We have produced a short film called My Brierley Hill which features interviews with people who live, work or shop in Brierley Hill. These interviews were conducted in April 2011.
In the film those interviewed express the way they feel about the town today and make suggestions on how it could be improved; they share their aspirations for the town’s future.
My Brierley Hill 4 from Jonathan Lee on Vimeo.
This film was submitted to Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council’s Planning Team during the public consultation on the new Urban Design Supplementary Planning Document for the new Brierley Hill town centre in 2011.
From Street to Stage!
The transcripts of the street interviews were used as source material to inspire the creation of a performance piece by Age UK, Dudley’s drama group – “Brierley Hilliness”. Watch the performance. Find out more about how the street interviews became part of the dramatic process.
Brierley Hillness 
I have lived in Brierley Hill all my life and it has some of the most friendliest people you will ever meet. I agree that the town centre requires a much needed facelift. The town centre is being overrun with fast food outlets, bookies and charity shops, similar to Stourbridge. If this continues, soon there will be nothing left. It has lost many household name shops already. While it’s great news that Brierley Hill has got a new state of the art health centre and college campus, but what about a replacement swimming pool venue for the leisure centre they demolished? Sure there are alternative places you can go to like Dudley, Halesowen or the Crystal in Stourbridge, but it’s not quite the same as Brierley Hill having its own. And whatever happened to the Metro idea?
As a result of the budget cuts, certain areas have had their direct bus services to Brierley Hill Town Centre altered or withdrawn. This means that people who were previously paying the £1.80 maximum fee, are now having to pay twice for the same one way journey for those who don’t have a travel pass. An example of such a bus service is the 297 which used to take passengers from Stourbridge to Brierley Hill, but since the 297 service now only runs from Merry Hill to Gornalwood, passengers who travel on that route have to now get the 287 Hansons bus from Stourbridge to Merry Hill, get off and pay again, to get on another bus to access Mill Street or the High Street (yes those people, who can manage the hill, could just walk it from Merry Hill to Mill Street, or the High Street, but it’s not the point really).
I also agree with the fact that Brierley Hill is given far little publicity, unlike Merry Hill, as this is evident from when I have attended events in the town centre, because not many people turn out for these, because they simply don’t know about them, or they just don’t have any appeal. You don’t see much coverage in the local press either and when you do see anything advertised, it’s often in leaflet format or some Council publication, which is written in the official language and difficult to understand. As most people will agree, these go unnoticed and end up in the bin. And while the internet is an invaluable tool to advertise stuff, there are people out there who don’t have computers or internet access and even if they do, they might not know how to use it, the older generation in particular. Not many people know the Brierley Hill Blog (http://www.brierleyhill.org/) exists or what is even about. A jargon free community magazine, which is non-local authority produced, would be the ideal solution to market and communicate information about Brierley Hill to its residents. If each partner was to chip in with funds, this could help pay for the printing and distribution of such a publication.
As for some people’s opinion about Merry Hill killing off a lot of the trade in Brierley Hill town centre, this begs me to to ask the question, just how can Brierley Hill compete with Merry Hill? Not just with the variety of stores and choice Merry Hill has to offer and their facilities for children, but their high profile celebrity guests they bring in each year to attract visitors (at the Christmas light switch-ons in Brierley Hill, for example, they only ever seem to get a costumed character, whereas Merry Hill gets a star off X Factor, last year they had Olly Murs). Merry Hill gets a huge commercial radio station to host their events as well, offering customers the chance to win £100 gift cards, ipads, game consoles, etc. Merry Hill also hands out free samples of things like perfume and nail varnish at events.