Guided walk of Druids Heath + Screening of a Decent Place With Hot and Cold

Continuing our collaboration with the Outpost at Pound Road in Druids Heath, this special archive screening has been developed in response to the Nick Hedges exhibition at the Birmingham Back to Backs.

The first part of the event is a walk around Druids Heath hosted by Jayne Murray (Place Prospectors). In the 1960s many people moved to Druids Heath from back-to-back communities when they were demolished as part of slum clearance programmes. Join Jayne for a tour around the estate taking in the sites and heritage of Druids Heath, including one of the highest vantage points in the city. The estate has now come full circle and the community is faced with clearance again. Walkers will be able to take away a postcard pack of photographs and artworks relevant to the tour.

Then we’ll draw on the collections of Shelter and the Media Archive for Central England for a thought-provoking selection of film material on the subject of housing, with a particular focus on the post-war era.

A highlight of the programme is Decent Place With Hot and Cold (1970) a half-hour documentary made by then-student Ian Dabbs in back-to-backs on Birmingham’s Hingeston Street. Four years earlier the same street had served as the location for Cathy Come Home, and Dabbs shows it just before demolition.

Visit the exhibition Home in the Shadows until the end of September.

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