In 2024 we received a British Academy SHAPE Inspire and Engage grant to produce an exhibition to help people look more closely at the world around them. We used the route of Birmingham’s 27-mile circular bus route (the Number 11 / Outer Circle) to highlight the city’s landscape and its fascinating history. We selected 23 sites around the route for Stan’s Café Theatre Company and photographer Ming de Nasty to take photographs of passers-by holding signs pointing to places of interest. Prof Kathryn Moore and Dr Alex Albans worked with Prof Carl Chinn MBE and staff at the Library of Birmingham’s local studies collection to select artefacts from the Library archive relating to each of these places and write an accompanying narrative.
Online exhibition
click the image to view each place from the exhibition, with extended text and hyperlinks to find out more.
Find out for yourself
Visit the Library of Birmingham Archives and Collection
Search the Archive and Heritage Catalogue
Artefact: The future water supply of Birmingham. Elan Valley Scheme. A lecture delivered in the Birmingham and Midland Institute, September 7th 1891.
Images of the varied landscape around the route of the number 11 bus
I am the County Commissioner for Birmingham and one of my aims while I am
in office is to celebrate Birmingham more and bring it alive for our girls and leaders. Many of whom just really know where they live. We are going to develop a challenge with a badge around the No. 11 route. So I am very interested in the exhibition and would have loved to
Have gone on the tour on Thursday so any tips or highlights are very welcome.
Hi Janice, what a fabulous idea, and such an important part of young people’s lives.
We’d love to help explore what this could be, and it’d be great to talk more about this if you’d like to.
I’ll be in touch.
My thought on “Number 11: Know Your Place’ is about how many children (as I was in the 1970s, from Selly Oak to Harborne) have travelled to and from school on the Number 11?
Now pay attention children, time for sums – and put your phone away at the back there!
The Outer Circle has been running for one-hundred years, each child is at school for say five years, that’s roughly twenty sets. I don’t know about your school journeys but mine were always over half-full with excited kids on perhaps three or four peak-time buses; call it one hundred each day? There were three or four main schools on my three-mile section, so estimate one school for each of the twenty-seven mile Outer Circle? And don’t forget, there are passengers approaching school from two directions.
So we have: 20x100x27x2 = 108,000. Maybe an over-estimate given today’s (over) use of cars instead of public transport, call it 50,000. Wow, aren’t we a special group!
(Ahem, perhaps my teacher could check my maths………..)
Ding-Ding!!
This celebration of the number 11 is very special to me. My Nan took me to so many special places around Brum on this bus from where we lived near Sarehole Mill.
Your exhibition has inspired me to record birds along the whole 27 mile route on 7th September 2024 in memory of my late father and to celebrate our City of Nature and the many green spaces that can be visited and enjoyed along the Number 11 route.
History builds pride in place and community, so I would like to thank everyone behind this project for creating it. It will strengthen the city of Birmingham!
I am happy to help with the project’s legacy work where I can.
Hi Chris, thank you for your encouraging feedback. We’ve heard so many stories of how the number 11 played an important part of their childhood, and are glad that it sparked happy memories of your Nan.
Your idea of recording birds around the route is brilliant – we’re convinced that the route is so much more than a means to get from A to B, and could be used in so many different ways to strengthen the vibrancy of the city. Please let us know how your bird survey goes – it’d be great to try and record this in some way.
What interesting places on the number 11 bus route would you point out if you were giving a tour?
Very close to Blakesley Hall is Old Yardley Conservation Area, one of the first set up in Birmingham in the late 1960s. The area includes St Edburgha’s Church and along with the conservation area creates a village feel. Part of the area is closed to traffic. There are many listed buildings including a Tudor building which was once a school.
Many Brummies don’t even know this area exists and that they can visit a quiet, peaceful village just off the Number 11 route.
This area along with Blakesley Hall is now a Cultural Action Area (under the banner Historic Yardley) and hosts cultural and community events open to all.