Digbeth Institute
Encyclopedia
Digbeth Institute is a civic building in Digbeth
Digbeth
Digbeth is an area of Birmingham, England. Following the destruction of the Inner Ring Road, Digbeth is now considered a district within Birmingham City Centre. As part of the Big City Plan, Digbeth is undergoing a large redevelopment scheme that will regenerate the old industrial buildings into...

, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

It is now operated as the hmv Institute, a 2,400 capacity music venue. It has three rooms: the main auditorium with a 1,500 capacity, the smaller library which holds up to 600 people and the 300-capacity 'The Temple'.

History

Designed by Arthur Harrison, it was officially opened January 16, 1908 by the wife of the Pastor of Carrs Lane Church, John Henry Jowett, as an institutional church attached to Carr's Lane Congregational Church. In the week that followed, it hosted a variety of acts. The area which surrounded it was predominantly slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...

s and industrial.

In 1954, the building was put up for sale by the trustees as they felt the building was not needed for its originally intended use. It was bought by Birmingham City Council
Birmingham City Council
The Birmingham City Council is the body responsible for the governance of the City of Birmingham in England, which has been a metropolitan district since 1974. It is the most populated local authority in the United Kingdom with, following a reorganisation of boundaries in June 2004, 120 Birmingham...

 in 1955 for £65,000 and was used as a civic hall.

People known to have made speeches at the Digbeth Institute include Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...

, Henry Usborne
Henry Usborne
Henry Charles Usborne was a British Labour politician who defected to the Liberals.Henry Usborne was born in Leamington, Warwickshuire, educated at Bradfield College and read Engineering at Cambridge....

, Florence L. Barclay
Florence L. Barclay
Florence Louisa Barclay was an English romance novelist and short story writer.-Biography:She was born Florence Louisa Charlesworth in Limpsfield, Surrey, England, the daughter of the local Anglican rector. One of three girls, she was a sister to Maud Ballington Booth, the Salvation Army leader...

 and Herbert Hensley Henson
Herbert Hensley Henson
Herbert Hensley Henson was an Anglican priest, a controversialist and Bishop of Durham...

.

In 1987, the building was used as a film studio by the Birmingham Film and Video Workshop for the Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 film 'Out Of Order'. The venue later appeared onscreen again, when it played a part as one of the main locations in the feature film 'Lycanthropy', filmed in 2005-2006.

During the 2000s
2000s
File:2000s decade montage3.png|From left, clockwise: The World Trade Center towers, in the wake of the September 11 attacks; the Euro enters into European currency in 2002; a statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled during the Iraq War; U.S. troops heading toward an army helicopter during the War in...

 the venue was called The Sanctuary and was the original home of Godskitchen
Godskitchen
Godskitchen is an international superclub brand which is associated with dance music and organises events, particularly in the UK and US. The company runs a club night of the same name at their nightclub AIR, in Birmingham, England and has an in-house music label...

. It also played host to famous club nights such as Atomic Jam
Atomic Jam
Atomic Jam the largest and the most influential Techno events in the United Kingdom. Its home is the Que Club, a cavernous cathedral type space, easily holding in excess of 2000 people.-Overview:...

, Uproar, Slinky, Sundissential
Sundissential
Sundissential is a dance music club started in Birmingham, England, in the 1990s. Originally hosted in various venues in the city, the event started as an after normal club hours event and exploited loopholes in Licensing laws of the United Kingdom to allow alcohol to be sold on a Sunday to...

, Athletico, Ramshackle, Insurrection, Inukshuk, Atomic Jam and Panic.

Fugazi performed a sold-out concert at the venue as part of their last ever UK tour, in support of The Argument
The Argument
The Argument was released by Dischord Records on October 16, 2001, along with their EP, Furniture + 2, almost 4 years after the release of End Hits. The album was met with critical and commercial success entering the Billboard charts and selling 174,000 copies in its first week of release...

on October 22, 2002 which was later released as Volume 28 of their Fugazi Live Series
Fugazi Live Series
The Fugazi Live Series is a series of live recordings by American post-hardcore band Fugazi, released on CD in 2004 and 2005 and also on the official Dischord Records Fugazi Live Series website for download beginning on December 1, 2011.- Background:...

.

Many influential hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...

 artists performed at the venue including Redman and Keith Murray
Keith Murray (rapper)
Keith Murray is an American rapper and a member of the rap trio Def Squad, which includes fellow rappers Redman and Erick Sermon.-Music career:...


Reopening

After a £4 million refurbishment, the hmv institute reopened its doors on 18 September 2010. The reopening featured performances on the night from Guillemots' frontman Fyfe Dangerfield and Ned's Atomic Dustbin.

Exterior

The exterior is a mixture of red brick and grey terracotta
Architectural terracotta
Terracotta, in its unglazed form, became fashionable as an architectural ceramic construction material in England in the 1860s, and in the United States in the 1870s. It was generally used to supplement brick and tiles of similar colour in late Victorian buildings.It had been used before this in...

. The grey terracotta forms the more ornate features of the façade including the three towers, the 1.65 metre tall allegorical figures and the window and door frames. The six allegorical figures are believed to be the work of John Evans, the chief modeller for Gibbs & Canning. Two hold open books and two have musical instruments (a third's instrument is lost). The final figure holds a purse, representing public charity. The drawings of the building by Arthur Harrison do not include the figures, indicating that these were probably added in 1909. The building is Grade B locally listed.
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