Free public lecture by Iris Bertz on the history of the Tower Ballroom, marking the annual Chris Upton Memorial Lecture.
The Chris Upton Memorial Lecture 2026 is on Monday 2 November at the Library of Birmingham, with Iris Bertz taking the lead. It's presented by Birmingham Archives & Collections (Wolfson Centre) alongside Friends of Birmingham Archives and Heritage, and the talk runs for about an hour. Bertz will be speaking on the Tower Ballroom, a Birmingham institution that's a bit of a local legend in its own right.
Bertz is the founder and director of Bertz Associates, and she describes herself as an 'accidental historian'. She came to Birmingham in 2012 after an MA in Fine Art from Wolverhampton School of Art, having been inspired by Midlands Actors Theatre and Carl Chinn. For more than a decade she worked in schools and community projects before setting up Bertz Associates in 2020, a non-profit arts and heritage organisation that platforms emerging voices of diverse creatives and uncovers untold city histories. The story of the Tower Ballroom is what first sparked her love for the city, so it's fitting it's the subject here.
Her other work follows a similar thread of digging into the city's overlooked corners. She's run the women's history walks Women Between the Lines, Everything to Everybody — a reflection on the Civic Gospel — and Discovering Lisel Haas, which looks at the archive of a German Jewish photographer. The lecture sits right in that same vein: taking a familiar Birmingham landmark and looking at it from a different angle.
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It's held in the Heritage Learning Space on Level 4 of the Library of Birmingham, Centenary Square, B1 2ND. The talk starts at 5:30 PM, with doors open from 5:00 PM, and admission is free, with refreshments included.
