CREATIVE POSTCODES: BLACK COUNTRY TYPE AND THE POETICS OF PLACE
In a corner of England too often flattened into cliché or forgotten entirely, Tom Hicks is quietly redrawing the map. Not with lines and borders, but with signs, shopfronts, flyposters, bricks, buses, and half-forgotten typographies. His project Black Country Type began as a lo-fi Instagram feed and has since grown into an evocative, unvarnished portrait of a region shaped by industry, humour, heritage, and grit. Hicks calls it “freeform photography,” but his lens is anything but careless. His gaze – direct, fond, often funny – captures the idiosyncratic beauty of the Black Country’s everyday vernacular.
Now, with the release of his first short film, Nothing Happens Everywhere, Hicks has added new dimensions to this deeply personal archive. Made in collaboration with poet Liz Berry, ambient sound artist Rob Glover, and editor Alex Crowton, the film distils the stillness, texture, and soul of the West Midlands into a lyrical, moving study of place and memory.
From Pixels to Poetry
What began as a series of smartphone snapshots has evolved into something far more immersive. In Nothing Happens Everywhere, Hicks explores new creative terrain, combining moving image, sound recordings, and Berry’s haunting Black Country dialect poem to build a multisensory meditation on landscape and identity.
“There was no script,” Hicks tells Fused. “No plan. Just the same freeform instinct that guides my photography. I knew I wanted to stay close to the aesthetic I’d developed with Black Country Type – static shots, no camera movement, no staged scenes. I didn’t want to suddenly become a filmmaker in the traditional sense. It had to feel like a natural extension of what I was already doing.”
And it does. The film doesn’t stray far from the materials of Hicks’ photographic world – faded signage, institutional brickwork, handwritten shop windows, brittle council buildings softened by time and context. But the addition of ambient sound – birdsong, market traders, passing buses – adds a quiet pulse to the visuals. Rob Glover’s sound design, compiled from field recordings across the region, stitches together disparate locations into a unified atmosphere.
The most transformative moment came from Berry’s poem, sent as a rough WhatsApp recording, her voice full of affection, grief, and hope for the region. “I expected a few lines,” Hicks recalls. “But Liz sent this fully formed poem that completely changed how I thought about sound in the film. It was beautiful – and it demanded to be heard in full.”
Local Colour, Universal Truths
The irony is not lost on Hicks that his work, so rooted in the mundane details of a single place, now speaks to wider audiences across the UK and beyond. “The reaction at Flatpack [Film Festival] was overwhelming,” he says. “People really connected with it. That sense of familiarity, of home – even if they weren’t from the Black Country.”
This August, Nothing Happens Everywhere will screen at the Royal Geographical Society’s annual conference as part of the “Creative Geographies” strand, followed by a solo exhibition at the University of Cambridge in November. The interest from unexpected corners – academics, urban planners, filmmakers – hints at the broader appeal of Hicks’ practice.
“People often say my photos don’t have people in them,” he adds. “But the evidence of people is everywhere. In a handwritten sign, in a plastic chair left outside a chip shop, in the faint outline of a removed sticker. The Black Country has a very distinctive visual language. And the way people interact with the landscape – adapt it, shape it – that’s part of the poetry.”
A Lo-Fi Philosophy
Hicks still shoots on an iPhone. Despite the temptation to upgrade, especially with a film commission and mentoring programme funded by The Space, he chose to keep his tools simple. “Using my phone is part of the process,” he says. “It’s immediate. It’s democratic. I’m not hiding behind technical barriers.”
That philosophy extended to the production of the film. Early test shots were captured with a borrowed plastic tripod, later upgraded thanks to project support. Mentorship from filmmaker Sarah Butcher encouraged Hicks to experiment with closer crops, new compositions, and better equipment – all while staying true to his core aesthetic.
“The big learning curve wasn’t just the camera,” he admits. “It was understanding what sound and movement could do – how they could deepen the mood without distracting from the visuals. In the end, it became a kind of portrait. Not just of the Black Country, but of how I see it.”
The Next Chapter
With the film gaining traction and his work being celebrated in increasingly diverse contexts, Hicks is already looking ahead. “I’ve got ideas,” he says. “Maybe a night-time version. Maybe more music. Definitely more film. There’s still so much of the Black Country I want to explore – visually, sonically, poetically.”
What started as a hobbyist’s Instagram account has become a compelling example of creative place-making – a reminder that powerful stories don’t need to come from glamorous postcodes or glossy backdrops. Sometimes, they emerge from bus shelters, abandoned factories, corner shops, and kerbstone cracks.
Black Country Type may focus on the local, but its impact is anything but provincial. In Hicks’ hands, the region’s unloved surfaces become luminous, its silence rich with meaning. Whether in stills or film, he shows us that nothing happening can, in fact, mean everything.
See It for Yourself
Nothing Happens Everywhere screens August 27 at the University of Birmingham as part of Words and Pictures: An Evening of Birmingham Creativity, curated by Flatpack Festival.
Find out more and book tickets
CREATIVE POSTCODES: BLACK COUNTRY TYPE AND THE POETICS OF PLACE
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