The lives and work of Birmingham’s Irish and African-Caribbean communities is to be the subject of a wide-ranging two-year project.

The project – Echoes From The Heart – has been made possible thanks to a £170,000 Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant.

Digbeth and Highgate in the 1960s will come under the spotlight – when manufacturing industry was thriving and household name products such as Typhoo Tea and Bird’s Custard were made there.

It will chart the history of the city’s industrial core through to its decline in the 1980s with the creation of a detailed archive available online through Birmingham City University and the city’s central library.

Reyahn King, head of West Midlands HLF, said: “This project will look at the personality of Digbeth and Highgate through the memories of those who have lived, grown up and worked there. It will preserve these stories for future generations.”