A new festival aims to put the future face of cities firmly in the hands of its inhabitants.

These days any event with the word Xtreme in its name usually involves skydiving, parkour or skateboarding, and guys called Trent or Ryan, who speak like Bill and Ted.

Happily while none of that will be in evidence, the Festival of Xtreme Building promises to be every bit as exciting and adventurous.

Aimed at bringing together professional architects and designers with members of the public FXB, which runs for four months from June 9, is intended to get local residents thinking about the built environment – and give them the knowledge and the skills to get involved.

Originally intended to be a project in Sandwell, when arts hub The Public closed down, curator Dave pollard decided to up the stakes and transfer his ideas – and the festival – to Birmingham.

“It aims to create a visible exhibition platform for the citizens of Birmingham, working together with, and supported by professional practitioners,” he explains.

Based on a pocket of derelict land around the city centre, the festival’s base will be at Albert Street car park, just off Moor Street Queensway.

Not the most glamorous of locations but a fitting one.

“We’re on the gateway to the building of a new city” says Dave, referring to the £6 billion regeneration of Birmingham’s Eastside.

“To get that stage is a big achievement”

Sponsored by Birmingham City Council, Advantage West Midlands, the Arts Council and private developers working on Eastside (“they recognise the value of developing a kind of holistic undergrowth around their development site, not just around the little square that you’ve got”) FXB’s centrepiece will be the UK’s first appearance of Professor Richard Horden’s micro-compact home – which visitors will have the chance to occupy for one night in a unique competition.

Other works include a 12m mobile ‘Fashion House’ designed by celebrated architect Will Alsop, as well as a series of school workshops and Project 500- where a group is given £500 to design and build a piece of public art.

The whole event opens with the arrival of a uniformed X Army or Nation, who will gather in the city centre on launch day before heading down to the exhibition site. Their departure four months later promises to be even more dramatic.

“It will be the opening of an event you’ll never forget,” says Dave.

That’s Year One; then in years two, three, four and five we really want to build up our presence. Year One we are having to go out and make that happen, we hope in the following years it will be become a far more organic process where people will say ‘oh yeah, the Festival of Xtreme Building, I’m going to be in that next year – here’s my idea….’ It has to be seen as along term initiative; if people see it as a one-off exhibition they’ll get the wrong idea – this is page one of a ten page story “

Pollard, whose own background is in the cross-pollination of building and art, wants to make FXB an event for which Birmingham will become famous, in the same way that Edinburgh has its festival and Chelsea its flower show.

“We want to make sure that we’re established in the conscience of the people of the city, so that they know about that thing called the Festival of Xtreme Building where you can go and design and build something; now its’s going to take time to sink in and people have to become familiar with it - that’s why we said we’re going to be there for four to five whole months, that’s really important, so people have a chance to feel comfortable and know it’s there – long term high quality engagement.”

To download a PDF of the City Living Birmingham Post article please click HERE.