Birmingham, Europe's meeting place!
The Aston University Campus is in the centre of the exciting and vibrant city of Birmingham. Birmingham, Britain’s second city, is flourishing and is internationally recognised as a leader in leisure, entertainment, business, shopping, industry and sport. The city centre is a fusion of attractive squares, modern shopping arcades, diverse pubs, clubs and restaurants and fine museums, theatres and art galleries – truly a World City. BIRMINGHAM:
Easily AccessibleWhether by road, rail or air, travelling to and from Birmingham is easy. The city is conveniently central to an extensive network of motorways and railways. Birmingham International Airport is ten minutes away whilst London is only a 90-minute journey on the train or around two hours’ drive. Getting around Birmingham once you’re here is straightforward, with cheap and efficient bus, train, tram and taxi services. Walking is just as easy, as the city centre is now almost totally pedestrianised and is a safe and welcoming place. Europe’s Shopping Capital – Birmingham City CentreSuperb shopping facilities are as close as five minutes’ walk from the University campus. The new Birmingham Bullring shopping centre (Europe’s largest city centre shopping development) is an incredible place. It has the equivalent of over 26 football pitches worth of shops, boutiques and restaurants including the new Selfridges store, housed in one of the most striking and unique buildings anywhere in the world. The development has also proved popular with over 50 million visitors in its first year, creating a real buzz in the city centre.
All over the city centre the shopping choice is bewildering with high-fashion boutiques nestling alongside major ‘High Street’ names in a compact pedestrian centre with many undercover malls. New and exciting developments include the Birmingham Mailbox, a massive leisure and designer shopping emporium (including Armani, DKNY and Harvey Nichols stores) and home to the BBC Television Studios, right in the city centre. The historic Birmingham Jewellery Quarter (Europe’s largest), home to manufacturing jewellers, silver and goldsmiths since 1460, is an amazing place full of high quality bargains often direct from their skilled manufacturers. Located just north west of the city centre the Quarter has a signposted walking historic shopping trail. Handy for students are the numerous markets (recently totally rebuilt), which offer over 1,000 stalls with an enormous variety of goods including fresh fish, meat, fruit and vegetables all at low prices. There is a splendid range of bookshops, including a palatial branch of Waterstones, which accommodates some four miles of bookshelves on four floors, including an academic section with links to the University, and a smaller Blackwells store on campus. Festivals and EventsThe city hosts many festivals including an International Jazz Festival in the summer, a Film and Television Festival, Comedy Festival and ‘ArtsFest’ in the autumn. Broad Street is regularly used as a backdrop for street parades and other lively spectacles and throughout the year the Arcadian Centre in Chinatown is the setting for a variety of street entertainment and themed weekends.
The NEC and NIA host many of the country’s major events and exhibitions including The Motor Show, Clothes Show Live, Crufts and the BBC Good Food Show. Christmas is a magical time in Birmingham, when the city centre comes alive with lights and sounds, a Frankfurt German Christmas Market (Frankfurt is twinned with Birmingham), a 60m high Big Wheel and over 6 million shoppers and visitors. “Birmingham city centre really is a great place, packed with shops, restaurants and bars. It is a great place to make new friends and spend some important years of your life. Living so close to Birmingham city centre is so convenient. You are only a 10-minute walk to excellent nightlife and shopping or just a short taxi ride. You can easily take a break from uni life without travelling expenses or long walks” Stage and ScreenBirmingham has one of the highest concentrations of live theatre outside the West End of London; the Alexandra, Birmingham Rep, Crescent, MAC, Hippodrome, Library and Old Rep Theatres stage both traditional and more innovative works. You can also choose from a wide range of cinemas, from the large multi-screen complexes to smaller cinemas (such as the newly refurbished and restored Electric Cinema, the oldest working cinema in the UK, dating from 1909) specialising in Arthouse, foreign language and avant-garde films. Again, student discounts are available for most performances. The Star City complex, about 2 miles to the north of the city centre, boasts 30 screens and almost 6,000 seats (the UK’s largest cinema), and has restaurants, bars and shopping too. Star City is even large enough to have dedicated sets of screens for Asian (Bollywood etc.), Arthouse and classic films. Museums and Art GalleriesSome of the finest art collections in the world are to be found in Birmingham. The City Museum and Art Gallery, the Gas Hall and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts provide