For March’s Digbeth First Friday, we will be hosting a special screening of Matt Tyrnauer’s 2016 documentary, ‘Citizen Jane: Battle for the City.’
During the day we will be hosting a community activation day from 2 pm. We invite our neighbours, friends, and anyone concerned with Digbeth and its future to come and help us map out the alternative community plan for Digbeth. We will have soup and refreshments throughout the afternoon for us all to share.
There will be an initial screening of the film 3.00 – 4.30 pm. Please drop in.
Following this we will have a second screening at 6.30 pm, preceded by a short introduction. Join us for a chat and a drink.
The film is one hour and thirty-two minutes long and will be shown with subtitles.
Jane Jacobs was an American author, activist, and theorist who organised grass-roots activity, campaigned, and wrote to protect communities and neighbourhoods during the post-war ‘urban renewal’ of New York in the 1960s. Jacobs recognised that the proposed slum clearances and new developments of this era were not designed to serve the people living in inner-city New York, but were rather intended to appeal to the wealthy commuter communities based in the suburbs. This film documents the conflict between Jacobs and Robert Moses, the urban planner and public official who supported demolishing and rebuilding of historic New York to create a modern, uniform city, regardless of what the community living there wanted and needed.
In The Economy of Cities, Jacobs’ writings explored how Birmingham’s industrial growth and development could be seen as ‘messy and inefficient’, however, she said that independent, small-part, industrial manufacturing created self-owned businesses to become part of a potential thriving economy. It is important at this particular moment in time to retell Jane Jacobs’ story and think about it in Digbeth’s current context – the intensive regeneration that has already begun in the area. The film echoes themes and questions raised by our previous exhibition, A Bedroom for Everyone by Ed Webb-Ingall, relating to the power of grass-roots activism and the rights of communities in the face of development and the ongoing housing crisis.
