Freakiest venue news of the year, perhaps, is that the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath is now under the same ownership as the Bulls Head in Moseley. This is not necessarily a bad thing – the H&H is an important venue on the Birmingham music scene and needs to be kept going – but the pub always had a rather grotty vibe to it in a good way and the range of acts performing was always somewhat random. It was also somewhere up and coming promoters could hire for a reasonable fee and, unlike other venues, didn’t have a house promoter taking the best nights.
There’s a short news piece here:
Marketing and events consultancy Big Cat Group and businessman Adam Regan have teamed up to produce leisure group Leftfoot Venues.
The partnership has already developed the the Bull’s Head in Moseley and is now investing pounds 500,000 in the redevelopment of the 19th-century public house the Hare and Hounds, in Kings Heath. Leftfoot hopes the Hare and Hounds will be a larger sister site to the Bull’s Head, which was reopened as a live music venue in May 2006.
Big Cat Group marketing director Anthony Tattum said: “The location of the Hare and Hounds is ideal for a project of this type, situated on one of the UK’s busiest high streets, it will be the only pub in Kings Heath that caters for the suburb’s increasing number of young bohemian and savvy professionals”.
Mr Regan said: “In a similar vein to the Bulls Head, we are aiming to cover a broad spectrum of musical tastes at the Hare & Hounds.”.
The pub re-opens on Friday 18th May with a Grand Launch Weekend. Here’s the flyer which details the bands and DJs playing. I’ll be watching this with interest!
(It occurred to me I might be perceived as being negative about this. I’m not. I’m just a little conflicted.)
Update: They have a website which lists the forthcoming gigs.
By golly it’s nearly June which means the Festival of Xtreme Building is about to start in Birmingham.
Running from June through to September this is an “experiment in design and experimental structures where Birmingham’s citizens, private sector developers and Local Authorities can create structures and explore architectural ideas that will reflect their visions of what gives a city its unique magic.”
I confess to being a bit dazzled by some of the terminology but it boils down to some interesting things being built on the patch of grass on the corner of Moor St and Priory St.
The first building on the site is T House which might look like this:
Or it might not. It opens on May 23rd with the official opening at 4.00pm. Here’s the barely legible invite which is dong the email rounds.
Part-architecture, part-sculpture, the design for T-House is a deconstruction of the built form – in this case, of the Japanese tea house and the English garden pavilion. T-House unfolds a series of environments through its intersecting planes, opening out dynamically like a giant piece of origami, which can be put to a wider range of different uses. T-House is intended for location in a modern public park where it is hoped it would act as both container and shelter for a wide range of social, aesthetic and artistic interactions to be determined by the general public. T-House is a developing concept which during the festival will be put to further research undertaken with different groups of people from Eastside.
There’s a lot more going on over the months but what really caught my eye was the promise of the Micro Compact Home arriving on June 2nd. This 2.6 sq metre cube apparently has all the space and facilities for humans to live in and is completely recyclable. There’s much more on the Micro Compact website about the design process and a quick Google brings up a number of articles (though oddly nothing on BLDGBLOG). It looks like this:
I think this festival is going to be one that’s best (perhaps only) understood by experiencing it. While some aspects might be a bit high level (though it’s worth noting they’re making interaction with Birmingham’s residents a priority) the city has always had a relationship with architecture, from the initial rapid growth of the industrial revolution through the post-war Brutalist years and continuing into today’s regeneration. Yet most of us know so very little about architecture. Buildings just appear like magic and we judge them in retrospect. If this festival can help us understand the process a bit better that can only be a good thing. We shall see.
Keeping Secrets
[audio:http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/the_heathers_secrets.mp3]
MySpace
(I’m going to do these randomly from now on. Bands and musicians can continue to send me mp3s and photos.)
Rudimentary Records is a new record label set up by music industry students at UCE. They’re working with acoustic fixture Ben Calvert along with bands The Motive and The Boom!Cans.
Rudimentary Records is aiming to play a part in the Birmingham music scene and expose the artists we feel are creating passionate music that Birmingham can be proud to have as its own.
Our Tony Wilson influenced label ethos means we currently have no contractual agreements with our artists. The artists have no obligation to work with us, but we have helped our acts to record tracks, we are soon to be distributing an EP, booking gigs and advertising through the media.
Their launch gig is at the Jug of Ale on Tuesday 15th May (tomorrow). Here’s the flyer.
via B:INS
The next exhibition in Light House‘s dedicated photography gallery is Shedding Light [Appropriation] by Anthony William Bye running from May 25th to July 13th.
Appropriated stills have been captured from 1960s cinefilm to create this exhibition documenting episodes in lives from a personal, political and cultural perspective. The images are selected carefully from diverse films including home movies, Air Force pilots flying planes, communist Russia and classic American cars taking the archetypal road trip. Using his background as a documentary photographer, Bye re-presents these images to alter the meaning and create a new story.
Just as a filmmaker or animator would draw up a storyboard of the frames of the film, Bye presents his work as a grid of many small images, leaving the audience to decide what the story might be. He takes documentary footage shot by amateur filmmakers and gives it a new light, preserves it as an archive and re-presents a point in history. With 24 frames per second of film to choose from, the process is a labour of love. The film is first transferred to digital format, then individual frames are selected based on aesthetic and intrigue and manipulated so that the original is blurred and softened, giving the appearance of a dream or memory.
This work is an ongoing development of Bye’s practice. Specifically for this exhibition his approach is more personal, using footage from his own family archive, which he has more recently discovered. Bye’s fascination in dissecting and re-positioning archive images is supported by a growing public interest in other people’s photographs. Most of Bye’s films were found or given to him and his appropriation of them is his way of prolonging their lives and preserving their existence. Some of the original film footage will also be included in this exhibition.
