A Conversation for Birmingham, The Midlands, UK
Birmingham Arts Lab
Asteroid Lil - Offstage Presence Started conversation Mar 24, 2000
Birmingham (oh, how I miss you) has the oldest surviving Arts Lab in the country. Not just surviving but thriving, it celebrated its thirtieth birthday last year. Originally founded in a huge old vacant building behind the Birmingham Settlement on Summer Lane in Newtown, the original Arts Lab was a spinoff of the London Arts Lab, and was the last great landmark of the expiring Sixties counterculture.
The Birmingham Arts Lab was a center for experimental theatre and film, for screenprinting and poetry readings, and for general artistic goings on. There was also a small commune there (in which I lived, briefly with one of the founding members).
And, in brief, although it has relocated and smartened up, it still is almost all of those things except a commune. Long live the Arts Lab!
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Birmingham Arts Lab
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