00:00BCU often gets treated as if it sprang up with the glass and steel at Curzon Street.
00:07The archive shows a longer line. It begins in the 1840s with a government school of design,
00:13moves through the old polytechnic era, then into university status in the 90s and the name it uses now.
00:20This book brings that journey into one place with a hundred images instead of dense text.
00:25It gives a sharper sense of what kind of institution Birmingham has lived with for nearly two centuries.
00:31It's a long history. It's quite a complicated history.
00:36And one of the reasons for telling it through a hundred images, as I've done in this book,
00:41is to reflect the diversity of its origins and some of the amazing achievements that students throughout the years have made possible.
00:50The pictures go beyond old buildings and group shots.
00:53They trace the shift from small specialist colleges to eight university training nurses,
00:59teachers, designers, engineers and musicians who mostly stay in this region.
01:04Behind the portrait sits a simple truth.
01:07Birmingham schools, hospitals, studios and small firms are full of people who came through these corridors.
01:13For a university teaching tens of thousands, the question is how far that influence has carried beyond campus walls.
01:21So it's the amazing imprint, I think, on regular life, you might say ordinary life, that so many of our graduates have had.
01:29And not just here, because BCU is of course a very international university as well.
01:34So we feel the effect of all of that design work in China, in India, all across the world.
01:40One of the things I always say to people is actually the influence of BCU students has been felt on pretty much every continent
01:48and in pretty much every way of life for people living on those continents.
01:54There's a sharper point beneath the celebration. If the history runs this deep, it raises the question why many still see BCU as a new or secondary option next to the older civic university of the road.
02:07A project like this can reclaim heritage, but it can also look like image management in a crowded higher education market.
02:14In a city where students are sold hard on branding, the line between honest history and polished profile can blur.
02:21That tension sits in these pages.
02:24Lots of institutions trace their roots back to colleges.
02:29So, yes, I mean, it's certainly true that in writing this book, I wanted to make people more aware, not just of the length of history,
02:36but of the diversity of achievements that students and staff have engaged in.
02:42I think there is a certain amount of snobbery to do with the way people view different universities.
02:50But the book makes the story very clear that many of the things that have come out of BCU and its constituent parts have been truly extraordinary.
Comments