This panel discussion focuses on the ongoing initiatives and projects that engage with the creative culture sector (including live music) in the West Midlands due to the upcoming Commonwealth Games 2022 against the backdrop of the Brexit and COVID-19. The panelist will talk about Birmingham’s preparations for the Commonwealth Games and its cultural programme, engagement with various stakeholders, and the challenges and opportunities posted by those two historical events. The sensitivity of the region and the city to the effects of Brexit and COVID-19 on the ‘cultural tourism’ economy place it at the centre of the local and the global in the creative culture economy.

The ongoing initiatives and projects behind this panel discussion involve the combination of labours taken by the Commonwealth Games 2022 Culture Programme crew, the Birmingham City Council (BCC), and Birmingham Live Music Project (BLMP). We will hear from Martin Green CBE, Chief Creative Office behind the Commonwealth Games 2022 Culture Programme, Symon Easton, Head of Cultural Development from the Birmingham City Council, and Patrycja Rozbicka, the principal investigator in the Birmingham Live Music Project.

The panel discussion will outline some of the ongoing initiatives and projects, and will summarise data available in the BLMP, hoping to answer how an urban geographical area that is tied into national and international mechanisms can work to sustain its creative culture ecology in the face of uncertainty of the Brexi-Covid duo.

Moderator: Craig Hamilton, a Research Fellow in the School of Media at Birmingham City University (BLMP Team).

Panel members:

• Martin Green CBE, Chief Creative Office behind the Commonwealth Games 2022 Culture Programme.
• Symon Easton, Head of Cultural Development from the Birmingham City Council
• Patrycja Rozbicka, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, Birmingham (BLMP Team).