Digbeth is changing, for a start its being renamed Eastside and a lot of the factories and workshops have already been compulsory purchased by the city council or bought by Advantage West Midlands. Local residents and workers generally feel in the dark about the plans for the area as there is much uncertainty about how the future of Eastside will look.

The Eastside Sustainability Advisory Group (ESAG), are a group concerned with making the development of the area sustainable in every way including environmentally, socially, economically and culturally. ESAG feels that regeneration should involve all stakeholders in an area: anyone who lives, works, socialises or studies in Eastside has the right to be involved in what happens there. To help give this a kick start they asked us to design a series of postcards for them which would hopefully open up the debate about the creation of Eastside.

We decided to go out and about in the area talking to local businesses and gathering photographs of the area. We found so many hidden gems in Digbeth that we decided to start to gather the 7 wonders of Digbeth for one of the postcards. The seven wonders included the beautiful roof garden on top of the 7 day autos garage, Sparky's piano shop and the Victorian Railway viaducts. We wanted to raise debate about what regeneration means and who it really benefits. Often when an area is 'done up' prices rise considerably and the current residents and businesses are forced out of their area by spiralling costs and bigger business moving in, there may be little concern for local people and more interest in short term profit rather than long term sustainable communities.

The postcards we created were delivered all around Digbeth and local people were encouraged to join a mailing list about developments in the area and to get involved by having their say in the future of the area.

To launch the postcards and to get the debate going with local people we decided to run an event on the new green space off Curzon Street in Digbeth during architecture week. The Eastside Grumble Sale was born! An opportunity for local people to bring along their Grumbles and experiences of the planning process, eat cakes, help to find the 7 wonders of Digbeth and create their own future vision of Eastside using a specially created interactive Velcro map of the Eastside area. Participants could select items they would include in the new Eastside from wind turbines and playgrounds to chain stores and power stations. The results were very interesting with many people opting for more interesting environmentally friendly options over the business as usual approach…

Generally local business people felt in the dark about what was planned for the area, many have already left or had their buildings compulsory purchased. There was a real sense of powerlessness and a feeling that local people had no say in what is going to happen in the area. The next aim of the ESAG project is to get a group of interested local people together to try to influence the decisions of the planners. It is often thought that there is no community in Digbeth, as much of it is hidden amongst the factories and warehouses but, the Grumble Sale brought some of the local community together and started them talking, sharing experiences and asking questions. A public meeting is planned for September and answers to the questions asked by people who attended the Grumble Sale are being found by ESAG and letters will be sent out to people soon.