We are delighted to welcome the diverse communities of our borough and we invite you to come in, explore, and make The Public your own.

The ground floor's first art exhibition, 'Seek My Face', was a great success for local artist Shaun Morris. The next exhibition, by local arts group Multistory, opens in November – raising awareness of domestic violence.

Specially commissioned permanent exhibits are also on show in The Public Gallery. Currently both galleries are showing the premiere of international documentary artist, Esther Shahlev-Gerz’s record of West Bromwich. Working with local residents, she filmed their responses to her question, “What Story Must Be Told Today?"  This is the fourth in her series of films entitled Les Portraits des Histoires.
 
Couture café bar is a stylish and spacious venue for any social occasion with friends or informal business meetings. Adjacent to reception on the ground floor and open for breakfast, lunch and evenings, it is fast becoming a favourite for commuter coffee breaks, business lunches and rush-hour drinks, or just a bit of weekend R&R. 

Pop in for a drink and great food, often with free live music to complete the atmosphere.

Private parties are welcome too - plan your own special occasion with expert help and advice from our first class team. We'll work with you to make sure everything is perfect. Satisfied customers so far include birthday parties, wedding meals and office outings.

Pinktank is an airy, pink-hued, glass-walled space incorporating next to the Couture Café bar.It is a multi-purpose venue, staging regular live music, tea dances and a variety of activity workshops, with informal seating and space to relax during the day or for a great night out. The Public is growing in popularity as a weekend venue for live music and entertainment.

Theatre - this versatile space can actually be a theatre, cinema, live music and performance stage, disco, ballroom, banqueting or conference hall. Events as diverse as corporate conferences and Saturday morning breakdancing workshops have so far proved successful and popular.  

The bookings diary is already filling up through to the end of the year for a wide variety of community and corporate events and we're still keen to hear how we could help with your event ideas for the future. 

The first floor accommodates open-plan offices for The Public and Gallery staff. It is also home to The Public’s resident music factory Major Key Studios.

Major Key Studios run foundation degrees in sound production and music management for Wolverhampton University. They operate a state-of-the-art recording studio and have education facilities for some 70 under-graduate students. They promote live music in the West Midlands and work closely with The Public team to provide technical events support including professional sound and film recordings from the theatre.

The second floor is being developed to provide additional facilities for training and learning which will enable us to provide smaller meeting rooms and enhance our existing conference facilities.

Longroom is on the third floor and visitors to the Gallery or the café should take a moment to appreciate the spectacular panoramic views from the signature jellybean windows. It is a wonderful exhibition or banqueting space with its own café and can be sectioned off to adapt to the scale of your event.

Public Gallery opens directly off the Longroom, with visitors checking in at the start of the interactive art gallery which takes them down a ramp, winding around the building down to ground level. The Gallery is at the heart of the Public and reflects the building’s original thinking – encouraging participation and learning by bringing together inspirational work by internationally renowned artists with opportunities for visitors to develop, make and take away their own art.

Public Gallery is a dynamic space with no vertical walls, and incorporates dizzying drops, a glade of steel trees, digital waterfalls, flying avatars, labyrinthine paths and sound tunnels, alongside two temporary exhibition spaces which will see a changing programme of work by internationally renowned artists.  
 
Highlights from the gallery include:
 
Flower of my Secret: Flower of my Secret is a virtual place that holds everybody’s dreams, memories wishes and secrets.  

Access at the Public: Access looks at the impact of surveillance, detection and celebrity on today’s society, revealing our fascination for control, visibility and vigilance – both scary and fun.

Animo: Visitors place themselves in a flip-book cartoon and experience stop-frame animation on a human scale.

Flypad: A spectacular vehicle for play, communication and transformation. Each visitor is assigned their own personal avatar, which they can fly around the gallery, overlaying a virtual world onto the physical world.

The fourth floor is a series of striking open-plan, designer business spaces – which have become known as Liliypads  or ‘pods’. Arrangements are currently nearing completion with two new permanent occupants and details will be announced soon. If you are interested in the possibilities for your organisation, you can talk it over and view the premises by contacting us at The Public.

For more information about The Public please visit www.thepublic.com or call 0121 533 7161.