If you fancy sampling a shedload of creativity and buying some stuff this weekend you could do much worse that go to the Flair Fair in Wolverhampton on Saturday.
Light House’s renowned Flair Designer Maker Fair will return this June. Featuring over 40 of the region’s best artists and makers who will be exhibiting and selling their work in the historic courtyard of the Chubb Buildings. Ranging from illustration and photography to ceramics, textiles and jewellery there will be something to suit your fancy whether it be a gift for someone or a piece of original art for your home. Graduates from Wolverhampton School of Art and Design will also be selling work which will be exhibited at their Degree Show during June – don’t miss this opportunity to buy unique craft and art pieces from the next generation of designers.
Runs from 11am – 4pm at Light House just by Wolverhampton train and bus stations. Admission is free.
The Natural House project comes to Birmingham this week demonstrating the Clay Build Technique as part of Architecture Week. “CBT is modern, sustainable and carbon neutral technique of building houses / buildings using primary materials such as, clay, straw and water.” In other words mud huts, and you get a chance to make them at the Festival of Xtreme Building site on Moor St Queensway this week.
The dates and times for workshops are as follows:
20,21,23,24 June
Each session runs for 1 3/4 hrs.
Session one 10am – 11.45am
Session two 12pm – 1.45pm
Session three 2.15pm – 4pm.
I say again, this workshop involves actually building stuff out of mud.
Thursday June 28th is the Creative Networks Summer Party held at Rooty Frooty at the Custard Factory. There’ll be live music, barbecue and drinks, and while it’s free places are limited so it’s best to register your interest. Here’s the invite (pdf) with all the details you need. See you there!
From moayad.com
Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.
A press release from Birmingham Artists that’s doing the rounds declares that Birmingham City Council has cut their funding with only one month’s notice to leave their city centre office and studio complex.
It could be argued that Birmingham Artists (BA) doesn’t need such frivolities as money and a permanent location, or that an organisation that’s survived for 21 years, has a membership of 150, runs the only Print Workshop in the region, does outreach and youth training and above all provides a networking node for Birmingham’s vibrant but disparate artistic community, that something like that isn’t really needed. These arguments could be made and in a bizarro parallel universe it might be concluded that BA doesn’t deserve taxpayers money and funding should be sourced from elsewhere, but allowing one month for that to happen is just madness, really.
I’m not saying Birmingham Artists deserve this support, though I suspect they do. I don’t think all arts organisations deserve public money by default. A significant number of them don’t and a lot of arts funding could be much better spent. But to take a well established organisation (how many arts outfits can say they’ve been in existence for over two decades?) and give it one month’s notice…
Words are failing.
There are a number of crimes here. The first is a betrayal of the commitment the city has given to the creative industries in Birmingham. The second is a blindness to the importance of social infrastructure in the city. The third is an ignorance of sustainable investment. You can add your own to this list.
More on this story as it develops.
Here’s the full press release:
Read the rest of this entry »
From suselstahl
Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.
As you might be aware, Birmingham blogger Andrew Dubber found his site rocketing to international attention when he posted an email discussion with Paul Birch of Wolverhampton-based Revolver Records. The substance of the debate was fairly daft – that as an employee of UCE Dubber should not be linking to articles that criticize the mainstream record industry – but by agreeing for the correspondence to go public Dubber essentially handed Birch a rope which he gladly used to hang himself. The story has gone global thanks to Birch being on the board of the BPI and the IFPI yet displaying an incredible lack of nous about not only the future of music but how the debate surrounding it should take place.
While enough petards have been hoisted to damage the reputation of the BPI in this matter there are a couple of observations I’d like to throw into the pot.
Firstly the name Paul Birch rang a bell somewhere so I did a bit of digging. Turns out he was the guy the Stone Roses threw paint over when he re-released a single of theirs without permission. While this doesn’t add anything to the debate it’s kinda amusing.
Secondly, and more pertinently, Birch’s record label has minimal internet presence. I’m not suggesting board membership of national and international trade organizations should be restricted to the corporations, but you’d hope that as the industry attempts to embrace the digital age its representatives would be at least vaguely aware of how it all works.
The July Out of Hours at Light House in Wolverhampton is a rather pertinent one for this site as it’s all about blogging.
Out Of Hours: Monday 2 July 2007, 5.30-7.30pm.
This evening we’re talking Blogging and we have some experienced bloggers on hand to guide us, including Pete Ashton of Created in Birmingham [that's me!], Joe Butcher, Steve Campbell of Creative Wolverhampton and Stefan Lewandowski from 3Form, an innovative web development company who have created numerous blogs for both commercial and private applications. If you want to know more about blogging, (is it only a social activity or can it be part of a wider business strategy?) or just want to meet interesting people, then come along to this event.
I gather these are pretty informal events taking place in the cafe and other than reciting my usual mantra of “everyone with something to say should blog and if they blog they must link” I’ll be up for answering any questions you might have about this platform.
From harri b
Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.
The Mixed Media show from the New Generation Arts festival had its opening last night. Lots of lovely stuff to look at.
Runs until June 29th at 44 Floodgate St in Digbeth, the first time this space has been used as a gallery. It’s well worth checking out if you’re a fan of dilapidated industrial buildings – lots of lovely flakey paint.
The art is pretty good too.
More photos in my Summer of Art set on Flickr.
