'Strike while the iron is hot!' - Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight hails ‘fantastic’ West Midlands investment event

Writer and director Steven Knight took part in the first Regional Investment Summit, held at Edgbaston stadium on October 21 and co-hosted by the Government and West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker.

At the Summit, Blues owner Tom Wagner revealed the new stadium will be created by British designers Heatherwick Studio and Kansas based architects MANICA, who are being supported by Mr Knight.

He also welcomed Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker to his Digbeth Loc. Studios.

There, two ambitious projects for the city were revealed, the first of which is the Warwick Bar Prospectus, which sets out a vision of an area covering the size of 22 football pitches with the potential of 1,700 new homes and 110,000sq ft of creative workspaces.

And the second project saw the announcement of Production Central WM, which is a new film production office to connect producers with set locations, local crew and suppliers needed to bring more big and small screen blockbusters to the region.

Mr Knight also said filming of the new Peaky Blinders films has taken place at Digbeth Loc. Filming of the new two series will also take place at the location.

The studios are built on the site where Mr Knight’s father, George, once worked as a blacksmith.

He said: “It’s been a fantastic couple of days for Birmingham. We’ve got some really influential powerful people from national Government who control the purse strings.

“Our job here is when the Summit happens in Birmingham, we’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot and do whatever we can to showcase the city and the region.

“(We need) to make it clear money invested here isn’t money given as a gift – it’s an investment which will actually reap rewards. It will create more income for the country.”

He added: “We shot the Peaky film in Montague Street studios so we’re going to be shooting two series here in Birmingham using wherever possible Birmingham and West Midlands crew.

“I love it here. I’ve got a lot of roots here, my dad used to work here when it was a corporation yard.

“There’s something that made me think when Peaky started to happen – we shot a lot of that in Manchester, Leeds. I thought ‘why can’t we do it here where it should be?’

“It’s taken a lot of time but we’ve managed to shoot the film here and it’s something I want to get done. It’s like a legacy.”