Open and close. Rub away the sleep and realise that your in a strange city, with just your mind to take you for-ward.

Birmingham city culture is what we are trying to show you in our own styles and personalitys in this

edition of

B

1 . . . WORD ON THE STREET, WRITTEN BY RAJ DH

3 . . . INTERVIEW WITH BEN, WRITTEN BY RAJ DH

6 . . . THE HANGING MEN, WRITTEN BY HARRIETT HARVEY

7 . . . THE CUSTARD FACTORY, WRITTEN BY HARRIETT HARVEY

9 . . . DIGBETH ILLUSTRATIONS

15 . . . DIGBETH PHOTOGRAPHS

21 . . . GETTING TO GRIPS WITH THINGS, WRITTEN BY RAJ DH

23 . . . WOKTASTIC ILLUSTRATION

25 . . . YOU SUSHI REVIEW, WRITTEN BY JORDAN GRIFFIN

28 . . . CAFE SOYA REVIEW, WRITTEN BY HARRIETT HARVEY

29 . . . CHINA TOWN PHOTOGRAPHS

31 . . . ILLUSTRATED JELLY BELLY ADVERT, ILLUSTRATED BY JORDAN GRIFFIN

34 . . . VINTAGE FASHION, WRITTEN BY JORDAN GRIFFIN

35 . . . SOHO ROAD PHOTOGRAPHS

Content

THE ARTCULATE CREW

Jordan Griffin - ILLUSTRATION

Harriett Harvey - PHOTOGRAPHY AND GRAPHIC DESIGN

Rajiv Dhunna - ILLUSTRATION, PHOTOGRAPHY AND GRAPHIC DESIGN

WHATS ON YOUR MIND

The word on the street.Since I came to Birming-ham, the area that was recommended for me to visit was Digbeth. I was intrigued and interested in exploring this art fu-elled area. When I ex-plored Digbeth and found out about its character and unique environment first hand, I came across many things that had me constantly stopping.

I then ran into a lo-cal skateboarder that I questioned and quizzed about the city of Bir-mingham...simply be-cause I am new to the city and I want as much knowledge about the city as I can get. Differ-ent people’s views and opinions on the city

certainly gives me a greater feel for the different cultures to expect from the vari-ous interesting parts of Brum city.

Open and close. Rub away the sleep and realise that your in a strange city, with just your mind to take you for-ward.

Birmingham city culture is what we are trying to show you in our own styles and personalitys in this

edition of

When I was in Digbeth, I met Ben...

Meet Ben.

Hi Ben. Ben kindly let me photography him and ask him a few questions after that. Per-sonally, if I were him I woulda said no and rolled away on my four cool skate-board wheels...whilst standing on the board. What’s cool about Digbeth? Digbeth is cool because it’s a shitty area with a lot of small businesses investing in it. The rainbow clubs have slowly filled a street, clubs and bars keep opening and rein-vesting, loads of music studios, galleries and Zen (in your photos) emanating awe-some.

Are there any other cool places like Digbeth? Nah, Digbeth is pretty unique. There are no other places in Birmingham I can think of from the top of my head where the art culture is so open and welcome to the public, but at the same time have its own community within which really appreciates and respects the area.

Is Birmingham a good city for art? There are so many insular micro scenes scattered everywhere it’s hard to know what’s going on and what’s going to be good.

What do you like the most about Birmingham? Word doesn’t move so fast here but when you do stumble on something it’s usually pretty different from everything else going on apart from the obligatory dubstep. Cheers man.

The Hanging Men

You may have heard of the hanging man, but have you heard of the suspended men?

Digbeth’s Custard Factory invites creative minds in with many weird and wonderful things, one of which greets you at the door. Seven very life like, levitating men, harmoniously float just above the entrance. Suspended by nothing more than fishing wire, the sculpture creates the sensation of falling or the lucidity of freedom.

Although odd, the dangling casts entice people to play and interact with them.

So, if you go down to the Custard Factory today, will you drop by and say hello?

