Created in Birmingham

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.

Just a quick note about the Binary Oppositions launch tonight at Vivid and then the Rainbow. I’ve been picking up bits and bobs of info about this over the week and I’m starting to suspect it’s a very important project that scoops whole swathes of interesting West Mids talent and projects it into wonderful places. Or something. All will become clearer in a few hours I guess.

The closing party for the Festival of Xtreme Building takes place this Friday at 9pm on the FXB site.

A pretty low key for everyone that has been involved to see the site looking very pretty at night lit up, listen to some music and have a beer. The Ale Installation by Pam Ginn will be on site for those of you that missed the Ale Exhibition at MADE, a performance by Polar Foam, and a few drums.

Had this email through from Julie Brown at the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at Birmingham Uni:

ACRE is a major, international, 4 year research project funded under the Priority 7 ‘Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-based Society’ within the EU Sixth Framework Programme. The project brings together partners from 13 leading research centres across Europe, and aims to significantly improve our understanding of the conditions that shape the emergence of a ‘creative knowledge’ economy and of its importance for the enhanced competitiveness of city regions. In addition to providing individual case studies and international comparisons of strategies for regional competitiveness and the role of creativity and knowledge-intensity in this, the research also focuses on several dimensions that have been neglected or underestimated so far. For example, the role of so called ‘soft’ factors (including quality of space, ‘atmosphere’ of the city, range of leisure and cultural facilities, social conditions and tolerance) in attracting the required ‘talent pool’ for creative and knowledge intensive activities.

We are currently undertaking a questionnaire survey of people who have graduated from Universities in Birmingham and who have decided to live and work here after graduating, and also a survey of people who work in creative and knowledge-intensive industries in Birmingham to find out why they chose this city to base themselves. We need people to complete the survey so that we can have an input into the creative city agenda and influence creative industry policy in Birmingham. Paul Cantrill Head of Creative Development at Birmingham City Council is already involved with the project and the results will be fed back directly to him.

There are two questionnaires and they’re both online:

This one is for people working in the creative industries.

This one is for graduates of Birmingham Uni and UCE.

Any questions about this project please contact Julie.

Well, would you look at that. The Custard Factory has a new website and it appears to be based around a blog! Who saw that coming? In fact it appears to be pretty influenced by this very blog in tone and style. Hmm…

Yes, I’m running it, but I’d be a fool not to plug it here. Expect a little bit of cross posting as I struggle to decide which blog gets what but it should all balance out in the end.

(And for the record I think I’ve hit my quota limit for blog running. Happy to help out with advice though.)

Russ L’s Lots Of Things To See And Do In The West Midlands: October 2007 is up. As ever, you think it’s going to be a load of heavy metal and boxing and he goes and surprises you. Some good stuff that slipped past my radar in here.

A great, evocative review of Blast was left in the comments today by “ezra”.

Nikki Pugh mentions, in an interesting little blog post, that Midwest is shutting down. Which is a shame as I’d started to rely on that website a bit. Here’s hoping something good comes from the ashes.

383 go through their recent work over the last month which, along with their continued inroads into the restaurant website market, gives us a lead into an interesting group of folks: Annamation are a storytelling company brining “spoken word, song and characterisation to bring the age-old oral tradition of storytelling into the 21st century.” One to investigate!

Birminghamusic.com reports that A Day Called Desire are releasing their EP Vital Signs today through a wide variety of outlets for an “unsigned” band. They’re playing at the Flapper on the 14th and then go on tour.

Five Birmingham Poets by Eric Doumerc

Dr. Eric Doumerc is conducting an ongoing research of the Caribbean oral traditions’ influence on Black British performance poetry. His main interests include the study of Jamaican deejaying (the early 1970′s period) and its influence on oral poetry. He travels to Birmingham, UK, where he interviews Five Poets with Caribbean and other international links. Included here, are the responses and poetry of Sue Brown, Moquapi Selassie, Leon Blades, Martin Glynn and Roi Kwabena, all poets living in that vibrant British Midlands city. “Five Birmingham Poets” is an excellent introduction to contemporary poetry and culture of Black Britain. It is suitable for study by students at High (Secondary) School and University levels. However also provides general readers with a splendid opportunity to experience these unique voices.

It’s available from lulu.com for £8.91. via Birmingham Words