Grand Union Arts marks 15 years with new Digbeth home for community arts
Grand Union Arts is celebrating its 15th Birthday, with the year going brilliantly so far for the charity, which has received a multi-year award from Paul Hamlyn Foundation to help develop its arts, social and environmental justice programmes, and has secured a long-term home for its work and communities.
Grand Union opened in Digbeth in 2010, when it was the first cultural organisation to move into Minerva Works, a place which has since become a vibrant hub of artistic and cultural activity, such as Digbeth First Friday. Since opening, the organisation has supported over 200 artists, welcomed over 350,000 people to experience its artistic work and has developed an innovative, collaborative programme with community groups across the city, which featured on BBC’s Gardener’s World last year.
During the last 15 years, Grand Union has developed into a wide-reaching community of people and stakeholders and thinks critically about how a cultural organisation can work with its community in the city context, to create social, economic and environmental change.
Grand Union has now secured a new permanent home, Junction Works, a beautiful Grade II historic building in the heart of Digbeth. It can now begin the journey to restoring and repurposing this historic building into a vibrant arts venue, creating a dynamic and inclusive space, in the heart of Digbeth’s regeneration, that celebrates the rich industrial heritage of the area whilst driving social and environmental impacts. By undertaking this project, Grand Union is disrupting the usual narrative of artists moving into cheap, unused warehouse space, only to be priced out a few years later as part of a wave of gentrification.
The building sits at the gateway to the Digbeth Branch Canal and Warwick Bar conservation area, opposite the BBC’s Tea Factory site which is due to open in 2027 and neighbour to Masterchef’s new studios. Securing its new permanent home has unlocked the opportunity for Grand Union to refurbish the site as a public arts venue, housing space for exhibitions, events and workshops, a community cafe and garden, artists’ studios and creative office space. Grand Union is now perfectly placed to launch its £4m fundraising campaign to complete refurbishment of the building, aiming to fully open the doors by 2029.
Supported through Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Arts Fund, Grand Union is recognised for its unique approach to people-centred arts programming and its work in considerate urban regeneration. The grant will give Grand Union some stability and reflection time during which it will ‘crack itself open’ to create and imagine new ways to bring about transformative change.
Grants like this are a lifeline for Grand Union amidst a challenging time for the arts sector, in particular those based in Digbeth. The intensive regeneration of this part of the city is seeing rents rapidly rising against a context of decreasing arts funding. The affordability of large-scale space here has been the bedrock of so much of Birmingham’s creative output in the visual arts, music and street art scene.
Grand Union is DIY at its core, set up by a group of artists and curators, first opening its doors in 2010, to create good quality artists’ studios and a project space for emerging curators to showcase experimental visual arts and performance. 15 years later, it is a registered charity and Arts Council England National Portfolio organisation, attracting support from a wide range of supporters, from Trusts and Foundations like Edward Cadbury Trust, Oglesby Charitable Foundation and local businesses such as Hortons, Bruntwood and Stoford.
