Birmingham City Council’s proposition to impose bans on amplified music and speaking in certain areas of the city has been met by backlash from buskers across the city.
Since the Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) was proposed in January 2022, a Change.org petition called ‘Stop the Birmingham busking ban’ has collected over 1500 signatures.
Birmingham City Council plan on imposing the order making it a criminal offense to ignore rules that prohibit amplified music and speaking in areas of the centre, including New Street.
The Council stated these complaints come off the back of “an increase in the number of complaints received from residents concerning noise levels on the street.”
The report detailed how between June and November 2021, a total of 79 complaints of excessive noise were received.
The city’s buskers are responding angrily as a result.
Birmingham-based musician, David Fisher, founder of the Facebook group ‘Save your Brum Buskers”, has rallied fellow performers together to protest the ban and raise awareness in the city.
The proposed ban would have a serious impact on musicians who relied on busking during the pandemic to make up for gigs that had been cancelled.
David said: “Busking was the only performing opportunities I had during Covid.
“It was my lifeline for most of the pandemic.
“A lot of musicians are just emerging from those restrictions and this feels like a slap in the face.”
We want to work with the council to create a system that works for buskers, local residents and businesses alike. But the proposals in their current form – which bans all busking in some of the best spots in the city – would be a hammer blow to our livelihoods
— David Fisher (@DavidFisherFolk) February 15, 2022
The New Street area is a prime spot for various religious groups to use amplification to preach, and although the ban will inhibit this too, David feels it disproportionately impacts the busking community.
On its website, the Council has stated that they have: “Attempted to work with people who use amplification and musical instruments in the street to reduce noise levels to a reasonable level and have had to take some formal enforcement action against some individuals.”
David added: “Even if there have been noise complaints about buskers, there are much easier ways of dealing with it.
“Enforcement officers can easily ask buskers to turn the volume down, and the vast majority of our musical community would be okay having that conversation.
“The Council has been saying it is due to noise complaints, but we believe a lot of those noise complaints include a lot of other things as well.”
David is currently planning an event for next month to protest the ban.
The plans include a group of buskers standing at a point in New Street, handing out flyers to the public while performing to highlight how important the city’s buskers are to the community.
A 2020 report from the British Council found that the COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on the arts and cultural sector with radical disruptions of many revenues.
Another report, published by the University of Sheffield in 2021, discovered how the arts sector “suffered from a 60 percent decline in output” due to Covid.
