rubbing their hands together with glee leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

BRMB deals with pop music; they pulled the line-up together. That’s their home territory. They have staged successful open air freebies many times without incident. However, it is NOT their job to handle security issues. Their role, if anything, is to reflect and support the council’s efforts around events like this. But this was a council event.

Like you say, it’s the focus of the event that caused the problems. I don’t want us to ever be parochial, and I don’t want us ever to react defensively. But do I wish that a Birmingham event like this had smacked less of “Me too! Look at us!” and been more… well… Birmingham.

I suppose this just goes to show that one should, when organizing an event such as this, assume the worst about people rather than (as seems to have been the case) have an expectation that people will act even semi-sensibly.

But seriously, Birmingham doesn’t have to prove anything to anybody, by being itself it will succeed. It always has.

@Dave I agree with Jules that Artsfest & gigbeth have in the past had problems with overstretching the time/people/stuff available too thin in an effort to be big – it’s not a Council only problem, I don’t think.

Whitby et al never seem to ask “is it best for Birmingham?” but instead, “is it better than Manchester/Liverpool/London?” Take the new library (which I appreciate is a whole ‘nother debate). None of the press releases explain why it will be a really good library… but they all explain how it’s designed by an internationally renowned Architect and will be really massive and funny-looking.

But your post focuses on people rather culture which I’m surprised at. Sacking senior officials who indeed are experts in their jobs, won’t get us very far. Rather, the City could do with asking how as an organisation it has developed a culture whereby senior officers feel compelled to out-big each other. New people won’t change the culture, new structures might. Elected officials, other than those is the very senior posts, simply don’t hold the power you suggest over senior officers. The chief exec does – and he’s the key person who should be creating a culture within BCC that recognises and nurtures the ‘small’.

But the city does need narratives with which to sell itself on the international stage. It needs investment because it has a lot of people who need jobs. We’ve given the Big City Plan too much credence I think. It’s really just a fancy powerpoint presentation to play in Dubai. An expensive one, but if it pays off then it can result in new investment and new jobs.

Oh and going around saying ‘Birmingham will be a leading Digital City by 2010′ is actually quite handy. In fact I’ve used that line in many a presentation before then going on to talk about how it’s a leading Digital City because the really interesting stuff happens outside the control of the city council. It’s a leading Digital City for its small digital stuff. It’s a leading Digital City because you’re in it. May I be the first to congratulate you on helping the city reach one of its key ‘big’ targets ;)

Actually (@catnip) I think Artsfest and Gigbeth (the latter wasn’t a city council event I thought?) are good models of how doing ‘big’ can work. Both events are the sum of lots of small parts, why not take time to point at them and celebrate them in a focused way.