Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, and the Pen Museum

During my week in Birmingham, I spent a lot of time in museums.

If you're a regular reader of my blog you'll know this is something that happens on most of my travels! I love museums big and small, and as well as exploring their exhibits I also like to support them by eating in their cafes whenever I can.

On my previous trip to Birmingham I'd spent a very short amount of time in the main Museum & Art Gallery - just enough to decide that I had to come back to the city for a longer trip so I could spend more time exploring all the exhibits!

I ended up spending so much time there on my return visit that I actually had to abandon some of my other plans for the trip. As well as exploring the permanent collection, I was lucky to be visiting during an excellent temporary exhibition devoted to William Morris & Andy Warhol. This exhibition was so fascinating (and so packed with interesting art and objects) that I visited it multiple times during the week (and all for free thanks to the magic of the Art Pass) 

The building itself is gorgeous - it's well worth a visit just for the architecture alone.

If you visit the museum, make sure to pop into the Edwardian Tearooms for lunch or a cuppa. The setting is fabulous, the food delicious and the service impeccable.

At the other end of the museum-size scale is Birmingham's Pen Museum: a lovely little museum, absolutely jam-packed with interesting objects relating to the city's pen trade and the history of writing.

I mean, just look at all this fabulous stuff!

I'd expected to just quickly pop in here as I worked my way around the Jewellery Quarter Heritage Trail, but ended up spending ages looking at everything and being generally delighted by it all.

Big municipal museums might have fancy buildings and famous artworks, but nothing quite beats the charm of a small museum devoted to something rather niche! The Pen Museum is just round the corner from the excellent Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, too, so you can easily fit both of them into one day.

Missed my earlier posts about my Birmingham trip? Follow the links to read about architecture, owls and the Jewellery Quarter.

Visiting Birmingham: Exploring the Jewellery Quarter

Time for another post about my trip to Birmingham (finally!).

On the first day (well, afternoon really) of my visit to the city I mostly just walked around oohing over the architecture and photographing owls.

The next morning I headed to the Jewellery Quarter: a historic area of the city which has been home to goldsmiths and silversmiths for over 200 years.

 

 
If you're visiting Birmingham and are at all interested in history this part of the city is an absolute must-see.

I recommend picking up a copy of the Jewellery Quarter Heritage Trail leaflet (PDF) from the tourist info office - it gives you an easy to follow walking route around the area and lots of interesting information to read along the way. There's a lot to see, including some really rather gorgeous buildings.

After following the trail I visited the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, about which I'd heard great things - and it did not disappoint!

The museum is based in the former factory of a jewellery manufacturing firm, Smith & Pepper. When the owners of the firm retired they just ceased trading and locked up the building, creating a fascinating time capsule of a place.

Upstairs in the museum there are galleries devoted to the history of the Jewellery Quarter, and to jewellery made from natural materials around the world, but the highlight is by far the guided factory tour. It's hugely entertaining, packed with interesting facts and amusing anecdotes, and you get to look around this incredible place!

I'll share more photos from my Birmingham adventure soon. In the meantime...

You can read about day one of my trip to Birmingham here, and read about my previous short visit to the city here. For more city breaks filled with interesting museums and fabulous architecture, click here to read about my trip to Manchester and here to read about my trip to Leeds.

Visiting Birmingham: Gorgeous Architecture (and Owls!)

When it comes to travel blogging, I am definitely a tortoise rather than a hare. I go on nice days out and the occasional holiday, I take a bunch of photos with good blogging intentions... then the photos sit on my laptop for weeks, months and sometimes years before seeing the light of day.

I don't see this as a bad thing, really. I'm not on a deadline, after all! I go places for fun, I take photos for fun and then at some point I'll probably blog about what I got up to. No pressure, just blogging about stuff when I feel like it. The only downside is that sometimes it's a bit weird starting a post with "Sooo, I went on holiday two years ago and I'm finally blogging about it! Woohoo!" Ah well.

If you don't like reading about what I got up to on my travels two years ago you should probably stop reading this post right now, because Guess What I'm Finally Blogging About Today? Haha.

