Created in Birmingham

The rather useful looking Skyscraper City forum prints the email sent out by UCE’s Vice Chancellor David Tidmarsh telling staff and students that he’s soon to be BCU’s Vice Chancellor. I won’t post the whole thing but here’s an exceprt or two that caught my eye.

Through our research and consultation exercise, we have confirmed that by using the shorter, stronger title of Birmingham City University, we will have a more recognisable and powerful name that will give us a much stronger identity in the market place. We believe that we will all benefit if the University is more easily recognised for its achievements by using a shorter, stronger name.

This is a name that clearly identifies both our status and location in Birmingham and also chimes well with our mission to be a centre of excellence in learning, creativity and enterprise, promoting economic, social and cultural well being.

[…]

As one of our many ambitions, our long-term estates plan will create a major new city centre campus at Eastside, near Millennium Point and we are committed to further investment at Perry Barr and Westbourne Road, to improve and enhance facilities at both campuses.

Thanks to Simon Howes for the tipoff

Do you know this font?

If it rings a bell do let Jane Anderson know as it’s doing her nut in.

Bobbie Gardner, the Community Musician, has a new weblog. Same spirit as the old one but with extra bells.

The BBC Big Screen, which, after a short break, will be reconstructed in Victoria Square, is harnesing the power of YouTube in a wide search for submissions.

This is your opportunity to get your film seen in the centre of Birmingham. Your film can be about anything….drama, documentary, animation, experimental, anything….as long as it is suitable for a public space (i.e. no sex, no full frontal nudity, no swearing, no brutal violence). Upload your film here and the curator for the screen will be in contact if we have a slot for your film. All copyright stays with the filmmaker, we just need your permission to screen the film. The filmmaker must also have full permission for any copyrighted material i.e music, used within the film.

So if you’ve got some stuff already on YouTube which you think might be of interest to passing shoppers and pigeons, join the group and add it. via BiNS

(Disclaimer - I really hate the whole concept of the Big Screen.)

The Stirrer ran a debate on the future of Digbeth at the Spotted Dog pub last night which I wasn’t able to attend. Here’s the write-up and the debate continues on the message board.

4Talent are running a Commissioning Competition which also combines a talent search and training session. Sort of.

To enter submit “three ideas that you think could work as a 4Talent multimedia feature, along with a current CV and links to a showreel and/or examples of your work.” The successful 10 applicants will then be invited to a workshop featuring “a screening of some best-practice examples of our films, alongside an expert insight of what works for different formats, from talking-head profiles to thematic mini-docs.”

“You’ll then have the chance to introduce yourself and pitch your ideas to the rest of the group. At the end of the day, the best four will be picked by a 4Talent Commissioning Editor and one of our pro producers to receive a £500 commission, and they’ll explain the strengths and weaknesses of the various pitches.”

The Birmingham session is at Maverick Television on Tuesday 16th October. Full details, including examples of what they’re after, on the 4Talent site.

Andrew Dubber writes about a new project starting in his department at UCE (sorry, BCU) - an “Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Knowledge Transfer Fellowship.” Thankfully Andrew translates this into English and it does look pretty interesting.

The Fellowship project will buy out half of my time for two years, starting with in February, to work with local music businesses and organisations, look at what they do, and help them develop new and innovative ideas that will help them make more money.

The idea is that it’s a knowledge exchange. They get new ideas from people like me who have nothing better to do than sit around and read, think about new technological developments and figure out what it all means. In return, we get first hand experience of what is commonly thought of as ‘the real world’ so we can get a feel for how these ideas might work in actual practice, rather than just in the realms of theory.

Not sure how it’s all going to shake out, but between the handful of us, we’re going to be working with about 20 different organisations, from community radio stations to punk labels, promotions companies to online music retailers.

Give than Andrew is absurdly blog-savvy you can expect this knowledge to be widely shared.

Illustrator and designer Jane Anderson has a weblog.

Heeeerrrree’s Brumcast 69:

Word on the wire is UCE will announce it’s changing its name to Birmingham City University on Monday. And I’m struggling to think of a comment that’s insightful or even vaguely witty about it.

Light House media and arts centre in Wolverhampton is celebrating its 21st birthday on Thursday 11 October with a party, a show and a DVD. The event is really aimed at past trainees and associates - the Light House Family if you will - but I got an invite so it’s not exactly exclusive.

As well as drinks we are presenting the work of director and screenwriter Sean Spencer and launching our new DVD featuring short films produced at the centre over the past 21 years. Light House is an award winning production company with an impressive list of titles to its name and this evening we will be showcasing a number of short films as well as inviting Sean Spencer to take the stage and talk about his career since graduating from Light House in 1999.

