The Griffin Report: City curator on changing the image of Birmingham
ALEX NICHOLSON-EVANS is in love with her adoptive city, Birmingham. And that passion is now being applied to promoting the city in a 100-day festival of creativity. JON GRIFFIN spoke to the former teenage entrepreneur who is now Birmingham’s first City Curator.
She’s had a nose for business since she was just 13, from arranging school discos to later selling university T-shirts – and now she’s Birmingham’s first City Curator, championing the wealth of creative skills across the city.
Alex Nicholson-Evans, the newly-appointed strategic brains behind Birmingham’s inaugural 100 Days of Creativity – a marketing campaign aiming to shine a light on a summer feast of arts and culture - has come a very long way since her days as a budding teenage entrepreneur.
Smiling at the memories of her teenage exploits in her home town in Buckinghamshire, Alex recalls: “By the age of 13 I had already started running my own company – I noticed there was a gap in the market for discos. I went to a girls’ school and there was a boys’ school down the road and never the two shall meet.
“There was a bit of a gap for the two schools to socialise and have fun so I started booking DJs and village halls. The company was called The Local. I made pocket money out of that, it gave me a taste of business, I had always been really interested in filling gaps in the market.
“I remember volunteering at the local Oxfam shop when I was even younger. They had loads of designer clothes coming in. They were just being laid out with all the other clothes and I thought how silly, there is an opportunity here to bring in a different demographic to Oxfam so I created this brand for designer clothes within this little Oxfam shop in Amersham High Street.”
The former teenage disco and clothing guru, who is now looking forward to helping sell a summer of culture in Birmingham to the wider world, believes she inherited her entrepreneurial genes from her parents.
“My dad was an entrepreneur so I grew up with a family running businesses. He was into food importing and export. A little bit of flair for business definitely came from seeing my mum and dad in action.”
Her natural flair for business and aptitude for voluntary work grew during her student days at the University of Bath, where she was involved in social enterprise activities, including helping women in distant Bolivia.
“I worked on an amazing project out in Bolivia, empowering women to create alpaca wool products. We supported them exporting into the UK and selling them to the UK market. Those sorts of experiences were more transformative for me than just doing the studying.”
Graduating with a 2:1 degree in Social Sciences in 2008, she honed her entrepreneurial skills still further by launching a clothing company called Fresh Apparel in tandem with a business partner.
“The business was in essence a T-shirt distribution company. We would take the orders, take the risks and then ship them out to universities. It wasn’t going to be a winning enterprise but it was all experience, it was the first time I had been involved in straight sales, cold-calling etc.”
She combined running Fresh Apparel – which closed within a year – with voluntary work at nearby Stoke Mandeville Hospital which eventually led to a two-year spell within the NHS where she rose to the role of trauma and orthopaedics co-ordinator at the world-famous complex.
“It was a real eye-opener for me. It was a really challenging time for the NHS, there were always more people needing appointments than there were slots or surgeries available. I started to understand and learn different skills managing relationships.
“How could I get consultants to add slots where there weren’t any? How could I manage the experience of a patient calling up who wanted surgery and was told they couldn’t have it for six months?”
Her time at Stoke Mandeville came to an end when she landed a job with American-owned Globus Medical, which would in due course lead to her move to the Midlands – and to the city which would become her adopted, beloved home.
“They flew me out to Philadelphia to do my training – it all felt like a world removed from my broom cupboard turned into an office in the NHS.” Promoted to regional account manager, she moved to Birmingham in 2013 – and would soon fall in love with the Midlands capital, regardless of any initial preconceptions.
“When I moved to Birmingham, I had a perception of the city driven by London national media that was completely inaccurate. It wasn’t until I started working for Birmingham Museums Trust and I got to know the people and the city that I started to fall in love with Birmingham. Now I am in Birmingham and am of Birmingham. I love the city so deeply that it baffles me when anyone has anything negative to say about the city.”
In her new role as City Curator – which she combines with running her own Living For The Weekend events and hospitality company where she has organised the likes of Birmingham Cocktail Weekend and Birmingham Restaurant Festival – Alex is determined to fight the oft-quoted London centric image of a post-industrial city currently plagued by the recent financial problems at Birmingham City Council.
“The West Midlands Growth Company would say that the perceptions of the city are around 10 years behind where the city actually is. It is why I think the role of City Curator and a lot of work that a lot of other people are doing is so important because if we do not mobilise as a city the only stories that will be covered and the only news that will be talked about on X/Twitter is the City Council’s financial collapse.
Now I am in Birmingham and am of Birmingham. I love the city so deeply.
“Birmingham is still resilient, it is still creative, it is still extraordinary in the face of all of that. Whenever possible I want to create opportunities for people to see Birmingham for what it really is, which is an absolute gem in the UK’s crown, an extraordinary place for people to work and live in.
“It is so important that people hear that narrative, the positive stories, the excitement and innovation that is coming out of the city and not just the headlines around Section 114.”
For now, Alex is concentrating on an entirely different narrative to the City Council’s troubles – helping showcase a summer of creative delights in her adopted home city.
“My contract is with Colmore Business Improvement District (BID) but it is very much a city centre role, looking at how the BIDs could work more closely together. I feel that this role is really needed and that it can make a genuine difference.
“It allows me to make an impact in a different way and bring people together in a different way. Actually, it’s a bit of a dream role for me because it combines my love of the city, my near decade of experience in a major cultural organisation in the city and my decade of producing festivals for Living For The Weekend.”
Clearly, the former teenager who once cut her business teeth running teenage discos and selling T-shirts to impoverished students is relishing her new role as Birmingham’s first City Curator – and showing the world what the city has to offer.
This article first appeared in the May 2024 edition of Chamberlink magazine.
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