UK Town of Culture

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the UK Town of Culture competition.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I want to begin by saying why the UK town of culture competition matters to towns like Halesowen. At its best, culture is not a luxury for places that are already well off; it is the glue that keeps communities together when the economy is changing around them. It is the thing that turns a high street into a meeting place, a park into a shared memory, and local history into a source of confidence for the next generation. The town of culture award is not just a title for the tourist brochures; it can be a lever for investment, volunteering, skills and pride, and for the practical business of renewal, as well as the poetry.

It is right that the competition has arrived when it has, because anyone who has spent time in the Black Country will know that we have quietly been a centre of British culture for years. London may have the west end, but the Black Country was the birthplace of British rock music, with Led Zeppelin and Slade hailing from our part of the world. The capital may have art galleries, but we have the Black Country Living Museum to preserve the history of glass making, chain making and real industrial crafts. Through the Hawne Halesowen townswomen’s guild we have probably the best yarn bombers in the history of the world.

We are not short on culture, but we have been short on other people noticing it. That is why I am proud to speak today about Halesowen, a town that deserves to be understood. Halesowen sits at a remarkable junction: a market town with the industrial inheritance of the Black Country and the green breathing space of the surrounding countryside. It is a place where in the same afternoon people can feel the legacy of making and the comfort of landscape. That combination is not accidental: it is the outcome of centuries of people working the land, working the forge, and creating a community that knows what it means to pull together.

When we speak about the Black Country, we speak rightly about manufacturing, and Halesowen has that story in its bones. In and around Halesowen, families built livelihoods through skilled trades and hard physical work done in small workshops and backyards, with a pride in workmanship that still shapes our local character today. It is tempting to describe that as history and move on, but that would miss the point. The value of that heritage is not simply that it happened, but what it tells us about the people of Halesowen today. It is a town where practical intelligence is still prized, where people understand the dignity of work, and where small and medium-sized businesses do not need lectures on resilience, because they have been living it for decades.

If Halesowen is a town that makes, it is also a town that imagines. One of the great cultural treasures of the constituency is the Leasowes, a historic landscape that was shaped by the poet William Shenstone. The Leasowes is not merely a park; it represents an idea—an early expression of the English landscape tradition where beauty, nature and the rhythms of rural life were brought together in a way that influenced English gardens far beyond our town. Its remarkable beauty drew two former US Presidents to visit: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. I issue an open invitation to the sitting US President to follow in their footsteps—it is a much nicer place than Greenland.

Within the Leasowes is a place that is exactly what the town of culture competition should be about: the Leasowes walled garden. It is hard to think of a more fitting symbol of what we are discussing. The walled garden is Halesowen at its best: respectful of the past, practical in the present and quietly ambitious for the future. It is not just a historical feature; it is a demonstration of civic pride in action. The walled garden has been brought back from ruin through the determined efforts of the Halesowen Abbey Trust and a remarkable team of volunteers who have given their time, skill and patience to restore a piece of heritage for public benefit. That work has received national recognition: just last month, the Leasowes walled garden was listed as grade II by Historic England, recognising both its historic significance and its architectural interest.

Halesowen has not only landscape but cultural reach through literature. It is the birthplace of Francis Brett Young, whose writing helped to put our region in the frame. Culture is not only what happens in big cities; it is also the patient recording of lives and places that feel to the people who live there like the centre of the world.

Halesowen is also the world centre of music. I mentioned Led Zeppelin earlier. Robert Plant grew up in Hayley Green and went on to become one of the defining voices in British rock; indeed, he was voted the best lead singer of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. And no town is complete without sport. Halesowen Town football club is not merely a team but an institution. It is one of the places where community life is renewed weekly, through familiar rituals: the talk on the terraces, the work of the volunteers behind the scenes and the intergenerational bonds that non-league football clubs uniquely sustain.

That brings me to someone who deserves to be named in this debate—Colin Brookes, the long-standing chairman of Halesowen Town FC, who passed away at the end of last year. Colin was a towering figure at the club, and he is remembered by many as the embodiment of its spirit and in many ways the town’s spirit, too. Colin guided Halesowen Town through many challenges, always remained close to the club and—fittingly—passed away while watching his beloved Yeltz.

However, the truth is that Halesowen’s culture is not only what I can list in a speech; it is also the daily life of the town. It is what happens in community centres, churches, schools, parks, cafés and small businesses; it is the volunteers who turn up in the cold to help run a youth club; and it is the sense that the town is more than a collection of streets. That matters profoundly when we talk about a town of culture, because the competition should not be about parachuting in a programme of events, and leaving behind a banner and a few glossy photographs. Instead, it should be about enabling a town to tell the truth about itself: what it has been, what it is now and what it wants to become.

In Halesowen, one of the truths that we can express with confidence is that ours is a welcoming town. For generations, people have come to Halesowen to work, to build families, to contribute and to become part of the place. That is not a recent trend—it is part of the Black Country story. We have communities who have shaped the local economy and culture over time, bringing traditions and different languages, food and faiths, that have widened the town’s horizons.

That diversity is not a weakness to be managed, but a strength to be celebrated. It is seen in the way that communities support one another. It is also seen in the celebration of the Black Country Multicultural Day in the town centre, or at the Halesowen/Dudley Yemeni community association, which offers language classes and youth activities. Culture, after all, is a shared language that allows people of different backgrounds to recognise themselves in a common home.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He has given an eloquent appraisal of why Halesowen is such a beacon for culture, and I note that Morgan Rogers, who plays for Aston Villa, was born in Halesowen. Will my hon. Friend join me in saying that this competition is not just about celebrating our past but about celebrating our future and people such as Max Stokes, a constituent of mine in Redditch, who curates the “Villa On Tour” YouTube channel, which has over 80,000 subscribers? People such as Max Stokes provide an outlet for our culture, including our sporting culture, to be seen by people across the world—culture with a Redditch accent and a Redditch voice. Does he agree that this competition should be about celebrating our future as well as our past?

[Alex Ballinger]

I join my hon. Friend in celebrating Max Stokes and his wonderful achievements in Redditch. My hon. Friend knows Halesowen well, because he has campaigned there for many years, so I hope that he will be an advocate for my town throughout the competition.

When I ask the Minister to recognise Halesowen’s cultural claim, I am not simply asking for a prize; I am making a practical argument. The town of culture award can help towns such as Halesowen in at least four concrete ways. First, it can boost our local economy, bringing in visitors to spend money in our shops, cafés and venues, supporting jobs that are rooted in a place. Secondly, it can strengthen skills and pathways for young people, particularly in the creative industries, events, heritage, digital media and community enterprise. Those sectors are growing and towns such as Halesowen should not be left to watch them grow from the sidelines. Thirdly, it can drive investment in local assets—our parks, halls, libraries and heritage sites—that towns rely on for civic life, but that often struggle to receive sustained funding. Finally and perhaps most importantly, the award can restore confidence. A community that feels seen and valued tends to act like it. Pride is not merely an ambition—it is a catalyst that changes what a town believes is possible.

In that spirit, I will put on the record what Halesowen can offer this competition. We can offer the story of a town that helped to build the country through skilled work, honest labour, technical ability and enterprise. We can offer landscape and heritage that connects people to the long thread of English history, and not as nostalgia but as stewardship. We can offer a living and modern cultural identity, and music, sport and community traditions that are rooted in place but outward-looking. We can also offer a model of community cohesion that is quietly impressive—diverse, practical and neighbourly.

I would want our programme to reflect those truths. I would want it to celebrate the makers and their skills to revitalise green spaces and heritage sites, to open doors for young people into culture and creative work, and to showcase the everyday institutions and individuals—community groups, faith organisations and volunteers—that keep our town strong.

Halesowen has the story, the assets and the people. With the right support, we can turn that into a bid that does justice not only to our town, but to the wider Black Country. If we are serious about culture at the heart of renewal, we should start with the towns that have never lost their sense of community, even when the national spotlight has looked elsewhere. Halesowen is one of those towns. It has earned its place in the national story and I hope that, through this competition, it will be given a platform to tell that story with the confidence it deserves.