The high-profile city centre 'regeneration' is dull and unoriginal, but there's a lot of good stuff happening in the arts and creative industries. Places like the Custard Factory and the Eastside regeneration have attracted lots of small businesses in design, textiles, music, visual arts and more. Cheap rents, lots of space, a supportive council and all those things places like Shoreditch and Peckham used to have before the money moved in. Brum's art gallery is excellent and well worth a visit ? as is the jewellery quarter, Aston Hall and a number of other fine civic buildings. Brummies have got used to others doing the city down ever since Jane Austen's Mrs Elton said: "One has no great hopes of Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound."