Wholesale Memory

Preserving the heritage and stories of Birmingham's historic Wholesale Market. We are working with traders, staff and customers to capture their tales of this unique place, before it is closed forever in 2018. We have received the kind support of the Heritage Lottery fund to make this project possible. This blog also details our 2015 project, working at the associated Sunday market.

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Derelict market takes centre stage

Former Birmingham Wholesale Market welcomes performance artists before demolition.

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'Confusion combined with masterpiece – an immense, intense daring celebration of space-piracy – @friction_arts are the ultimate zone-clones'

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Doorstep History on Smithfield Birmingham Wholesale Market closure

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No more meat at the Old Wholesale Market

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Two weeks on at the old fish, meat and poultry 

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‘We’ll win customers at new market,’ say Birmingham traders

With new site close to M6 corridor, wholesalers think they can steal business from likes of Wolverhampton, Leicester and Nottingham

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Fresh start for traders as relocated Birmingham Wholesale Market opens for business | TheBusinessDesk.com

It is one of the largest integrated wholesale markets in Europe

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Major live performance & exhibition to take place inside Birmingham's Wholesale Markets! - M7 PR

A major live performance and exhibition will take place inside Birmingham’s famous Wholesale Markets, Pershore Street, Birmingham from Wednesday 30 May running until Sunday 3 June 2018 celebrating the end of nearly 900 years of unbroken market history on the site. ‘EVERYTHING MUST GO’ offers a rare opportunity for audiences to gain access to the …

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Friction Arts on Twitter

“In light of current news, some archive footage of the markets during the road races + gratuitous flying bloke. Last chance to visit at the end of the month because #everythingmustgo - https://t.co/EevZ6vWFFK https://t.co/eT1U4FQIWz”

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Wholesale Market site springs back to life - as major tourist attraction

Music and actors will bring the Birmingham Wholesale Markets site back to life

Wholesale market to re-open for five days - 30th May to 3rd June: http://www.frictionarts.com/project/wholesale-memory-everything-must-go/

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The old wholesale market plaque reads like a tombstone outside the market entrance.  It’s eerily quiet walking about the market with a couple of traders taking their last opportunity to pick up furniture and the last of their possessions.  The silence is broken momentarily by a fire alarm and the invasion of a hundred builders.

Last, last chance to see #Everythingmustgo 30th May to 3rd June:

http://www.frictionarts.com/project/wholesale-memory-everything-must-go/

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When did they decide to close Birmingham Wholesale Market?

We don’t know when the decision was made, but Consultants working with BCC were already proposing the demolition and relocation in 1991.  Here’s a couple of quotes from this public document:

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Sir Frank Price, who was a key figure in the Modernist redevelopment of Birmingham in the 1950s and 60s, has sadly died aged 95.  | Birmingham Updates

Born in a back-to-back court in a Hockley slum in 1922, Sir Frank Price, who has died aged ninety-five, was a key figure in the Modernist redevelopment of Birmingham in the 1950s and 60s, and was the last of a remarkable group of self-made and largely self-educated Labour politicians who dominated political life in the city during the postwar decades. A successful businessman with a famously brusque – even aggressive – manner, Price may not have seemed a likely utopian, but the deep seated anger at the poverty and indignity he endured in his youth that led him to join the Young Communist League as a teenager never left him, even as his politics moderated towards a reformist socialism. First elected to Birmingham City Council for the St Paul's ward in 1949 – at the time he was employed as a toolmaker; his employer had not expected him to win and he was dismissed from his job a few weeks after the election – he quickly gained a reputation for outspoken behaviour and pugnacious

Our archive contains the New Birmingham’ booklet outlining his an dManzoni’s modernist vision for Birmingham of which the Smithfield Wholesale Market was an important part

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Some images from the last couple of days trading