A quick Google revealed very little about Bye but did uncover this site which has five of the works online including the above and I have to say they’re lovely and quite inspiring. There’s a not-so-Private View on Wed May 30th at 6.30pm. It’s free and all are welcome.
Add to Google Calendar.
The Fierce Festival Opening Party is this coming Friday at the Cotton Club (previously 52 Degrees North) on Hurst St. It’s free entry but you’re asked to email them to say you’re going.
This might be part of the entertainment for the evening, put on by Gob Squad who’ll be performing their Who Are You Wearing, um, show? Is that the right word?
The red carpet entrance has always fascinated Gob Squad for its sheer entertainment and breathtaking superficiality. All the “just be yourself” glitter, phobias and self consciousness of contemporary society are flattened and compressed into a surface as thin and as vivid as the red carpet itself. The audience themselves become the stars, filmed as they arrive. The interviews are transmitted live to a large screen where the audience then watches the red carpet ritual which many of them have just experienced.
(Gob Squad’s proper performance for the festival, Kitchen: You’ve Never Had It So Good, is on at the Warwick Arts Centre on the 1st and 2nd of June.)
There’s also a cabaret hosted by Mrs Barbara Nice and free booze.
No offense intended but I’m not really sure exactly what this is. So I’m reprinting the email in full.
Read the rest of this entry »
From amortize
Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.
The announcement of Rootsville adds another big festival to Birmingham’s music calendar and it appears to have come from the grassroots rather than some city initiative. Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter but the former warms my heart.
Also notable is the wide, and I mean wide, range of genres on show covering, well, almost everything it seems. Have a scroll down this press release and see what’s missing.
The ticket pricing is interesting. The event runs from noon on Saturday June 30th until 6am the following morning but the first six hours are free (with families encouraged). After that it’s £20.
It takes place at the Custard Factory across four venues – the usual Medicine Bar and Lakeside Stage along with the Rooty Pool (presumably next to Rooty Frooty who are organising the event, hence the name) and the new Under The Arches which I’m guessing means the railway arches on Gibb St which, the last time I looked, were being used as a dumping yard.
More news as it emerges from the Rootsville site which has feeds, comments and everything or, if you’re that way inclined, their MySpace. There’s also a flyer you’re encouraged to spread about the place.
From suselstahl
Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.
Wolverhampton Art Gallery is celebrating the completion of artist Claudio Hils’ recent photographic commission to document the Art Gallery’s building works with the launch of his new book.
Friday 11 May, (4.30 – 6.30pm) is the book launch while Saturday 12 May (11am – 12pm) is the artist talk where Hills “reveals how building work, something that is often hidden from the public gaze, can be transformed into art.”
Both events are free.
Creative Wolverhampton is a blog about the creative scene in Wolverhampton and the surrounding area that’s been running since November last year.
Who knew?
Not me!
On Saturday there’s the monthly meeting of The Multipack at Lloyds No. 1, Regency Wharf, Broad Street from 2pm. (map).
The Multipack is a community of multi-talented individuals from across the Midlands UK, that come together to discuss all the things web and share their knowledge, skills and talents. It’s a great opportunity to meet like minded developers, designers and perhaps even the odd expert! Come along and share your ideas, and perhaps learn something new.
I’d imagine these are similar to the Flickrmeets and other events of that ilk that bring together disparate people who usually work in isolation and aren’t aware of others in their field working locally. I’ll be attending my first this weekend…
Misty’s Big Adventure have announced on their blog that their next album, Funny Times, has been finalised and should be released late August / early September. There’ll then be a national tour with Kate Goes and The Retro Spankees.
Also of note is a brief tour of Lithuania sponsored by the British Council where they’ll be representing Britain, which implies there’s someone at the British Council with a keen sense of humour.
Their single Fashion Parade was used by the BBC recently as background music for some trailers. There’s a free download this instrumental version from their MySpace player.
Finally, there’s a gig at the Hare and Hounds on May 21st and they’ve set up a shop at myspace.com/mistyslittleshop where you can buy CDS, t-shirts and the finger puppet pictured here.
Tonight the regular Screen Forum at Light House in Wolverhampton is a special on pitching at Cannes, supported by Bafta and Screen WM with some quite high profile speakers.
May’s forum will focus on pitching and will provide a timely opportunity for those thinking about taking their ideas to Cannes later in the month. The event will feature a workshop and talk by Julian Friedmann from Blake Friedmann Literary, Film & TV Agency. Julian is the author of How to Make Money Scriptwriting and publishes the UKs only scriptwriting magazine, the Scriptwriter. He has been teaching pitching for the last 17 years and has been a frequent visitor at Cannes .
This will be followed by a pitching panel where members of the audience will pitch to industry experts.
In addition to Julian Friedmann the panel will comprise:
- Roger Shannon , who has 25 years experience in the film industry, as producer, executive producer, financier, Film Festival Director, writer and broadcaster (Under the Skin, Butterfly Kiss, Beautiful People, Love is the Devil, Lawless Heart, Festival)
- Peter Rudge, who sits on BAFTA’s Council and their Education and Events committee and has spent time working with Colombia Pictures and Universal TV in Los Angeles before taking up a teaching post at Staffordshire University.
- Lee Thomas , who has over 10 years experience in feature production and is currently Head of Production at Screen WM where he has acted as executive producer on a number of high profile films, including Confetti, The Road to Guantanamo and Straightheads .
If that isn’t enough to get you down to Light House, there will also be exclusive BAFTA and Screen WM prizes for best pitch.
The evening will continue after the talks and pitching with drinks and chat in the bar.
It’s £4.50 to attend and while you can probably just turn up but it does say “to book contact Angela on 01902 716055.” More details here.
