The streets of Southside were alive with the sights and sounds of Hip Hop earlier this week as performance artists from across the city came together for the launch of Birmingham’s first, annual B-Side Hip-Hop Festival.

The three day, city wide festival saw performance artists from across Birmingham join forces with the best in international Hip Hop talent for an exciting weekend of talks, pop-up city centre performances, workshops, battles and art installations taking place across the Southside district from Fri 23 – Sun 25 Sept.

The event was dope and I had so much fun just getting down with the people and enjoying the festival. The vibe was fresh!

Victor (MF KIDZ/Squadron) Florida

I don’t think Birmingham was ready for an event like this but now they know what Hip Hop is about and they loved it, nothing but positive vibes and Brum Hippodrome was amazing!

Silence, performer at B-SIDE Hip Hop Festival

Produced by Birmingham Hippodrome in partnership with The Old Rep and curated by the city’s many hip-hop talents including Break Mission, Dance Nuvo, Juice Aleem and Mickeal ‘Marso’ Riviere, B-Side Hip-Hop Festival is the first, annual festival of its kind to take place in Birmingham. Following in the success of Summer in Southside 2016, this three-day festival – covering all aspects of contemporary Hip Hop from graffiti to breakin, street dance to spoken word – brought together over 70 performers, wordsmiths and artists from across city plus an additional 150 local street dance competitors from across the country. The event attracted an estimated 5000 visitors to Southside over the three day period.

It made me proud to be a Brummie!!!!

NeNe (MDK/TBB UK) Birmingham

Highlights of this year’s festival included The Hip Hop Conversation, a city-wide symposium hosted by local MC and rap artists Juice Aleem and DJ Silence exploring Birmingham’s independent and vibrant contribution to global Hip Hop culture, the Break Mission x Just Jam International semis and finals which saw b-boys and b-girls from across Birmingham compete in 1 vs 1 ‘poppin’ and ‘breakin’ battles for the chance to win a place in the national finals and a specially-commissioned performance of Remote by Birmingham-based theatre company Frantic Assembly, an exhilarating piece of physical theatre created by ‘Ignition’ in partnership with the Old Rep, the company’s UK wide training programme for young men aged 16-20.

A huge thanks to everyone who came along and supported the event. You can view a selection of highlights from this year’s festival by clicking on the image gallery above.