Big Peg

Thanks to Nicola and Neil #SHPR and #DeNadaDanceTheatre are very happy in their new workspace office 734! And bonus as The Big Peg is dog friendly too! Thanks for throwing in the desks and a chair!
Thanks to Sharon and Nicky for looking after Fred so beautifully too! Much appreciated, and above and beyond office mgmt!

I’ve been using The Big Peg for a number of years due to its central location, set in a thriving area called The Jewellery Quarter. Essentially it’s an office building providing office rental for periods of one day to five years, however, I’ve always used it as a meeting place, the café is trendy and creative with great customer service. It’s run by the Urban Coffee company of which I’m a fan. The café has a certain buzz about it which I can’t quite put my finger on but it feels good, surrounded by 400 years of jewellery manufacturing must have left it’s presence, so perhaps that’s it. There’s free Wi-​fi so it’s a great place catch up on your emails or write a book over an Espresso.

Having attended quite a few events at Big Peg I was impressed by the spaces that this building provided for businesses and organisations. From the spaces that I saw they were large, open plan, simply and pleasingly decorated without feeling corporate. They had a panoramic view of the proximate city (which obviously only applies if you’re high up).
It can be a bit shambolic there at times, I have been sent to the wrong floor, or the wrong room, or had my pathway to the right room obstructed by building debris. But nonetheless it is a nice building and houses a lot of organisations, most of the ones I know being in the charity or voluntary sector.
If you need a space for your entrepreneurial pursuits, a HQ for coordinating your organisation’s action or an office space to keep you from the distractions of home then Big Peg might have a nice little spot for you.

When we started looking for space for our business, we looked at The Custard Factory as an obvious choice for an arts business to set itself up. After feeling a bit dismayed about the size of the space offered vs. the cost, we started to look in other areas of Birmingham — including the Jewellery Quarter. The Big Peg — part of the same group as The Custard Factory was somewhere we vaguely considered — but compared to the Custard Factory it seems much more targeted at ‘proper’ businesses — not people who might want to throw paint around or experiment with smelly chemicals like resin or create their own photographic darkrooms.
Similar to the Custard Factory, it’s a bit run down on the outside and there are faded posters up outside advertising businesses which are no longer there. All of these things contributed to us not wanting to be based there, and instead looking for our own independent space elsewhere in the JQ. That said, The Big Peg is still very much a landmark within the area, and is the first place people think of when they find out you’re a creative businesses based over that way. I think it’s just more kitted out for creative design or marketing businesses rather than messy artists like me!