Black Country Day: Why annual festival is a bostin' way to celebrate
Celebrations are planned for Black Country Day with the annual festival of community events, live comedy, music and culture.
He’s the Black Country evangelist who champions the way we spake and the bostin people he meets.
And that’s the word which perfectly sums up how Steve Edwards feels about the Black Country.
It’s the fourth year of the Black Country Festival – an event which grew from a will to ensure there was an annual celebration to remember.
It brings the people of the Black Country together from across all four corners of the community to mark Black Country Day with a series of events during July .
Black Country Day had humble beginnings just five years ago. In fact it passed most people by.
Yet community champions like Steve helped establish the festival as it is today.
“In the first year, July 14 fell midweek and there wasn’t much stuff people could do to celebrate it,” said Steve as he sipped a pint and tucked into some fittle – pork scratchings of course – in the Bottle and Glass pub, at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley.
“A few of us got together and said we should have a go ourselves.
“We planned on just having a weekend of events but so many people wanted to do something we said why don’t we just take over the whole of July and put on as many community events and fill as many town centres as we can.
“Before the Black Country Festival community had kind of died.
“Nobody was really speaking to each other. Shows that used to happen don’t happen any more.
“And it was just like ‘how can we bring people back together and celebrate the story of the Black Country’. We have a lot to celebrate here.”
WATCH: Find out more about this year's festival
From live comedy nights, fun runs and community carnivals – more events are being planned than ever before during the festival which kicks off on July 1. And the Black Country Flag, designed by schoolgirl Gracie Sheppard, has been proudly flown at hosts of events – from Glastonbury to community fairs in Brierley Hill.
Steve laughs: “It’s been amazing. That flag has been the second highest-selling in England, only outsold by the Union Flag. So you know just to see that now it’s great.
“The Black Country struggled to have a brand to help push it forward and see all the number of events growing. We are covering the four boroughs now of Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley and Sandwell.”
Steve, aged 33, of Pensnett, helped organise his own Black Country celebrations prior to the festival inspired by another landmark event in the calender. “It was brought about by seeing people celebrate St Patrick’s Day and I thought you know what the Black Country is famous for, its beer. Why can’t we use our own breweries to promote what we’ve got going on and bring in all the history of the Black Country,” said the furniture factory worker.
“The Black Country Living Museum got involved and gave us some substance to the date and it became July 14, when the Industrial Revolution got started with the invention of the Newcomen Steam Engine.
“The museum epitomises everything that’s Black Country.
“You’ve got the factories still working, orange chips, everything that’s proper Black Country to the core. There’s something from everywhere at this place.”
Black Country Day has given fresh impetus to patriotic fervour and created an identity for an area which – a lot like its people – rarely shouts too loud and have a self-deprecating take on life.
Steve said: “When we first started [the festival] we didn’t know if it would work. Black Country people were kind of looked down upon and people take the mick out of the way we speak, but you know what, that’s something we should be proud of. Because the way we speak is actually the original form of English.
“Everyone else has changed and we have stuck to the original form.
“It’s something we should should grab hold of and say ‘we’m spaking proper’.
“It’s us that’s doing it right, the rest of you are doing it wrong’. It’s started to be promoted and it’s getting there and coming to the forefront of people’s minds.
“Everyone has got a link to the Black Country. It is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and it was the engine room of Great Britain.”
With just a month to go before the festival gets under way, excitement is already building, says Steve. “There’s more people getting involved. New events taking place. People saying ‘actually we want to fly the flag’,” he said.
“I think that people are starting to realise that if you start to engage the community, the community will prosper.
“Businesses have started to realise if we start to engage with our local community we’ll prosper and that’s makes the whole of the Black Country thrive.”