 

In 2014 I went to the Blognix blogging conference in Birmingham and built a mini holiday around it, exploring Birmingham and going on a delightful day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. I enjoyed my brief visit to the city so much (and, let's be honest here, the cheap hotel prices!) that I decided to go back for a longer visit in the summer of 2015.

That summer I spoke to so many people who were going to really glamorous, far-flung destinations for their holidays. "Are you going anywhere nice this year, Laura?" "Um, I'm going to Birmingham". It doesn't sound like the most exciting holiday, does it? But I had a really brilliant time, crammed loads of great stuff into just a few days and I still have lots of things which I'd love to do/see on a future visit.

So.... what did I actually get up to on my trip? Mostly walking around the city oohing over the architecture and other historical bits and pieces, and exploring the city's excellent museums (I love museums so much).

Before my holidays in Birmingham I have to admit that I'd thought of it as a pretty bland place full of concrete. I'd only ever really been to the NEC and to assorted conferences in bland chain hotels and just had this vague impression that it wasn't really an interesting place to visit. Kind of like a bigger version of Slough?

Of course, I could not have been more wrong. Birmingham is amazing: bustling and vibrant and filled with a fantastic and really visually interesting mix of modern and Victorian architecture. When I visited it was also full of owls, for The Big Hoot trail (so much fun!). (Click here to see all the owls I spotted during my trip).

I really enjoyed wandering round the city with a tourist map in my pocket, looking up at all the interesting buildings and spotting places to explore - galleries to pop into, churches to look round, cafes to have a cuppa in, and so on.

When I visited there were some very striking floral displays in the city including this one commemorating the First World War. Lots of the museums had First World War themed exhibitions as well, it was fascinating and moving to read about the local stories from the war.

I always love learning about local history when visiting a new-to-me place: centuries of people and their stories, and how the place has grown and changed over the years. I know not everyone is a fan of museums, but for me a trip to a little local museum (or the local history gallery of the big local museum!) is a really intrinsic part of my holidays. 

I'll be chatting about one of the Birmingham museums I visited in the next post about my trip ... which I promise you won't have to wait two years for! In the meantime, you can read about my previous (very sunny!) trip to Birmingham here. For more city break goodness, click here for my trip to Manchester and here for my trip to Leeds.

The Big Hoot: Owl-Spotting in Birmingham

For my summer holiday this year I spent a week in Birmingham. I'd planned lots of fun stuff to do during my trip (including visiting lots of museums and spending a crafty day at the Festival of Quilts)... but what I wasn't expecting was for the city to be full of giant owls!

 

It turns out that Birmingham has been fillwed with a flock of owl sculptures, for an art trail called The Big Hoot. Just like the Shaun in the City trail that I've enjoyed following in London & Bristol this year, the Big Hoot is a free trail of quirkily-decorated sculptures to raise money for charity.

89 giant owl sculptures are on display across Birmingham until 27th September, along with an assortment of smaller owls decorated by local schoolchildren (as part of The Little Hoot).

I resisted the urge to spend half my holiday following the trail (I know from my experience Shaun-spotting that I'd get hooked all too easily!) but I couldn't resist taking photos of all the owls that I spotted on my travels during the week. It was really lovely to see the different designs - they cheered up even the greyest of days - and it was great to see so many people (young and old) owl-spotting and takings lots of happy owl selfies.

Want to see some more giant owls? Of course you do! :)

As well as Wise Owl, New Street Flyer, Active Owl and Swirly Whirly Birmingham Owl-land (above), I also saw... 

Alf the Penguin Owl: 

Jewellery Owl and Ozzy's Owl:

Tick-Tock and Big Brown Inky Owl:

Re-tail and Our Happy Hospit-owl:

 

Lots of Little Hoots on display at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (so much fun!):

The Ship:

 

I See a Darkness and G'owl'd:

 

 Beorma:

 

Selfie:

 

(I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I was a bit baffled by that owl being called "Selfie" but, of course, it's decorated just like the famous Selfridges store behind it. I clearly needed some more caffeine that morning!)

