HISTORY
Aston Alumni Magazine — 2017
Grand Designs It’s regenerated more times than Doctor Who, but what’s on the horizon for the city of Birmingham? Annette Rubery talks to alumnus and West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street, about the fall and rise of an irrepressible city.
B
irmingham has more miles of canal than Venice. That phrase will be familiar to any Brummie even though, like many memorable pieces of marketing, the truth of the statement is questionable (the Council website wisely hedges its bets with “Birmingham has 35 miles of canals, which is said to be more than Venice”). However, Birmingham has something else in common with Venice which is much more important - both are cities founded on trade. It all started in the last quarter of the 18th century when a group of amateur experimenters, tradesmen and artisans formed The Lunar Society. Foremost amongst them was the ambitious toymaker Matthew Boulton whose Soho Manufactory became internationally famous for producing plated metalware, buttons and coins. Boulton and his business partner James Watt (of Steam Engine fame) are often pressed into service as the figureheads of Birmingham’s industrial might, but there are numerous others contributors to scientific knowledge: James Brindley, who built the canals; William Withering, discoverer of the first heart medicine; Joseph Priestley, the man who ‘isolated’ oxygen and invented soda water.
These stories have been told, of course, and often airbrushed (we are rarely reminded that Priestley was driven out of Birmingham by rioters, angered by his support of the French Revolution, for example). Yet, as Andy Street acknowledges, even with founders of this stature, Birmingham has always been bad at shaping a narrative about itself. Street, who holds an Honorary Doctorate from Aston University, fought and won a nail-biting campaign to become the region’s first Mayor last April, and before that served as Chair of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership. As the former Managing Director of John Lewis, he knows something about trade - and Birmingham: a city which he loves, despite its dislike of backward glances (the city motto, after all, is ‘Forward’).
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