Digbeth Dining Club’s Brierley Hill venue is widening its role beyond street food through a curated gallery, community programming and business collaborations.
Guests gather inside Dockworks Waterfront in Brierley Hill, a former steelworks site converted into a food, events and cultural venue. — Credit: Daisy Denham
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Dockworks Waterfront has added a dedicated gallery curated with Black Country Type artist Tom Hicks and featuring work by several local creatives.
- The 7,000-square-foot former steelworks venue is combining rotating street food traders with markets, live entertainment, talks, sports screenings and other events.
- Partnerships with local food, business and community organisations are extending Dockworks Waterfront’s role beyond hospitality alone.
- The venue’s evolving model is designed to connect visitors with the culture, independent businesses and creative identity of the Black Country.
(NEWS) BRIERLEY HILL, West Midlands, United Kingdom, 2026-Oct-02 — /Travel PR News/ — Dockworks Waterfront is broadening its role in Brierley Hill from a street-food and entertainment venue into a wider showcase for Black Country culture, with a new curated art space and an expanding network of local business and community partnerships.
The 7,000-square-foot former steelworks site, operated by Digbeth Dining Club, was reworked through a £500,000 refurbishment earlier this year. A new update published by Visit Birmingham details how the canalside venue is continuing to develop its food, events and cultural programme while strengthening ties with organisations across Dudley and the wider Black Country.
A gallery built around Black Country creatives
The latest addition is a dedicated gallery and exhibition area curated with Tom Hicks, the artist behind Black Country Type. Hicks’ work documents the region through photography, words, typography, handmade lettering, signs and elements of its post-industrial landscape.
The opening selection at Dockworks brings Hicks’ work together with pieces by Claire Buckerfield, General Blimey and Bag Lord. Across the display, the artists use drawing, digital media and painting to explore everyday spaces, local identity, routines, symbols and imaginative narratives.
Hicks said one of his aims was to work with artists whose work “celebrates the culture and atmosphere of the region”, placing the new gallery within a broader effort to keep the venue visibly connected to the Black Country rather than treating local identity as a decorative theme.
From rotating street food to a broader destination venue
Food remains central to Dockworks Waterfront. Digbeth Dining Club continues to give established and emerging street-food businesses regular trading opportunities at the site, with rotating operators serving visitors across the venue’s weekly schedule.
But the programme now extends well beyond dining. The venue has developed a calendar that includes monthly markets, bingo, game-show-style quizzes, live DJs, sports screenings and talks, alongside private and commercial events. Its official Dockworks Waterfront listings also show an autumn programme spanning music quizzes, local-history talks and comedy events, reinforcing the multi-use approach.
That mix gives Dockworks a different role from a conventional food hall. Visitors can encounter independent traders, performances, social events and locally focused cultural programming in the same former industrial setting, while the venue gains reasons for people to return outside peak dining periods.
James Swinburne, co-founder and director of Digbeth Dining Club and Dockworks Waterfront, said local partnerships had been part of the project from the planning stage. “Through local partnerships we are supporting and understanding our community,” he said, adding that the events programme is continuing to grow in response to the range of people using the venue.
Business, food and community connections
Dockworks is also being used as a platform for local makers, independent businesses and community organisations. Dedicated events including Black Country Day have brought together traders and residents around regional food, culture and identity.
The venue is working with the Black Country Food Network to deepen links with independent food businesses, while a partnership with the Black Country Chamber of Commerce is bringing mixer and networking events into the space. Dockworks is also available for corporate, private and commercial hire.
Another community link comes through the Black Country Foodbank, for which Dockworks now serves as a collection point. Together, the partnerships show how the venue is being positioned not simply as a place to eat and drink but as a meeting point for local enterprise, cultural activity and community participation.
For travellers and day visitors exploring Dudley and the Black Country, that evolving mix adds a contemporary food-and-culture stop shaped around the character of the surrounding region. The combination of independent traders, local art and recurring events also gives Dockworks a reason to function as part of the destination experience rather than as a single-purpose hospitality venue.
