Oliver Budd with the mural which his father created 37 years ago

THE son of the artist who created Birmingham's John F Kennedy mural is hopeful it will find a new home soon in the city's Irish Quarter.
Oliver Budd recently removed part of the mural created by his father Kenneth 37 years ago to make way for the redevelopment of Snow Hill Queensway and St Chad's Circus.
The mural, one of several created by Kenneth Budd in Birmingham, was paid for by the Irish community of the city.
With the prospect of the Snow Hill/St Chad's development being on the cards for some time now calls were made for the mural to be preserved.
Oliver, aged 45, said: "There were originally seven in Birmingham and I have been looking after then for the last 25 years.
"When this development came up the Irish people said you can’t go and demolish this because it's ours. The city gave the site but the work is the property of the Irish community. They felt very strongly that they wanted it saved and moved to Digbeth. We had a lot of discussion with the Irish Forum."
Oliver explained that in reality only part of the mural has actually been removed and taken to Budd Mosaics' East Sussex studio for storage.
"The bits we have taken off demanded an extreme amount of effort and care and it is costly.
"It would have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds for it to be removed entirely - more than doing a new one. We couldn't save all of it but we could save the portraits and the lettering panels."
Around 20 per cent of the original has been removed, including the heads of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King. All these parts will go to create the new mural.
The project was supported by Birmingham City Council and the developers of the Snow Hill site Ballymore Properties Ltd who are actually an Irish company.
Under the terms of the Snow Hill and St Chad's Circus project the developers must re-site the Kennedy and Great Western Railway (GWR) murals.
The GWR mural will be re-sited in the new public square at Snow Hill while one idea being considered for the Kennedy mural is to make it the focal point of a new JFK Square.
One of the challenges is finding a big enough space for the mural, which is 15m long and between four and five metres high.
Oliver said: "The onus is on the Irish community to find a site for it somewhere in Digbeth and the potential is enormous with large numbers of old factories lying empty, all being done up for apartments. We just need to find a wall space big enough to take it."
While he admitted he was sad so many of his father's Birmingham mosaics no longer exist, Oliver also accepts the need to make way for new development, particularly as it was new development that enabled the mosaics to be created in the first place.
But he pointed out that making space for public art in new developments does not seem to be a high priority.
He said: "Space is a big problem and is always a problem in developments, though more so now than in the past. These days it is about making money out of the space and accountants are everywhere.
"But hopefully I will get a call in a few months time saying here is the order to remake it."