spectacular settings for classical and modern works, while the IKON Gallery on Brindley Place hosts challenging exhibitions and serves great coffee. Birmingham also has a wealth of museums. Cadbury World celebrates Birmingham’s chocolate industry whilst the Millennium Point and Thinktank (across the road from the campus) chronicles Birmingham’s industrial past and future and has lots of interesting buttons to press! Sport and LeisureOver the last four years or so, no other city in Europe has held more major sporting championships than Birmingham. Currently, local football teams Aston Villa (Villa), West Bromwich Albion (The Baggies), Birmingham City (The Blues), Coventry City and ‘Wolves’ are competing in England’s top two Divisions (The Premiership and Championship) and all have their home grounds within easy reach. Warwickshire County Ground at Edgbaston (3 miles south of the city centre) provides Test and county cricket games and a number of local rugby teams compete in national divisions. Major tennis tournaments are held at Edgbaston Priory and international golf tournaments at The Belfry, the National Golf Centre (including the Ryder Cup). The Alexander Stadium hosts international athletics, whilst the National Indoor Arena (NIA) is also the venue for over thirty indoor sports, including tennis’ Davis Cup and the 2003 World Indoor Athletics and World Badminton Championships. Leisure activities in and around Birmingham include go-karting, snowboarding and skiing (for example at Tamworth Snowdome), ice skating, tenpin bowling and paintball, whilst the city’s many parks and gardens offer space to relax in the open air. In fact, Birmingham has more square miles of open space than any other UK city, including Sutton Park, Europe’s largest urban nature reserve. Business and IndustryBirmingham is a major UK and international centre for business, commerce and industry. The city is home to numerous UK, merchant and overseas banks, over 500 law firms and is Europe’s second largest insurance market. The UK’s top accountancy and management consultancy firms have their largest offices outside London here. Birmingham has developed its reputation as ‘Europe’s Meeting Place’, attracting over 40% of the UK’s total conference trade, and over 25 million visitors a year. Birmingham is by far the UK’s largest manufacturing and engineering centre, employing over 100,000 people and contributing billions to the national economy. Major manufacturing areas include electrical and mechanical engineering, telecommunications, motor vehicle manufacture and hi-tech research. In the public sector, Birmingham is home to three universities; major medical centres of excellence and employs thousands of people in national and local government. The FutureThe city centre is always undergoing exciting changes, and the ‘Birmingham Eastside’ area just to the east of the Aston University Campus is being developed into a major new social, cultural and creative ‘learning’ quarter. Everyone at the University is excited at the prospect of Eastside taking shape and our role within it. Watch this space... Around Birmingham – beautiful open spaces close byBirmingham lies at the heart of England and is surrounded by a wealth of beautiful countryside. Historic towns and cities, picturesque villages, hills, valleys and rivers are all a short journey away. One of the most surprising features of Birmingham is that you can find real countryside within 10 miles of the city centre. Directly to the north are the beautiful Derbyshire Dales, The Peak District National Park and the cathedral city of Lichfield. Thrill seekers need look no further than the Alton Towers theme park in Staffordshire, whilst for a relaxing day in the open air, Cannock Chase and Sutton Park offer space to get away from the bustle of the city.
To the west you can visit Ironbridge – the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, surrounded by the rolling Shropshire countryside. Worcester, a historic city on the banks of the River Severn is famed for its porcelain, Elgar’s birthplace and the impressive Malvern Hills close by (less then one hour away from Birmingham). Further west, the mountains and lakes of Wales are only 90 minutes’ drive for world-class hiking, climbing and watersports, whilst only ten miles west of the city centre, the Clent Hills are perfect for a weekend stroll and a pub lunch. To the south lies Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s home town (present day base of The Royal Shakespeare Company), and historic Warwick Castle. One step further are the Cotswold hills, renowned for their honey coloured stone villages and wooded valleys. All worth a visit, these areas are located within easy and inexpensive reach of Birmingham by car, bus or train. Aston students appreciate the balance between vibrant city life and being able to get out into the country. “I was astonished how beautiful Birmingham was. The buildings, the art, the use of water. It is an extraordinary jewel of a city...I was bowled over when I was there.” A few essential Birmingham websites
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