You are 20 minutes into a drink in a quiet bar, you have covered work and the commute and the weather, and everything now rests on the next question. The silence that follows is structural. 2 people with nothing to do with their hands run out of material at roughly that mark, and the problem disappears the moment an activity supplies the next thing to react to. A set of experiments published in 2000 found that couples who spent 7 minutes on a novel, physically involving task rated their relationship higher afterwards than couples given a dull one. Birmingham is unusually well supplied with the first kind of task, most of it within a 20-minute walk of New Street.
Crazy Golf at Golf Fang, Digbeth
Scoring badly is the point here. A first date where one person is visibly worse at something is a faster route to a real conversation than any question about siblings, and 18 holes gives both people plenty of chances to be the worse one.
The course occupies part of the Custard Factory on Gibb Street and was built by graffiti writers, with holes set into buses, shop fronts and mocked-up pubs. Drinks are brought out to you wherever you have got to, which removes the trip to the bar that usually kills a conversation halfway. The venue is strictly over 18s and operates a Challenge 25 policy, so bring identification regardless of age.
Board Games at Chance and Counters
Also inside the Custard Factory, Chance and Counters keeps a library of board games and staff who will pick one for you based on how much time you have. Ask for something short and cooperative for a first meeting. Competitive games at 40 minutes tend to produce a winner and a person waiting to leave.
The advantage here is the pace. A game gives you a legitimate reason to sit in silence for stretches, and the talk that happens over it comes out sideways, which is how most people prefer to reveal things about themselves. It also produces information faster than questions do. 10 minutes of watching someone lose a round tells you how they handle being wrong in front of a stranger, and that is the trait most likely to matter 3 months later.
The Digbeth Street Art Route
Digbeth is a 10-minute walk from the city centre and its walls, alleyways and railway arches are covered in graffiti. A self-guided route of roughly 3 miles, which can be picked up at any point along it, takes in work from anonymous writers alongside a photorealistic Tommy Shelby mural commissioned by the creator of Peaky Blinders.
Walking beats sitting for a first meeting because eye contact becomes optional. You are both looking at the same wall, opinions have an obvious subject, and if the conversation stalls the route supplies the next thing to talk about within 40 metres.
Free Entry at Ikon Gallery
Ikon occupies a Victorian former boarding school in Brindleyplace and charges nothing to get in. Exhibitions change through the year and the building is small enough to see properly in 45 minutes, which makes it a sensible opening move for an afternoon that might continue elsewhere.
The gallery gets every configuration of first date passing through it, from students on a budget to someone meeting a sugar daddy for the first time in a public place with an easy exit. Free entry is the reason for all of it. Nobody has committed to an evening, and anyone can walk out after 20 minutes without the afternoon having cost them anything.
Check the programme before you go, since it changes through the year and a bad match of taste to subject makes a long 45 minutes. Brindleyplace also puts you on the canal, so the next hour can be decided outside without either of you having booked anything in advance.
The Back to Backs Guided Tour
The Back to Backs on Hurst Street are the last surviving court of back-to-back houses in the city, restored to 4 periods between the 1840s and the 1970s. Entry is by pre-booked guided tour only. The full tour runs 90 minutes at £10 for an adult, and a ground-floor tour of an hour is available at £8.
A guide talking for 90 minutes solves the small talk problem by removing the requirement for any. You get a shared reference for the rest of the evening, and the questions afterwards are obvious, since everyone leaves that tour with an opinion about which decade they would least like to have lived in. Book ahead and arrive 10 minutes early, because the tours start on time and there is no way to join one late.
The Smith and Pepper Workshop in the Jewellery Quarter
When the owners of Smith and Pepper stopped trading in 1981 they locked the door and left everything where it was. The tools stayed on the benches and the jars of Marmite stayed on the shelf beside the teacups. The Museum of the Jewellery Quarter now runs the site as it was found, and entry is by guided tour only, about 45 minutes, including a demonstration at the main jewellers’ bench and a look at the upstairs office where Olive Smith processed the orders. The scale suits a first meeting better than a large museum does, and the Jewellery Quarter has enough bars within 2 streets to continue somewhere afterwards.
A Canal Walk From Gas Street Basin
A walk costs nothing and has a natural end point, which matters on a first date more than the scenery does. 2 hours is a commitment. 40 minutes along a towpath with a drink at the end asks for much less, and the freedom to stop early is what makes people relaxed enough to be worth talking to.
The Birmingham Canal Navigations add up to about 100 miles across the city and the Black Country, and Gas Street Basin is the junction at the middle of the network. Towpaths lead from there towards Brindleyplace in one direction and the Mailbox in the other, both flat, both busy enough to feel comfortable after dark.
Sequencing the Evening
The bar problem from the opening is easy to solve by putting the bar second. Start with the activity, whichever one suits the weather and the budget, then let the drink happen afterwards, when there is something to talk about other than commutes. Locals tend to run it in that order and finish in the Digbeth area, which is 10 minutes on foot from most of the city centre and keeps going later than everywhere else. Sit down after that and the 20-minute mark arrives with a subject attached, because by then you have already played 18 holes badly or argued about a mural.