Grand Union have been working with Stoford developments to create two new artist commissions at the new BBC Tea Factory Development in Digbeth, Birmingham during 2025/26.
Tea Factory sSite Visit with Jasleen Kaur, Digbeth, 2025. Image courtesy of Grand Union.
The Tea Factory, the new home of BBC HQ will open in 2027. This landmark development is revitalising the historic former Typhoo factory building into a new carbon efficient production facility. The two commissions present the opportunity for artists to explore the conditions of regeneration for the many different communities of Digbeth. Examining the conditions on the ground in specific and locally sensitive manner whilst also speaking to the nationally significant context of arts and regenerative practice.
Jasleen Kaur (Turner Prize Winner 2024) has been commissioned to create a new Landmark Public Artwork for the new square, making visible the invisible aspects of the industrial histories of exchange and transfer of goods.
Whilst Infinite Opera led by Roxanne Korda & Daniel Blanco Albert (Birmingham Based Experimental Opera Company) will be presenting a multi-site operatic community performance-installation that follows multiple simultaneous narratives, inspired by the lived experiences of local residents, workers, and the industrial and cultural heritage of the area.
Grand Union’s presence within the evolving Digbeth ecology over the last 14 years has enabled us to develop an intrinsic knowledge of the area, with all its textures and subjectivities. Through these commissions we are interested in exploring how this new development is to be connected to the existing communities that live and breathe the realities of the Digbeth area.
Jo Capper, Grand Union’s Co-Programme Director says “We are so happy and excited to be working with Infinite Opera and Jasleen for these commissions, both new art works will help to develop deeper connections and meanings for Digbeth past, present, and future as the wider area transforms and regenerates.”
We want these commissions to embed and evolve the potential of how the arts sector can work with developers to build a cultural programme – enabling a new life and purpose for a building that makes sense within its community. Building reciprocal actions, that are founded on trust, and one that values the role of culture in relation to regeneration.