Created in Birmingham Shop

Image Courtesy of CiB

Imagine a place in Birmingham that sold art and creative works produced by local people, that was more like a record shop and mini indoor market combined? Well it exists in The Bullring and while in the city today I dropped in to take a look, and had a chat to Pete Ashton, CiB extraordinaire.

The shop is very similar in layout to those kind of places that sell crystals and tarott cards, except you’ll find wall art featuring local scenes, handbags, little trinkets and such. Some connected directly to Birmingham, some hand made jewellery that might have no city theme, but was still made here.

It generated £22,500 for local artists!
Reading on the site, it says; “The CiB Shop has, it seems, been a rather successful thing. So far we’ve sold about £30,000 worth of art by local people of which £22,500 has gone into their pockets”. Which I’d say is a sucess story that needs shouting about in our region as a beacon of hope for empty retail space?! Read about the CiB shop here

The Created in Birmingham shop, sells works from the local creative community and if you plan on visiting, best make it sharpish, the three month stint in the Bullring is coming to an end on May 23rd!

The Created in Birmingham Shop has a section on the CiB blog, and is also on twitter @createdinbrum. You may want to follow them on twitter, to keep track of where they are going, as the shop in the Bullring is a temporary location, offered by the centre, a great use of vacant retail space in the downturn.

The place was buzzing and on the way out there is a chance to leave your comments in a guest book and join the mailing list. It was great to see this and I think it’s an awesome thing to have in city. Perhaps it might re-open after the summer, let’s hope so. I had a nice chance to speak to Pete who seemed to have vanished from the Birmingham Flickr Meets, now we know why.

Posted on Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Comments

1. Nazia Sheikh says:

   May 16, 2010 at 00:23

   CiB was probably the best thing in the Bullring!! It’s such a shame theyre going, they let me sell some of my handbags in there and generate interest in the things I make. Birmingham needs a permanent CiB shop (or two) :)
2. Lee Jordan says:

   May 16, 2010 at 18:19

   Cool good stuff! I agree, it would be great to see more of this up town. I left a comment to say as such in the guest book.

   Thanks for the reply :)