Venue: Grand Union

Join us for the final late night opening of ‘Learning to Drive in Birmingham’, a 30-minute film by artist Laisul Hoque which explores the political relationship between the people of Bangladesh and Birmingham through archival images, documentary footage and phone calls from home.

Join us for a late night opening of our current exhibition ‘Learning to Drive in Birmingham’ by artist Laisul Hoque, as part of monthly arts social Digbeth First Friday.

5-6pm: A quieter time to enjoy the exhibition, with less crowds and no bar. We kindly ask visitors to mask, and avoid wearing perfume during this time.

6-8pm: A full opening with a pay bar as part of the wider Digbeth First Friday event.

Filmed inside vehicles and among construction sites, blocked roads, and sprawling South Asian neighbourhoods on the city’s outskirts, ‘Learning to Drive in Birmingham’ shows Laisul, a Bangladeshi immigrant now living in the UK, attempting to navigate the city through driving lessons, conversations in cars, and phone calls from home. Moving between intimate conversations and urban observation, the film explores Birmingham’s deep connections to Bangladesh and its diaspora.

This work is supported by Arts Council England, Bow Arts East London Art Prize and Grand Union. With thanks to MJM Bespoke for fabrication and installation.

Join us at Grand Union from 5-8pm on Friday, 3 July for the launch of ‘Learning to Drive in Birmingham’, a new body of work by artist Laisul Hoque.

Seen through the perspective of someone learning to navigate Birmingham as a first-generation migrant, Laisul captures the inner worlds and emotional landscapes of the city’s residents, building community through exchanges of services, labour, and time.

‘Learning to Drive in Birmingham’ is supported by Arts Council England, Bow Arts East London Art Prize and Grand Union. With thanks to MJM Bespoke for fabrication and installation.

5–6pm – A relaxed hour and quieter time for people to enjoy the exhibition with less crowds and no bar. We politely ask visitors to wear a mask, and avoid wearing perfume during this time.

6–8pm – Full opening with pay bar as part of the wider Digbeth First Friday event.

Join us for June’s Digbeth First Friday to celebrate the launch of ‘Matter Out of Place’, an exhibition curated in collaboration with the University of Birmingham’s 2026 MA Art History and Curating Cohort, marking Grand Union’s eighth year working with UoB.

‘Matter Out of Place’ gathers 12 Grand Union studio artists who recover the discarded, inviting them to respond to ideas of waste in relation to their own practices and the context they work in. Guided by the assertion that ‘waste is matter out of place’, this exhibition seeks to expand understandings of how the neighbourhood, materiality, and artistic practice shape and subvert understandings of waste and re-use.

Featuring work by Simon and Tom Bloor, Roo Dhissou, Sireen Martin, Joanne Masding, Farwa Moleldina, David Rowan, Sarah Taylor Silverwood, Natasha Taheem, Courtenay Welcome, Matt Westbrook, Stuart Whipps, and Nilupa Yasmin, ‘Matter Out of Place’ invites you to reconsider how we commune with waste.

For May’s Digbeth First Friday, we are delighted to present the first iteration of ‘HORSES!’, a special event co-curated with artist, educator, and equestrian Linda Stupart and Flatpack Festival at Grand Union. Reflecting Grand Union’s social and environmental work, these events explore the therapeutic connections between the urban landscapes and the power of equine energy.

Linda, Flatpack, and Grand Union come together to present ‘HORSES!’ – an evening of film screenings and performance exploring representations of horses in relation to class, queerness, anti-colonial contexts and filmic materialities.

Alongside Linda’s new work, we will be screening ‘Stepney Western’ (2025) by artist and filmmaker Harry Lawson.

‘Endangered Pudding’ seeks to unearth the knowledge which lies between the lines of a recipe, and the words spoken between spoonfuls through performance.

Faye Matloub and Harmanpreet Randahawa respond to the idea of food heritage in danger of being forgotten or overlooked. Inspired by the specificity of endangered puddings, both artists have drawn on their personal relationships to recipes and ingredients to explore the importance of food as a universal, sensory language.

Recipes live and breathe beyond their simple instructions. They are love letters, maps, archives, genealogies, geological surveys, time capsules. They are evolving ‘social entities’, systems of ideas that hold emotion, memory, experience, and culture. Faye will be serving a dish and giving a live reading, and Harman will present an embodied performance, both grounded in their own relationships to food culture and heritage.

‘Endangered Pudding’ asks: Where did these ingredients grow, how were they brought together, and who chopped, peeled and stirred? How much, beyond its taste, is lost if a recipe is never cooked again?

For November’s Digbeth First Friday, you are invited to two performative co-creation workshops with Infinite Opera exploring the past, present, and future cultural heritage of Digbeth at Grand Union Gallery. These workshops will help to inform Infinite Opera’s upcoming operatic endeavor for summer 2026, an ambitious multi-site community performance marking the redevelopment of the Typhoo factory.

Workshop 1 – 6.30-7.00pm

Workshop 2 – 7.30-8.00pm

Infinite Opera have been speaking to Digbeth’s day and night working force. They have gathered informal impressions of the current state of the area and discussed transience, nostalgia, and present and future worries and hopes. Infinite Opera want to keep this discussion open to everybody that engages with Digbeth in any manner, willing to inform the development of their new work in the most empathetic, inclusive, equitable, and collective way as possible. You can drop in and enjoy this session as a one-off, or use it as a starting point to get involved with the long-term project!

Librettist and singer Roxanne Korda will perform some initial exploratory Digbeth-inspired bits of song and poetry.

For October’s Digbeth First Friday, you are invited to two performative co-creation workshops with Infinite Opera exploring the past, present, and future cultural heritage of Digbeth at Grand Union Gallery. These workshops will help to inform Infinite Opera’s upcoming operatic endeavor for summer 2026, an ambitious multi-site community performance marking the redevelopment of the Typhoo factory.

Workshop 1 – 6.00-6.45pm

Workshop 2 – 7.15-8.00pm

Infinite Opera have been speaking to Digbeth’s day and night working force. They have gathered informal impressions of the current state of the area and discussed transience, nostalgia, and present and future worries and hopes. Infinite Opera want to keep this discussion open to everybody that engages with Digbeth in any manner, willing to inform the development of their new work in the most empathetic, inclusive, equitable, and collective way as possible. You can drop in and enjoy this session as a one-off, or use it as a starting point to get involved with the long-term project!

Librettist and singer Roxanne Korda, alongside pianist Melissa Morris, will perform some initial exploratory Digbeth-inspired bits of song and poetry.

Join us for the final late night opening of our exhibition, ‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ by Iranian multidisciplinary artist and writer Kasra Jalilipour. ‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ is an exploration of ‘queer’ lives and rebellions in 19th Century Iran, which have been purposefully hidden away from the public consciousness. Although at times, queerness has played a key and obvious role in Iranian art and literature, societal structures have ensured that it has been erased from historical memory despite always having existed in the culture.

Come along for either the earlier, quiet opening or a celebratory drink later in the evening.

4–6pm – A more relaxed opening, a quieter time for people to enjoy the exhibition with less crowds and no bar. We ask people to wear a mask and not wear perfume for this time.

6–8pm – Full opening with pay bar as part of wider Digbeth First Friday event.