The Custard Factory

Digbeth’s hard to miss, Custard Factory contains various vintage clothing shops, a bar, a music library, cafe, art shops, T-shirt

printing factory, graffiti paint shops, an indoor skate park accompanied by a skate shop, and hosts a number of exhibition halls displaying a wide range of funky indifferent art from all shades of life. Digbeth’s Custard Factory is the heart of art and fashion. Shops, art and fashion line the creatively structured pathways and walls, leaving nothing to the imagination. Everywhere you turn there’s more and more art and fashion, such as the thirty foot stature of Esus just outside the exhibition hall doors. Made entirely out of wood, wire and willow the statue towers over passersby. Fancy a shopping trip? Vintage is all the fashion this year, high-waited denim shorts and silk shirts are on every girls shopping list. As the vintage fashion rises out of the ashes once again, so do many vintage fashion shops. Some of the best shops are in Digbeth’s Custard Factory, crammed rail upon rail crowds the isles of shop floors, selling everything from buttons to fur coats at reasonable prices. If you fancy customising you own clothing however, head down to the T-shirt printing shop tucked in next to the graffiti shop. Using quality printing machines and graphics, they can make you old clothing look brand new. They’ll print anything for an acceptable price. Digbeth is renowned for its ever changing colourful graffiti art, spanning from stencil art to writers, all with the intention to make their name as big and bold as possible. On most days graffiti artists can be seen painting new pieces

on a vast wall just around the corner from the Custard Factory. Anyone looking for ideas and help can visit the area and speak to the artists. Tucked away in a small corner of the Custard Factory is a graffiti paint shop, only visible by the brightly coloured segments wrapped around the top of the cans, peeking out from their shelves. The place is ideal for Graffiti artists to grab an extra can, caps and extras. The shop is also a brilliant place for a novice graffiti artist to ask questions about shading and can control. Feeling parched? Just inside the exhi-bition hall is a sophisticated cafe that serves up as many different teas, coffees and cakes you can think off. Grab a seat and chill whilst browsing the art in the adjacent exhibition hall. For those who want something a little more alcoholic, there are two bars around the Custard Factory. One of which is called the music library, it offers live bands from around the area and beers on tap. The other sits above the exhibition halls, it offers a more sophisticated and relaxed feeling. Braced for a skate? Check out the indoor skate park right at the end of the Custard Factory, with an immense amount of ramps, kickers and spines to skate it’s the next best thing to street skating. Just off to the side of the skate park is a skate shop, decks, trux and bearings are all on display. There are always ever changing exhibitions and shops down at the Custard Factory, it has something to offer everyone, take a wander down to Digbeth and lose yourself in the Custard Factory.

Getting to grips with things

Getting to grips with this all.

The surroundings in Birmingham are not what I am fa-miliar with, but the industrial his-tory is interest-ing and intrigu-ing to me. With what seems to an ever chang-ing cityscape, liv-ing with the older buildings is cer-tainly aesthetically challenging to look at.

But that is what is cool about it all, the cur-rent and the old, the contemporary mixed with the past.The culture within Bir-mingham is diverse, with many different areas crawling with different ethnici-ties, unique cul-tural goods (food, antiques and ob-jects) and inter-esting art de-pending where you look.

Getting to grips with things“All

I’m going to say is...Birmingham

should be the first city. The capital should be

here.”

When i asked him if I could quickly ask him a couple questions about the city and culture he hesitated and was reluctant to even talk to me after that question, but he said one thing before he vanished into the distance. “All im going to say is...Birmingham should be the first city. The capital should be here. Not London.” And he was from New-castle.

When i was drawing and photographing the Birmingham cityscape, an elderly man started to peer over my shoul-der and look at my work as i was doing it, so i started conversation. After minutes of speaking I thought it was an oppurtunity to get a different point of view on the city of Birmingham.

Yo SushiSushi seems to be very popular in

Birmingham in current society. Like most people when I think of a Sushi

restaurant ‘Yo Sushi’ is the first to come to mind- just because that’s what I have seen around most with the colourful plates and stylish asymmetric tables and conveyer belt. In Selfridges inside the Bullring there is a Yo Sushi- where there is always a wait to get a seat at the conveyer belt. The different coloured plates aren’t just for decoration; they indicate the price of the plate- paying by plate is very expensive, especially since they are so small- I could

restaurant called ‘Woktastic’ where they do un-limited Lunch (£10) and evening buffet (£12.99) – all on a conveyer belt. The surroundings aren’t as appealing as Yo Sushi, and the food is not quite as good as Yo Sushi- however for the price difference it is completely worth it! The staff are friendly and helpful, we even asked the chefs if we could get more noodle soup and they made a fresh batch! They also have dessert plates which is a nice idea for those people who fancy a little some-thing sweet after all of the savoury you’ve eaten to get your moneys worth.

