New Birmingham Canal Festival

THE Canal & River Trust is organising a new festival to take place along the Birmingham city centre canals.

The event will take palce on the weekend of 16th and 17th of September with a floating market moored near Arena Birmingham—it changes its name from the Barclaycard Arena in September—that will offer all manner of things including a range of foods and handmade crafts.

Live music and outdoor activities

The recently opened Canal House—another name change as it was The Brindley Pub—will have live music and outdoor activities for children including face painting.

Regency Wharf will be showing films from the Flatpack Film Festival in an outdoor cinema and other screenings will take place on a narrowboat moored in Gas Street Basin. It will be another chance to see Cliff Richard’s 1973 film Take Me High—in which Cliff moves to Birmingham, lives on a narrowboat and sets about inventing a new burger (the Brumburger)—as well as a selection of other canal-related short films.

Working boat

Coinciding with Birmingham Heritage Week the event will also enable people to explore an historic working boat moored outside the Roundhouse. Visitors will be able to step onboard and discover what life would have been like for a boatman and his family on a working narrowboat at the height of the Industrial Revolution.

The festival will be open from 11am to 5pm over the weekend.