Starlight and Unity Within Diversity:

 

So many fun and colourful owls.

My favourites were this delighful two-sided design, The Owl and the Pussycat (so cute)...

... and the pretty, patterned, Bejewelled Owl (you guys know I'm a sucker for anything turquoise).

 

The Big Hoot runs until 27th September. Visit the website to see all the owls, get more info about the trail and download trail maps or the Big Hoot app so you can do some owl-spotting of your own!

Blognix 2014 & An Attack of Impostor Syndrome

So, it's September already and I'm only just getting round to blogging about an event about blogging that I went to back in early June. Sigh. Worst. Blogger. Ever.

Last year I saw lots of blog posts pop up in my feed about Blognix, a brand new Birmingham-based blogging conference. It looked like fun so I joined the mailing list, bought an early-bird ticket when this year's event was announced and booked myself a hotel room so I could have a lie in on the morning of the conference and turn the trip into a mini holiday, exploring the city, and visiting nearby Stratford-upon-Avon. 

When the day of the conference rolled round, I walked the short walk from my hotel....

 

... to the venue: the Custard Factory.

 

 

 

The day was jam-packed with blogging-themed talks and workshop, about everything from being a freelancer to working with brands to podcasting to taking better photos.

Some of the bloggers I chatted to were "old timers" like me, reminiscing about how much blogging has changed since "back in the day" when we first started and others were more recent converts to the world of blogging. I even chatted to one person who hadn't yet written their first post, and was still deciding exactly what she was going to blog about.

 

There were fashion and lifestyle and food bloggers, podcasters, designer/makers promoting their businesses through their blog, and craft bloggers like me. I was delighted to discover that a few people I knew "from the internet" - Jackie, Kate and Lucy - were at the conference too. It was lovely to meet them in person and to have a good natter about the different talks we'd attended.

Oh, and there was also lots of tasty food throughout the day, including homemade cakes and a bar of Blognix-branded chocolate tucked in our free goodie bags. Yum!

 

 

Now, I have to admit to feeling a bit nervous about going to this conference. This was partly the usual social butterflies where you think "I don't know anyone going to this event, what if no-one talks to me and I end up sitting on my own all Billy no mates??".

However it was also in a large part because earlier this year I was suffering from a bit of Impostor Syndrome about my blog.

After making big changes to my business last year I'd started to describe myself as "a blogger" when talking about my job - for example, my business cards currently say "Designer / Maker / Craft Writer & Blogger".

But I didn't feel like "a blogger" - I wasn't doing any of the stuff that bloggers are "supposed" to do like sponsored posts and brand collaborations and having an editorial calendar and writing traffic-increasing posts with SEO-friendly titles and making those perfect Pinterest-friendly images with post titles on them, and so on.

Almost all the How To posts I read about blogging seemed very disconnected to this crafty diary that I was writing which - technically, coincidentally - happened to be "a blog". I just made stuff and wrote about it! I wasn't doing any of this important blogger stuff that real bloggers do!

So I started to feel like my blog wasn't really a "proper" blog, and whenever I described myself as "a blogger" I felt like a bit of a fraud.

Of course, like every case of impostor syndrome this was all in my head. I write a blog, therefore I am a blogger. Obviously. But this was really not the best mood to be in when going to a blogging conference! :)

Having this moment of "oh my god I don't belong at an event like this"... and then going anyway and having a great time actually turned out to be just what I needed. As well has having a lovely day and meeting some lovely people I confronted all my weird feelings about what I "should" be doing as a blogger and realised that the only thing I "should" be doing is what works for me! (I give this advice to other people all the time, but am apparently terrible at following it in my own life, haha.)

The magic of blogging is having a space where you can do things you own way. You can write about what you like, how you like, when you like.

This summer I resolved to stop worrying about how other people blog and how I "should" be running my blog and to just focus on creating my own happy, crafty space, cherry-picking blogging tips and tricks that work for me. I now happily describe myself as "a blogger", and I've even bought a ticket for another blogging conference!

P.S. If you'd like to read more about Blognix and the different speakers and their talks, you'll find lots of the other attendees' posts about it here.