Steven Knight backs West Midlands growth plan

Steven Knight said a second revolution was starting in the West Midlands

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has called a £17bn plan to kickstart a region's economy "a new West Midlands revolution".

The screenwriter, producer and director is backing the West Midlands Growth Plan, launched in Wolverhampton on Monday.

It includes proposals to invest in towns, create 100,000 new jobs and provide more funds for public transport.

Knight wrote a prologue for the plan and said: "This document represents the people of the West Midlands climbing up on our rooftops and shouting out the remarkable news about our region to the whole world."

Mayor of the West Midlands Richard Parker set out the growth plan proposals, which he said would "improve the lives of everyone".

Actions include £30m funding to transform skills and employment, investment in social housing, affordable and accessible transport, and transforming high streets in the region's cities and boroughs.

Unable to attend the launch in person, Knight's words were read out by spoken word artist Bradley Taylor.

In them, Knight drew parallels with the so-called Lunar Men, a Birmingham-based group of 18th Century intellectuals, inventors and scientists led by Erasmus Darwin he said "invented the modern world".

"By the end of the nineteenth century we were known globally as 'the workshop of the world'," he said.

"So open a museum", some might say. Well, we actually do do museums (really good ones). But right now, we are busy doing other things, like starting another revolution," he said.

'All you need is here'

The director and screenwriter said the people of the West Midlands had been quietly getting on with making things and described it as a "breeding ground" for creative content.

"We make diggers and lifters (JCB), we make paints and plastics and glues and pharmaceuticals, armoured cars and tanks and rockets (BAE), we make machines that make machines, batteries that make vehicles run, and even stuff that makes people happy (like two-tone music and Cadbury's chocolate)," he said.

"Birmingham was once known as the City of a Thousand Trades. Well now it's more than a thousand. Many times more.

"The sound you hear when you stop and listen on any street in any West Midlands town is the sound of industry - not the sound of people shouting from the roof tops.

"But guess what? That is all about to change."

Mayor Richard Parker set out his £17bn growth plans on Monday in Wolverhampton

Knight pointed out Birmingham would be 49 minutes from central London once the Curzon Street HS2 rail link was completed, adding: "But, why commute when what you need is all here?

"We have lots of smart people who are making the new West Midlands revolution happen.

"This region is once again the home of revolutionary new inventions, and the Lunar Men would be over the Moon."

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.