The evening will begin with a screening of Sean’s work including a number of edgy and distinctive short films that have been screened worldwide catching the attention of high profile organisations such as the British Film Institute and the BBC. Sean is now regularly approached to undertake consultancy work, script editing and mentoring for companies such as Frontline Productions and currently has a slate of feature films in development.

If you know of anyone who’s been involved with Light House over the years please tell them about this, and if you’d like to go yourself RSVP to plot [at] light-house.co.uk or 01902 716055.

BiNS has news of a series of walks lead by Ben Waddington of Birmingham Library concentrating on the design and typography history of the city as part of the Plus festival. Here are the dates:

Type Tour of Digbeth - 17, 18, 19 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
Baskerville’s Birmingham - 20 October 12.30 – 14.30pm
City Centre Type Tour - 21 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
All priced at £10

Waddington has done many of these in the past - here’s more info on his Baskerville walk (from where I nicked the above image). Personally the Digbeth one looks the most fascinating. I’d imagine the letterforms will reflect the random evolution of the area over the last century rather well.

Details to follow on the Plus site.

Arts Council England’s new Chief Executive is Alan Davey.

In this review of the Damian Ortega show at Ikon Eastside Terry Grimley interviews curator Helen Legg giving some insight in why they’re in a big dirty warehouse.

Some visitors might feel that the current space would make a perfect permanent gallery if only its walls were given a good scrub and a few coats of white emulsion, and the roof was re-glazed. But apparently artists and curators like it in its raw state, just as the metal-bashers left it.

“We love it here,” says Helen. “You should see it when the artists first see it and we say can you make something for this space. They just drool.

“Birmingham has got this great industrial history and it’s crazy for us not to have a space like this that reflects it. We’ll close this one in October because it gets incredibly cold in the winter, and we’ll be saying goodbye to it with a party on Hallowe’en. Then we hope to reopen in a different location next summer.”

While you might think that galleries would be an essential ingredient of a new cultural quarter, the economics of providing them are challenging, to say the least.

“We couldn’t provide a permanent space like this unless there was some permanent funding.” says Helen. “People are being encouraging - the council like what we are doing down here, and the Arts Council like what we’ve done, but the Arts Council has lost a lot of lottery money.

“So we just have to keep on putting effort into it. In Birmingham there are so many empty factories and it does need more spaces like this, something to give the city a bit of an edge.”

She points to Prof Michael Parkinson’s council-commissioned study of the city centre, which calls for the future development of Eastside to remain “gritty” as a foil to recent glossier developments such as the Bullring.

Antonio Gould reports from the Serious Virtual Worlds conference that took place in Coventry recently.

Type Records have released their 30th album. Stef runs through some of their recent releases.

The Designer Show And Tell event at the Plus festival looks pretty fun:

This event, taking place at the Plus Friday Night Party, is proving to be very popular amongst exhibiting agencies and freelancers at the festival. Designer Show and Tell is a simple concept. Participants are asked to show 10 images each on view for just 20 seconds during which time they have to tell the story behind the image. This gives each presenter exactly 3 minutes 20 seconds of fame before the next presenter takes to the stage. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

Here’s the full press release for Paul Kaynes’ appointment as West Mids Creative Programmer for the Cultural Olympiad. I’m not going to try and summarise it as I’m still processing exactly what a Cultural Olympiad is but here’s what he intends to do:

• Encourage and enable arts and cultural bodies to get involved, and create opportunities for ordinary people to take part,
• Become a dynamic link between the regions and London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG).
• Assess whether local projects meet the criteria to become part of the Cultural Olympiad, and
• Ensure that each region’s heritage is as well represented as its 21st century technology.

If I was being cruel I’d say the title of the latest exhibition to take place at Curzon St Station is an indication of some shark jumping, but I’m not and it looks pretty cool.

The Cure Zone is:

An exhibition by a group of international visual communicators. Fusing ideas of European, Asian, North and South American students discovering their individuality through their studies at UCE’s BIAD. […] A mix of diverse influences, oozing concepts articulated in photography, animation, moving image, illustration, graphic design, scenography, visual identity and branding.

The private view is on October 1st from 6-11pm and the exhibition runs from the 2nd to the 5th from 11am-8pm.

In this post about Audiences Central’s Chief Executive Paul Kaynes leaving to become West Midlands Creative Programmer for the Cultural Olympiad we learn that Audiences Central used to be called Birmingham Arts Marketing, which is something I did not know and makes a lot more sense now.