Yo Sushi easily eat ten plates at Yo Sushi – which could be £50 for one person depending on the plates you chose- and that’s without a drink! The food at Yo Sushi is undoubtedly desirable and you feel like you’re at the peak of post modern popular culture, eating with chop sticks. Although it is expensive, like most places there are discounts available if you search for them- you can apply for a 25% off student discount (but every person has to have the discount for their meal to be discounted) and there is ‘Blue Monday’ where you pay the price of a blue plate (£2.30) for every plate that’s on the conveyer belt – but make sure you don’t get caught out by the plates which are usually cheaper! Then went to another sushi

EAT FOR £5!!!

Cafe Soya Students are you feeling peckish? Head down to China Town. With a vast range of cheap traditional Chinese restaurants to choose from, and student offers, it’s a great place to grab something that isn’t pasta. While investigating the art culture within China Town, the ARTiculate crew stumbled across Cafe Soya, which smelt and looked too good to pass up. The menu offers a variety of dishes that aren’t just rice and noodles; of course there are the favourites and the well Chow Mains. If you’re feeling traditional however, there are a lot of traditional Chinese dishes on offer and the chief’s specials.

Here’s some of the dishes the ARTiculate crew tried; Sweet and Sour Chicken with Rice A gigantic plate appeared, piled high with enormous pieces of chicken coated in a traditional Chinese sweet and sour source, partnered with stack of long grain egg fried rice. Believe it or not we paid less for the whole dish than at a Chinese takeaway!

Chicken Chow Main Noodles A safe dish, which is what it says on the tin, however it was presented with equally enormous pieces of chicken and a colossal nest of noodles, bean sprouts and bamboo shoots. Although a safe dish, if fills the empty stomach!Chicken Noodles with Lemon Source WARNING: starving students only!! The sheer size of this dish put the other two to shame! This dish is similar to chicken chow main, with the titanic pieces of chicken, noodles and veg. This monster however comes with, oodles more veg and a traditional lemon source. Is your stomach big enough to take on this titan?

China town/China block/

China town, where do I start? Maybe by cor-recting it from China town and calling it China Street? A road with a supermarket and a couple more restaurants in the Ar-cadian isn’t really a town, but none the less it’s still a cool place to go and eat/walk around in. It’s not as busy as I antic-ipated, but they say that there is always calm before the storm.

I’ve been told that around the Chinese New Year this street, I meant town gets prettyyy darn busy. So ill be sure to visit around then, but I wouldn’t recommend going there if you’re looking for a hustley bustle busy I want to weave in and out of people to get to my destination kind of day.

STREET?

Vintage Fashion

I myself bought two lovely sequin tops from the shop- currently in fashion, similar tops are be-ing sold in River Island and Topshop for £45-£60 each, one of the tops I bought was £15 and the other was £20 – and I won’t see anyone else out wearing the same top as me!

Digbeth is filled with vintage clothes shops, some better well known than others. Cow vintage is probably the most

well known in the area as a local vintage shop – it is one of the largest in the area. The shop has wide selection, interestingly displayed vintage clothing and accessories; they hang from the ceiling, walls and rails. Out of all the different sections in Cow Vintage I found the fur coat section the most appealing (although I am against the use of fur- but if it’s vintage it may as well be used rather than wasted) as the other vintage shops did not have such a high standard of beautifully kept coats. Although Cow Vintage is very large and filled with vintage wear, my favourite vintage shop in Digbeth is ‘Vintage Inn’ – which is just on your left as you walk into the Custard factory area past the lit sign. There’s warmth to the shop- it has a lot of character, a small hide-away for lost treasures. As soon as you walk in you’re greeted by a friendly face behind the till desk covered in vintage posters- as if you have been invited to her house. There is a record section on the left where there are sectioned by decades from the Beatles to Wham. The isles are bursting with clothes all hung on rails, again sectioned by appearance- there is also a large men’s section including accessories such as shoes, belts and bags. In the far corner of the shop there are boards buried by novelty badges, and another blanketed by military badges. Behind you are old worn suit cases – surely too perfect to be taken on another flight.

SOHO RD.