Created in Birmingham

• Over on the Iron Man Records blog Mark Badger reprints an essay from Bill Drummond, Pub back Rooms, concerning state funding and music. It’s a good read, as expected from Drummond, and I think pretty relevant to the situation in the West Midlands.
• B:INS reports on the Tunnel Vision installation that was part of Architecture Week. “Personally I’d have preferred to get a trip all the way down the tunnel, possibly with a knowledgeable guide – coming out the other end having learnt a little more about the architecture and history of the building. Art that uses architecture as part of its context should be a little more grounded, for me anyway.”
• The Stirrer reports that Johnnie Turpie’s TV production company Maverick, which also produces Ten4 Magazine and the West Mids division of 4 Talent has been bought by London based All3Media. Apparently it’s more about distribution and expanded opportunities than corporate absorption and they should retain their independence within the group.
• The newly (?) revamped BBC Birmingham site profiles Jaskirt Dhaliwal who has been taking portraits of people in Bearwood as part on an ongoing project. Her photos are also on Flickr.
• Devo at Symphony Hall on Friday was fantastic. Nothing to do with Birmingham really but I felt it worth stating. An historic occasion and no mistake. Lovely acoustics there too – other venues should take note.

Lauren Davies writes in with news of a free 2 day course from the Media Skills division of UCE, Explore You Inner Entrepreneur. Run by Annette Naudin the course “has been especially created for individuals working in the creative industries sector and will explore personal values, presentation skills, confidence and will include talks from inspiring guest speakers.”

More details are here and reports from previous sessions are here. The course is on Wednesday 11th & Thursday 12th July 2007 at the New Technology Institute in Birmingham city centre and while it’s free booking is essential. Contact lauren.davies@uce.ac.uk / 0121 204 9880.

With the gamut of music festivals and events happening in the city centre this summer it’s easy to forget about the suburban ones. Most of the districts in the sticks will be having some kind of village fete or festival usually lasting for a day, but Moseley’s lasts for a full week from June 22nd to July 1st. Here’s the events listing and it ends with Music In The Park, a two day weekend music festival taking place in the same venue as the Folk Festival.

By some cruel twist of fate it clashes with Rootsville on the Saturday, as does the madness of the Bournville festival, so tough decisions will have to be made. Nothing clashes on the Sunday as far I can can tell though.

The lineup for Music in the Park generally consists of local bands and artists. Here’s the current list:

There are, of course, many more events happening over the week starting with the Launch Party tonight at the Patrick Kavanagh with Partners in Crime, The Copycats and Mark Guest. The schedule is here and programmes and tickets for the festival are available from Sage Wholefoods on Alcester Road.

If you know of any local festivals that have a strong arts / music bent do let me know.

The programme of events for the Decibel Performing Arts Showcase is online. It runs from September 3rd to 7th and full details are here. I could be wrong but I think these are only open to paid-up delegates, in which case you’ll be wanting to register before the end of this month and save £50 on the £150 price.

The core aim of Decibel is “to provide African, Asian and Caribbean artists and companies based in England with a platform to promote their work to an audience of national and international promoters, Artistic Directors, venue managers, agents and producers.”

Einstellung’s acoustic kraut/post-rock gig at the Old Joint Stock Theatre last week got a great write up in the Birmingham Post. Justly so. It was very good.

The addition of strings seemed to suit the quartet’s reworked arrangements perfectly. Much like their usual incarnation, mellifluous guitar lines duelled and intertwined, although much more subdued than usual, nevertheless snaking between the rumbling bass while motorik rhythms (on this occasion played with brushes for the requisite subtle mood) provided the signature krautrock theme, even without the nominal searing guitars.

Tower of Song is “a new intimate live music venue run by musicians” in Cotteridge that I’ve just found out about.

Sit back and enjoy live jazz, folk, blues, roots, acoustic, bluegrass, unplugged indie, pop and rock, leftfield, dub, comedy.

I haven’t visited yet but they have a load of videos embedded into their MySpace page which give a flavour of the kinds of music being played. They also have regular new artist nights (presumably a variation on Open Mike) on Tuesdays and Wednesdays which I’d imagine are quite welcoming.

The venue is located at 107 Pershore Road South, a little way out of Cotteridge along the 45/47 bus routes and just by Kings Norton station. (map). It’s also on the Number 11 route which has got me thinking. There are a few music venues on the Outer Circle – Kings Heath, Cotteridge and Bearwood spring immediately to mind – possibly one for every major stop. I’m not sure how important this is but I feel it’s worth cataloguing.

Roys Boys is “an independent film company that was established in the West Midlands in 2006 by two brothers. Neil and Nathan Turner both write, direct and co-produce (along with DOP Jon Lewis) short low budget films.”

They’ve got three shorts on their site which are of pretty high quality, not just in production but with the scripts too. I’d recommend you put half an hour aside to check them out. And bonus points for making them available to download iPod style.

Here I Stay
[audio:kings_spain_here_stay.mp3]

MySpace.

Next gig at the Pat Kav in Moselely this Saturday.

Further to the Birmingham Artists funding issue I’ve received a statement from Birmingham City Council.

“Over a year ago Birmingham City Council staff met with representatives from Birmingham Artists and explained that we may not always be in a position to keep on funding their rent and service charges, which in 2006/07 came to £55,600. Unfortunately, following a re-valuation of the building they lease (which was required by law), the rent was increased from £27,900 to £50,000 with further increases planned to the associated services charges. The group was made aware of this change in November 2006 through a Section 25 Notice which they then acknowledged with a letter. Due to limited budgets, which already provide £9.5m to be spent on arts across Birmingham every year, the City Council cannot maintain this level of funding. However, officers will continue to meet with the group to look at other funding options and alternative business models and we have made provision for a month’s extension to the current lease to allow extra time for them to work on this.”

