Teach Your Business How to Swim: Rise and Fall in Digtopia

Teach your business how to swim: Rise and Fall in Digtopia is an upcomping exhibition that pays homage to the story of Digbrew Co., delving into the dialogue between a crude reality and the fiction they generated to empower their existence as a brewing venture.

The opening celebration will be held 5pm-7pm on 27th March, and the exhibition will be open 10am-5pm on 25th March and 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, April. It is at The Shell in the Parkside Building, Curzon street, Birmingham. For tickets click here.

Having closed its doors in January 2023, Digbrew Co. and its history are explored in this exhibition as a lens to interrogate Digbeth, a promised land marketed as an utopia, but often experienced as a dystopia by many through the brutal processes of gentrification and a global pandemic. Throughout the design of its labels, beer pump clips, and other memorabilia inspired by nostalgia and the mythology of its own expanded universe, there is a critical vision of Birmingham socioeconomic context pre- and post-pandemic. All of these materials now are part of Birmingham City University’s ADM archive as a new collection that critically reflects a crucial time in the recent history of this city, as well as that of many others going through similar post-industrial transformations.

Curated and designed by Infinite Opera and Oliver Webb, and commissioned by the ADM’s Keeper of Archives, Dr Pedro Cravinho.

Acknowledgements: Arts, Design and Media Archive Team, ADM Exhibition Team, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Performative Arts, and ADM Digital Technical Team.