One city · a hundred voices · a shared story
Birmingham is a city of many voices, cultures, and stories. We are capturing more than 100 oral histories and digitising over 150 heritage items from the city's BAME and English working-class communities — before they are lost forever.
Birmingham Together celebrates our shared heritage by bringing communities closer, capturing untold stories, and creating spaces where everyone belongs.
From oral histories and exhibitions to festivals and digital archives, we are building a platform that showcases the rich diversity of our city — past, present, and future.
The stories of first-generation migrants who rebuilt post-war Birmingham, and of the English working-class communities rooted in its industrial history, sit side by side here — recognised, valued, and celebrated.
.jpg?width=900)
Centenary Square
The Golden Boys — Boulton, Watt & Murdoch, makers of industrial Birmingham
From the workshop of the world to the Commonwealth Games — two centuries of arrival, work, faith, struggle, and celebration, told through the photographs, letters, and memories of the people who lived it. Community-contributed images will join these frames as the archive grows.
Pens, buttons, guns, jewellery, brass, chocolate — Birmingham makes everything, and working people make Birmingham. Generations of skilled hands fill the workshops of Digbeth, Hockley, and the Jewellery Quarter, building the working-class culture of solidarity and craft this archive will honour.
Explore this eraThe Blitz strikes hard — Birmingham is among Britain's most heavily bombed cities, its factories turned to the war effort, from Spitfires at Castle Bromwich to munitions across the city. Whole streets are lost. Out of the rubble comes an urgent question: who will help rebuild?
Explore this eraOn 22 June 1948, the Empire Windrush docks at Tilbury carrying hundreds of passengers from the Caribbean — days before the new NHS opens its doors. Britain has called on the Commonwealth to help rebuild, and a generation answers. Many will make Birmingham their home.
Explore this eraFamilies arrive from Jamaica, Barbados, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ireland, and beyond, settling in Handsworth, Sparkbrook, Small Heath, and Balsall Heath. They drive the buses, staff the hospitals, and work the foundries — often facing colour bars in housing and work. Their courage begins this story.
Explore this eraThe futuristic Bull Ring Shopping Centre opens in 1964, the Rotunda follows, and the Inner Ring Road carves a new city out of the old. Neighbourhoods are cleared and communities rehoused — upheaval and optimism side by side, remembered very differently by those who lived it.
Explore this eraIn April 1968 Enoch Powell delivers his infamous speech at a Birmingham hotel — and the city's communities answer with organisation, not retreat. Churches, unions, tenants' groups, and community associations build alliances, and the Race Relations Acts of 1965–1976 slowly outlaw open discrimination. Voices raised here changed Britain.
Explore this eraBirmingham Central Mosque opens in Highgate — one of the first purpose-built mosques in western Europe. Gurdwaras rise in Handsworth and Smethwick, temples in Balsall Heath, Black-led churches across the city. Faith buildings become anchors of community life: schools, kitchens, advice centres, and second homes.
Explore this eraIn the cafés of Sparkbrook — the home of this project — Kashmiri and Pakistani cooks create a new dish in a thin steel bowl: the Balti. Corner shops, market stalls, and family restaurants become engines of enterprise, and the Balti Triangle carries Birmingham's name around the world.
Explore this eraDeindustrialisation bites: factories close, unemployment soars, and in 1981 and 1985 Handsworth erupts as communities demand equality and opportunity. Yet the same decade sees carnival, bhangra, reggae, and youth culture flourish — resilience and creativity that stereotypes of decline never captured.
Explore this eraSymphony Hall and the ICC open in 1991, the canals come back to life at Brindleyplace, and in Digbeth the old Bird's Custard factory is reborn as a creative quarter. Birmingham begins turning its industrial past into cultural future — a transformation its people led.
Explore this eraThe silver discs of Selfridges rise over St Martin's, and the rebuilt Bullring opens to the world. Birmingham becomes one of Europe's youngest, most diverse cities — with residents tracing roots to more than 180 countries, and the open market still trading below.
Explore this eraThe Library of Birmingham opens in Centenary Square — Europe's largest public library and home to the city's archives. It is here, with Birmingham Library & Archives as our partner, that the City of Many Voices collection will find its long-term home.
Explore this eraThe Commonwealth Games bring 72 nations to Birmingham — and the opening ceremony, with its raging bull, tells the city's own story of industry, migration, and unity. The very communities this archive celebrates take centre stage, watched by over a billion people.
Explore this eraNow the memories that hold all of this — the arrivals, the factory floors, the faith halls, the market stalls — survive in family albums and ageing minds, fragile and at risk. Over two years we will record 100+ oral histories, digitise 150+ heritage items, stage exhibitions and the Festival of Many Voices, reach 1,000+ school pupils, and build this permanent, free digital archive. The next chapter is yours to tell.
Explore this eraA dedicated digital platform will safeguard more than 150 oral histories, photographs, and community stories, ensuring they remain accessible for generations.
Mobile-friendly and free to access — with captions, transcripts, BSL interpretation, and multilingual support — so schools, researchers, and families across Birmingham can explore shared heritage anytime.
Designed for sustainability, the archive can expand with future contributions, becoming a living record of Birmingham's diverse voices and cultural legacy.
.jpg?width=900)
The markets
Bullring open markets & St Martin's — where the city's voices meet
Whether you want to share a story, lend an item, volunteer, or book a school workshop — send us a message and we’ll get back to you.