As I understand it when the notification of the rent increase was given it was not made clear that the increase would not be covered by the funding since this came from another department, which might explain why Birmingham Artists felt they had no warning about this. I suspect when it comes to giving notice the fault lies with inter-department communication.

Regarding the question of whether the council will continue to support Birmingham Artists in the future – discounting rent they were receiving £27,700 (although a lot of this would have gone on “service charges”) – I understand they are guaranteed £10,000 for 07/08. Obviously this isn’t going to cover the rent of a new building and so on but it is support. I also understand they’ll be helping them find funding from other sources

As is so often the case in these matter I think a lot of this is down to holes in the bureaucracy and poor liaising between the council and the society, but there are still some questions. The main one is why the council doesn’t think BA is worth what amounts to 0.8% of their budget. Is 0.8% a lot? I’m not sure.

Another is about the notion of property values in the city centre. I believe it’s the policy of Birmingham City Council, through the regeneration program, to increase property values as an indicator of success. For example, one of the reasons for rebuilding New St Station is to connect the area around Hill St to New St, thus increasing the value of the former. Birmingham Artists are currently based near the Mailbox, an area that was a bit of a shithole a few years ago but is undergoing extensive regeneration so it’s no surprise the rent has increased. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to BA and it certainly shouldn’t have been a surprise to the council. You’d hope that organisations that receive a significant amount of council support would be taken into account when planning these areas. It’s really not enough to blame a sudden rent increase on a compulsory re-vauation when the council, through its regeneration policies, is directly responsible for it.

The logical solution would be for BA to move to an area with lower rents. Digbeth, for example. Though plans to do so should really have been put in motion back in November. Of course, this is assuming the rents don’t increase in Digbeth once the regeneration kicks off there…

Emma Needle at BCC (who seems a very nice person) is aware of this post so any questions or points you want to make in the comments will presumably be seen by her.

Popped into Jibbering Records today to get my Supersonic ticket and noticed they have new art on the walls from one Tom Lewis. Here’s one of the more abstract pieces:

It feels a lot like meditation © Tom Lewis

As well as paintings he also does a nice line in character illustration. This chap is called Mr Tilly:

Mr Tilly © Tom Lewis

As well as selling his work he also has a line of greetings cards and is available for commissions. There’s also a two page interview in issue 3 of Multilink, a free PDF magazine.

Not sure when the exhibition finishes but be sure to have a looksee next time you’re in Jibbering.

• The Stirrer has a couple of videos of Mick Scully talking about and reading from his new book Little Moscow, previously mentioned here.
• Iron Man Records has a blog
• Sarah Woods’ Box gets reviewed in the Guardian. (Previously blogged here)
• West Midlands No! has published a letter from an ex-employee of Advantage West Midlands written to the chief executive that mentions the creative industries a lot. It’s not a particularly glowing letter. In fact you could say it’s rather damning. (Yes, I know who wrote it – it’s a small world. No, I’m not getting involved – just pointing.)
• Paul Bradshaw rounds up the links on the Dubber / Birch affair on his excellent Online Journalism blog.
• Birminghamusic.com rounds up the music-specific part of New Generation Arts. Looking on the NGA site itself there’s some top-quality looking stuff here, including graduates from the Conservatoire, at very cheap prices.

The Typ-Tap Festival at the MAC on July 10-11th sees two days of looking at new theatre writing for a young audience. A number of plays are being performed along with discussions and seminars.

More details of the methodology of this festival and the schedule on the MAC website.

As you may have heard, the MAC had something of a flood recently as rainwater poured down the hill from Moseley filling the lake which overflowed. While the complex has mostly re-opened they have had to reschedule a few things. From the MAC site:

The Hexagon and Theatre are operating as normal.

As a precaution, all exhibitions have been removed from the gallery spaces. It is our aim to reinstall them as quickly as possible, however this may not be until early next week.

The Exhibitions Private View, scheduled for Wednesday 20 June has now been moved to Wednesday 27 June to allow for the re-hanging of exhibitions following the closure of mac. All invites are valid for the rescheduled date, for further details please contact Lyle Bignon on (0)121 446 3346.

The cinema is currently closed and will remain so until Thursday 21 June.

The Parkside and Courtyard rooms will remain closed until Friday 22 June, while Music Rooms 1, 2 and 3 will remain out of action until Monday 25 June. We are yet to determine when the Dance Studio will be re-opened.

We will continue to update the website as much as possible. If you have any queries please call mac’s Ticket Office on 0121 440 3838.

mac would like to thank all our patrons for their patience and understanding at this time.

On a more positive note, I noticed on a recent visit that they’ve revamped their monthly programme booklet for the first time in years, possibly decades, and it’s very nice, from the full-bleed and slightly muted matt colours to the texture and feel of the paper. A lovely little package that really serves them well.

From tanyalupton

Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.

The schedule for the incredibly multi-genre Rootsville festival is coming together nicely. As you’ll recall the event has a novel ticketing system. The first chunk, from noon til 6pm, is free. Then from 6pm to 6am it’s £15 (adv). The free section is shaping up to be well worth your time too with the Birmingham Community Gospel Choir, Chrissy Van Dyke, Steve Gibbons and Soweto Kinch all performing during the day along with the recently confirmed Young Zulu Warriors from South Africa. They look like this:

(photo from Iron Man Records)

and here’s a video of them in action:

I think this is going to be a good festival.