Digbeth has changed, is changing, will change again. Touted as the coolest postcode in the UK in 2025, Digbeth is undergoing a rapid transformation after four decades of slow regeneration and DIY culture led experimentation and community building.
As part of the new Digbeth landscape, artists Helen Cammock, Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan, and Sarah Silverwood have been invited to create new public artworks for Digbeth, curated by Eastside Projects and commissioned by Birmingham City Council and West Midlands Combined Authority. Launching in Summer 2026, the new works are site-specific and place-sensitive – each taking a different approach to reflect and celebrate Digbeth’s layered heritage, rich ecologies and diverse communities.
Helen Cammock’s glass enamel artworks ‘Something in Nothing’ (2025) open up conversations – amongst themselves, with the public and their surroundings – about the life cycles and cultural flows of Digbeth’s past, present and future. The artwork is made of three texts that address pedestrians who may know the area well or are experiencing Digbeth for the first time.
Clad in colourful hand-made tiles Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan’s ‘The Digbeth Cylinder’ (2026) playfully references the visual languages of Digbeth’s architectural and civic heritage, shuffling to and fro between the decorative and the functional. ‘The Digbeth Cylinder’ is an artwork made of ceramics and concrete and a series of workshops with South and City College Birmingham and Chandos Primary School, with billboard posters across Digbeth thanks to JACK ARTS, BUILDHOLLYWOOD.
Sarah Silverwood’s ‘Undercurrents’ (2025) has been developed with young people from St.Basil’s Youth Hub, and brings the pavement across the high street to life with patterns incorporating super-sized creatures and features of the River Rea that runs beneath it. The artwork is made of brightly coloured thermoplastic, heated onto the dark grey band of block pavers as if we can see an enlarged x-ray view through the street of the microscopic flora and fauna below.
Further east down the high street, 10 minutes walk from the former Ty-phoo tea factory, Amy Ching-Yan Lam has sown an opium poppy meadow at the end of the tram line, creating a living legacy to her Birmingham 2022 festival project ‘Looty Goes to Heaven’. ‘Looty’s Meadow’ (2025) is in memory of Looty, a small Pekingese dog stolen by the British Army from a Chinese imperial palace in 1860 and gifted to Queen Victoria.
These artworks continue the art experiments of Digbeth towards a future sculpture park of creativity, beginning the process of the new ‘Companion Culture: Four Actions for Digbeth’ cultural strategy to Be Good Neighbours, Secure Cultural Space, Be Inclusive and Be A Lighthouse.
Click here for interview with Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan