Digbeth Institute
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Digbeth Institute Building
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| Location | 78 Digbeth High Street, Birmingham,B5 6DY England |
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| Coordinates | 52°28′32.13″N 1°53′14.55″W / 52.4755917°N 1.8873750°WCoordinates: 52°28′32.13″N 1°53′14.55″W / 52.4755917°N 1.8873750°W |
| Owner | MAMA & Company |
| Type | Live music |
| Genre(s) | Music, Comedy |
| Capacity | 2,900 |
| Website | |
| o2institutebirmingham |
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Digbeth Institute is a civic building in Digbeth, Birmingham, England also known as Digbeth Civic Hall. It is now operated as the O2 Institute Birmingham, a 2,900 capacity music venue. It has three main rooms: the 2,000-capacity main auditorium called "The Institute" which has a seated upper balcony, the downstairs room which holds up to 600 people called 'O2 Institute Birmingham2 (formerly 'The Library') and the 300-capacity upstairs room 'O2 Institute Birmingham3' (formerly 'The Temple').
Designed by Arthur Harrison, it was officially opened January 16, 1908 by the wife of the Pastor of Carrs Lane Church, John Henry Jowett, as an institutional church attached to Carr's Lane Congregational Church. In the week that followed, it hosted a variety of acts. The area which surrounded it was predominantly slums and industrial.
In 1954, the building was put up for sale by the trustees as they felt the building was not needed for its originally intended use. It was bought by Birmingham City Council in 1955 for £65,000 and was used as a civic hall.
People known to have made speeches at the Digbeth Institute include Neville Chamberlain, Henry Usborne, Florence L. Barclay and Herbert Hensley Henson.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s it housed the Midland Jazz club.
In 1987, the building was used as a film studio by the Birmingham Film and Video Workshop for the Channel 4 film 'Out Of Order'. The venue also played a part as one of the main locations in the feature film 'Lycanthropy', filmed in 2005–2006.
In the 1980s the venue was refurbished, and in 1998 The Sanctuary opened, which was to be the original home of the Cambridge/Northampton born club night Godskitchen. It also played host to club nights such as Atomic Jam, Uproar, Slinky, Sundissential, Athletico, Ramshackle, Insurrection, Inukshuk and Panic.
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