Jivan Astfalck’s installation at Moor St Station at first look like hats on stands in a box. Which is what it is. But look closer and each hat has a delicate brooch attached to it the design of which has some connection to the station itself, from the shapes of the beams and windows to a picture of a cat (apparently there’s a community of feral felines living in the disused tracks). And then you notice the cast iron hat stand has the GWR logo on it.
Jivan created the piece by sitting in Moor St watching people move through it. As a German based in London who teaches at BIAD she is not a native Brummie, something she was jokingly apologetic for, but that doesn’t make her reaction to a Birmingham train station any less valid. If anything it makes it more pertinent as the city evolved around travel and trade, from the canals to the motorway network to the airport. People pass through Birmingham as much as they live here.
Jivan was particularly interested in the renovation of the station which attempts to recreate the Victorian style to an almost fanatical degree, from the light fittings to the palm trees, yet cannot help but be fake in places. It also contrasts strongly with the ubiquitous Selfridges building the empty glass cube next to it, like a functional museum exhibit. But above all a building like this is about people and how they use it. Jivan spent time just watching the different types of people, what they looked like and how they behaved as their narratives were framed by the building, which in turn informed her choice of hats and brooch designs.
The exhibition is housed in an wood and glass box in the concourse of the station which, as an original feature, blends into the surroundings until it catches you eye. It’ll be on display until June 29th.
Jivan Astfalck is a Senior Research Fellow at UCE BIAD (this is her staff page) where she directs the Jewellery, Silversmithing and Related Production MA. Her installation is part of the Architectural Jewellery and Conceptual Design strand of New Generation Arts and Architecture Week
Created in Birmingham has been running for 6 months now and in that time it’s become apparent that the scope of this project is beyond the capacity of one man (ie me). So it’s time to expand the remit somewhat.
Originally I didn’t want to run reviews here as it would give the blog the perception of bias, but on reflection I don’t think that’s a bad thing. People seem to like the fact that this blog veers into opinion from time to time rather that just being a bland listings site so since I obviously can’t help that I might as well expand it.
So CiB is now open to submissions. There’s no money available for payment and in the long term I’d encourage you to write on your own blog but if you aren’t ready to commit to that or just want to reach CiB’s readership then send in your words. The blog currently gets approx 200 unique views a day and they be top quality views. The people with the power read this blog. Oh yes.
(Please be aware that “power” is a relative concept and all statements regarding the degree of influence of this blog are unsubstantiated, ill-informed and blatantly made up.)
I’ll refine this over time but here’s the guidelines. Keep it short-ish. 500 – 1000 words ideally. If you can include a relevant image or two that’d be great. Include a short bio sentence to put at the bottom of the post. Subjects should be within the artistic, creative and musical arenas of Birmingham. Opinion pieces are kinda welcome if you’ve got something interesting to say but actual reports and reviews of what’s going on are more encouraged. Axe-grinding ain’t what this blog is about.
Email stuff to peteashton at gmail dot com and I’ll get back to you. And if I reject your writings get over to Blogger and set up your own blog. You don’t need me really. I mean, who the hell am I anyway? Just some mook with a blog. Screw me, no-nothing moron…
Background
(Thrown together using Google Image Search and Photoshop. If someone with actual skillz in this department wants to have a go please do!)
With the New Generation Arts starting next week there are more launches and views happening than normal. Or maybe they’re just getting more publicity. Whatever the logic, Mixed Media is a keen looking one happening tomorrow evening that has a lot of artists in one place. These artists to be exact:
Chris Clinton (Painting)
Greg Cox (Sculpture)
Mark Essen/Jo Spencer (Mixed Media)
Rita Fletcher (Photography)
Helen Grundy (Mixed Media)
Anne Guest (Installation)
Faith Pearson (Mixed Media)
Chris Poolman (Mixed Media Assemblage)
Tom Ranahan (Photography)
Matt Robinson (Sculpture)
Stephen Earl Rogers (Painting)
Liz Rowe Mixed Media (Assemblage)
David Thomas (Installation)
Lois Wallace (Painting)
Amy Woolley (Sculpture)
Yvonne Hindle (Painting)
Mitra Memarzia Video (Installation)
The launch is from 6.30-8.00pm on Friday at 42-44 Floodgate Street (near the Custard Factory). Here’s the invite (pdf). It then runs until June 29th from 10am. No idea when it shuts though.
Now that’s a great title.
Painting from the other side of an optical injury, Stephen Farley affirms his legacy of rekindling an extra-sensory relationship with the viewer inviting exploratory touch. Each intensively embellished work portrays a slice of translucent texture that hints at an altered perspective, giving us a unique insight into a remote but compelling viewpoint.
Titles such as ‘Angel amongst us’ and ‘Nocturnal Violation’ offer irregular compositions that are encapsulated in the direction of an overlapping and altogether organic form. Other works are adorned in shrouds of crystallised droplets that invoke the onlooker to reach out a hand as if to re-examine their own personal visual perception. By seeking to provoke an awareness of a shifted sensibility beyond the conventional picture plane, the artist bequeaths a testimony to aesthetic beauty hidden within an unfamiliar landscape.
Mon-Fri 9am-8pm
Sat 9am-5pm
June 25 until August 4
The Hanging Space, Birmingham Central Library.
