A space for the community
1976
“We took the three five storey buildings fronting Bordesley Street and did an awful lot of work, we made a suite at the back on the ground floor with a separate entrance for Friend, which was up and running by then. We had Switchboard who had accommodation upstairs. Then we had a coffee lounge and meeting rooms, and we cleared out the cellars and made a disco area in them. It became a very lively place. It also hosted national conferences of various sexual political groups, such as gay Marxist or gay Socialist groups. We had five floors and three enormous buildings and hosted anything that was vaguely related to gay politics, we had the MCC church meet there.”
“The BBC made a documentary about the Gay Centre, for the Access series [he doesn’t have a copy]. It was called Open File or Open book and they did a half hour documentary on the Birmingham Gay Centre.”
Contributed by: Malcolm Gibb, 58