The New Irish Centre, Birmingham

A pivotal part of the thriving Irish community in Birmingham, the Irish Centre relocated to Kings Heath after 50 years in Digbeth. The new site comprises a bar, hotel, sports facilities, dance studio and a shop, see BBC article here.

As the much-awaited opening became imminent, the team at The Irish Centre contacted us to help them produce picture frames for the bar and sports centre, and canvas prints for each of the 78 newly refurbished hotel rooms.

For the bar area, we were presented with an assortment of old photos, each telling a story of the Irish community over the past five decades. We scanned each of the original photos and reprinted them on Photo Lustre in either A4 or A3. We were also sent a variety of digital images, which again we printed on Photo Lustre. Once we had printed all the photos at the same two sizes, we framed them using a white mount and smooth black frame.

For the sports centre, we were given various sporting garments to frame, including Gaelic football shirts, cycling jackets and some particularly heavy Irish dancing dresses. Each were individually framed in a box frame.

For the hotel rooms, we were supplied with a panoramic photo for each of the 32 Irish counties. We printed 3 copies of each as 1 metre wide canvases, then hand-stretched them onto stretcher frames and supplied them ready to hang.

“Dave and the team at Precision were really helpful getting all our framing done in a really tight timeframe, they managed to get everything we needed done to a high standard in time for our grand opening, we would definitely recommend them!”

Paul Owens, Managing Director of the New Irish Centre