Digbeth was supposed to be the future. Once crowned “Britain’s coolest neighbourhood,” this corner of Birmingham was written up in glossy magazines and talked about in the same breath as London’s Shoreditch or Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Artists moved in, old factories became creative workspaces, and the streets buzzed with the promise of a new kind of city living. It was the backdrop for Peaky Blinders, with its moody, atmospheric alleys practically made for period drama. The show’s creator, Steven Knight, believed in the place so much that he opened a production studio there in October last year, and the BBC is due to set up a flagship headquarters nearby next year. All the right boxes seemed ticked: culture, money, fame, momentum. And yet, residents now describe a very different Digbeth. They talk of a district that has become a “slum” in parts, a place where graffiti covers nearly every wall, rubbish piles up on pavements, and crime stalks the night-time streets. The contrast is jarring. A neighbourhood that was meant to rival Salford’s MediaCity has, in the eyes of many who live and work there, been allowed to rot around the glossy new developments. The symbol of that decline is the iconic mosaic of President John F. Kennedy, unveiled in 1968, five years after his assassination. It once stood as a proud piece of public art. Now it is defaced, scrawled over by vandals who seem to answer to no one. For locals, it is not just a damaged mural. It is proof that the soul of Digbeth is being lost, one ugly tag at a time.
Walk through Digbeth today, and the first thing you notice is the chaos on the walls. Street art used to be part of the area’s charm — colourful, imaginative, sometimes political. It drew visitors and photographers, and it made Digbeth feel like a gallery without a roof. But residents say that spirit has curdled into something far uglier. Now anyone with a marker or a spray can appears to think they can scrawl their name on any surface, no matter how historic or beautiful. “The graffiti issue is a massive problem,” says Natalie Freeman, 39, who works in the Custard Factory, the creative hub that houses small businesses. “It was always just street art, but vandals just tag away with no repercussions now, and almost every street is covered in it. There’s never anybody to stop them either.” Natalie is not talking about a few stray tags. She is describing a takeover. Empty shopfronts, residential doors, bus stops, heritage buildings — all of it is being layered in paint and ink. And where the graffiti is thickest, other problems follow. Fly-tipping has become routine, with old mattresses, broken furniture and black bags of rubbish dumped in alleys and car parks. It is grim, she says. It feels neglected. And at night, that neglect turns into fear. “People say it’s still a good nightlife, but that can come with crime as well,” she adds. “There’s been plenty of stabbings in Digbeth, and a man was murdered at The Crane club a few years back.” She pauses before summing up the deeper frustration: “They’ve pumped lots of money into certain projects in a tiny radius instead of focusing on Digbeth as a whole.” In other words, a few shiny buildings cannot mask what is happening on the streets around them.
Jamie, another local resident, sees it all from a slightly different angle. He remembers when Digbeth was genuinely exciting, a place where independent shopkeepers, artists and small business owners supported each other. That atmosphere made the area special. But now, he says, the graffiti has “got out of hand.” “People are seeing the street art as meaning anyone can paint anything on any wall, and it is starting to look a right mess,” he explains. The defacing of the Kennedy mural particularly angers him. “A mural should be pretty sacred and kept up to date. It’s not right people doing things like that.” He is not blind to the fact that parts of Digbeth have been cleaned up. Some blocks around the new developments are smart and tidy. But just a few steps away, the rot returns. “Some places have been kept clean, but in others it is starting to look really bad,” he says. That patchwork of neglect sends a clear message: no one is in charge, no one is watching, and no one cares enough to protect the things that made Digbeth worth visiting in the first place. The independent stores that once defined the area are now drifting away, too, because they simply cannot afford the rising rents that come with regeneration. One by one, the quirky coffee shops, vintage sellers and family-run businesses are closing or moving out. The people who gave Digbeth its identity are being priced out, and what is left behind is a strange hybrid of expensive new developments and decaying old streets. It is, as Natalie puts it, a double-edged sword. Money has arrived, but it has been aimed at the wrong targets, and the heart of the district has been torn out along the way.
Underneath the visual decay, there is a darker and more painful reality. Several serious crimes in recent years have left their mark on Digbeth, and for many families, that has made the area feel dangerous in a way that no amount of cool murals can fix. In December 2022, Cody Fisher, a 23-year-old semi-professional footballer, was stabbed to death on the dance floor of The Crane nightclub on Boxing Day. He was young, popular, and had his whole life in front of him. Two people, Remy Gordon and Kami Carpenter, were later convicted of his murder. The same year, Jinming Zhang, a 41-year-old Chinese national, was murdered in a flat in the area. His killer has never been caught. And in 2021, 20-year-old Ashley Day was stabbed to death with a Rambo knife at a flat party that had been promoted on social media. These are not abstract statistics. They are human tragedies, and they have left residents feeling exposed. One office worker, who did not want to be named, puts it bluntly: “I won’t let my daughters come into town anymore, and Digbeth has started attracting the wrong crowd. It used to be one of the best nights out in the city, but it’s not safe. It looks a right dump in parts now.” Her words echo what many people in the area think but are sometimes afraid to say aloud: that Digbeth has become a place parents warn their children about, a place where a night out can end in disaster. The crime rate supports the fear. Police statistics show that Digbeth is now one of the highest-crime areas in Birmingham, with nearly 200 offences recorded per 1,000 residents — well above the national average. And there is an extra layer of discomfort in the fact that the local MP is none other than Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, the very person at the centre of national law and order debates. For locals, it feels like a cruel irony: if this neighbourhood cannot be made safe, whose can?
And yet, the regeneration machine keeps rolling. Digbeth is at the centre of a 20-year masterplan, with 11 development sites earmarked for 35 plots across the area. The plans were launched at the UK Real Estate, Investment and Infrastructure Forum in May 2025, with promises of new homes, new workspaces, new life. West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker has been ambitious, even grandiose, in his vision. At previous events, he promised that “Digbeth will be bigger, better and bolder than Salford’s MediaCity,” a statement designed to signal confidence. Millions of pounds have already been invested in glitzy projects. Steven Knight’s studios are open. The BBC is coming. The area is being positioned as a creative and digital powerhouse, a place where jobs and innovation can transform the fortunes of the whole region. But residents cannot help noticing that the money always seems to land in a concentrated cluster, close to the big new buildings, while the rest of Digbeth continues to struggle. The streets where people actually live are still covered in graffiti. The back alleys are still used as dumping grounds. The nights are still frightening. There is a disconnect between the brochures and the reality, between the vision of a media city and the daily experience of people trying to get to work or walk home safely. Natalie Freeman’s criticism is a good summary of the problem: “They’ve pumped lots of money into certain projects in a tiny radius instead of focusing on Digbeth as a whole.” Birmingham City Council has been contacted for comment on the situation, but for the people on the ground, words are no longer enough. They have seen promises before. They have watched the scaffolding go up and the glittering openings happen. They have also seen their own streets left behind.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Digbeth is not that it has become dangerous or dirty; it is that nobody asked the people who made it special what they needed. Regeneration should not mean erasing everything that came before. It should mean building on the strengths of a community, supporting the small businesses, cleaning up the public spaces, and protecting the cultural landmarks that gave the area its reputation. The graffiti problem, the fly-tipping, the violence — all of these are symptoms of neglect, not causes. They thrive when people feel no ownership over their surroundings, when they sense that authority is absent, and when the softer, human side of a neighbourhood is ignored in favour of flashy developments. Digbeth’s residents are not calling for an end to investment. They are calling for balance. They want the new studios and the BBC, yes, but they also want to be able to walk down the street without seeing another wall defaced. They want their children to go out at night without fear. They want the small independent businesses that survived for decades to be able to afford their rents. They want the JFK mosaic restored, not because it is simply a piece of art, but because it represents a time when this place cared about beauty and memory and shared public spaces. Digbeth was never just a postcode. It was a promise — a promise that old industrial spaces could become cultural homes, that artists and entrepreneurs could build something together, that Birmingham had a heart that could compete with anywhere in the country. That promise is still there, buried under the graffiti and the rubbish and the crime. It is not too late. But it will take more than money. It will take listening to the people who actually live there, and remembering that a neighbourhood is made of human beings, not just booms and buildings. For now, Digbeth remains a warning and a hope all at once: a place that shows what happens when development forgets its people, and a reminder that with the right care, a broken neighbourhood can still be brought back to life.
