Rolling at the Tower 

Rolling at the Tower - Teaser 2 Final Mastered.mp4

We are creating a community documentary about the history of roller skating in Birmingham which started in 1871 with the building of the Tower Ballroom at the Edgbaston Reservoir in Ladywood. The Tower Ballroom was recently demolished to make space for luxury flats. Ladywood is an area which is under threat of gentrification due to its closeness to the city centre, and is currently earmarked for demolition, threatening the erasure of its strong working class history. 

The area is one of the most deprived, one of the youngest, and most diverse areas in Europe. It is an area in Birmingham where many refugees and other displaced people first arrive, and still has a relatively high level of social housing. It has developed from being a mostly white working class area in the 1800s to an incredibly diverse area now. Newly arrived people and people of colour often struggle to connect to the history of the city, as portrayals of Birmingham’s heritage primarily focus on the white industrial history. 

With this project, we would like to break the disconnect by inviting people to explore the city's history and ”own it”. The aim of this project is to make history accessible to everyone, through organising heritage research meetups, and creating training opportunities for research. These workshops will focus on the history of roller skating at the Tower Ballroom and culminate in the creation of a short documentary film. We will work as community researchers to create and explore the history and importance of skating to these diverse communities. Additionally, we will document our research journey through publishing blogs and articles about the topics discussed at the workshops and also work on a community shout-out to find and collect more roller skating memories of the Tower. This project will continue the development and support of the massively overlooked roller skating community in Birmingham.

You may also be interested in...