Created in Birmingham

Midwest has details of a gallery launch at Crowd6 in Bearwood: Modern Traditions by David Thomas:

Modern Traditions marks the first UK solo exhibition for David Thomas and contains part of a body of work made during a residency at VIS-A-VIS Art Lab in China over February & March 2007. This work was developed in Xiamen, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shanghai and now forms part of a permanent collection and a touring exhibition programme. The work explores notions of Cultural Heritage and social difference, in particular how these elements of life are lost or subject to change through economic and commercial development.

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David Thomas is an artist currently based in Birmingham, UK. His work spans sculpture, performance, film and new medias, often working within an interdisciplinary capacity. He has shown extensively throughout the UK and in New York (USA), Tokyo (Japan) and China, and coordinated and curated projects across Europe. In 2008 David will exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Massachusetts USA and will have a residency in Beijing (China) concluding in a major solo touring show with accompanying publication.

The Private View is Private View on 20 September 6pm – 8pm and the show runs from 22 September – 14 October. Contact Crowd6 for details.

Work on the Charles Parker archive at the Central Library was recently completed and it’s being launched (as it were) at the AGM of the Friends of the Charles Parker Archive on September 28th. All are welcome.

Charles Parker was a pioneer of radio broadcasting and oral history in the 60s and 70s and did most of work in Birmingham with figures such as Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger.

At his death in 1980 he left a huge archive illustrating all aspects of his life and work including correspondence, notebooks, transcripts of lectures, production books, articles, over 4,500 recordings of speech and music, and a library on the oral tradition, drama, music and politics. He was involved in anti-racist activity from the late 1950s and this is reflected in the collection which also includes rare and significant material on Gypsy and travelling communities. During his research he became increasingly aware of the ill-treatment of travellers and the prejudice which existed towards them. In 1969 a controversial eviction from a site in Birmingham led him to form the West Midlands Gypsy Liaison Group to campaign for travellers’ rights with his long time collaborator Phillip Donnellan.

The archive will be available on the Connecting Histories website and in the library while the AGM takes place at 6.30 pm on Friday 28 September in Conference Room 4 at Birmingham Central Library. For more details contact Pam Bishop on 0121 244 3513 or p.bishop [at] blueyonder.co.uk

CLUB gives notice of a “Static Caravan compilation album launch party with drinks reception at Vivid in Digbeth followed by free gig at the Rainbow featuring Micronormous and Mike in Mono, and a DJ set from doTb.” Takes place on 27th September from 8pm. Static Caravan site says Wednesday 26 September 6pm onwards so we’ll go with that.

Paul Bradshaw’s posts on how journalism can adapt to the online world are, I think, relevant to non-journalists who want to use blogs, etc to get their message out there. So go read The News Diamond and How a blog can put you on the road to success, parse them for your sector, learn and apply. These articles are CiB approved reading.

Mark Badger’s Iron Man Records blog is on something of a roll at the moment with loads of posts on the subjects surrounding his world. This one on the Music Network should be of interest.

BMD dept: Congrats to Karl at The Adhere Creative on the birth of Elliot John Binder.

Radio Heads – a nice 4Talent feature on the practical aspects of podcasting that looks at Brumcast and specifically a one off special that featured music from Iron Man Records who report making a couple of hundred pounds worth of sales from that show. via the Iron Man blog which has a slightly different edit of the piece.

Black Country poet Brendan Hawthorne has been writing a regular poem for The Stirrer’s poetry corner since 2006. Here’s his piece reflecting on Artsfest: Fest or Famine.

Audiences Central has news of the International Mask Festival taking place in Stourbridge from October 19th-27th along with some fantastic images of people in masks. Here’s my favourite:

Woo!

You can get a copy of the festival brochure from Audiences Central and download a PDF version.

The Birmingham Post‘s Media page has a nice “for and against” debate today between Dave Hodgson of Marketing Birmingham and Simon Jones of the Factory Club over the merits of the Feel The Heat campaign (previously blogged here). Unfortunately it’s not on the Post’s website so I’ve scanned it in. Click on the below for a legible version.

Hodgson’s piece is well worth reading as it goes some way to explaining the thinking behind the campaign and how it came about. Whether you agree with him or not it’s good to see this openness from the city’s marketing agency and an apparent willingness to engage in the conversation. Long may it continue. (Although preferably in a venue I can actually link to…)

Marc Reck reports (quite lucidly) on the Drop Beats Not Bombs re-opening of the Que Club on Friday and pronounces it good. As does Rich Batsford.

We’ve had the official statement declaring it a massive success on all fronts and it’d be interesting to see what those on the ground thought of Artsfest this year. I’m particularly after views from people who worked the event as artist participants, volunteers or organisers. Put your thoughts in the comments and if you’ve written about it elsewhere leave a link.

(And as always with these things remember that subjectivity is rife and no single person can see the bigger picture but hopefully together we’ll aggregate an approximation here.)

Councilor Ray Hassall, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Sport and Culture, having decided to reprieve Artsfest for another year (quoted in The Stirrer):

“The reorganisation has totally paid off, and it’s been very successful” Hassall explained.

“Wherever I’ve been, it’s been packed. The question now is how do we look at adding to that?

“The arts team have gone away and brought back something that’s really hit home.”

Nachdey Hasdey Bhangra Group perform on the Millennium Point stage, photographed by hellocatfood

A press release was issued on Sunday evening by the City Council’s Marketing and PR Team.

The 10th annual Artsfest is hailed a huge success as over 200,000 people attended events and basked in the unseasonal sunshine taking in the UK’s largest free festival of its kind.

The highlight of the festival was the Classical Fantasia concert with CBSO, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Birmingham Opera in Centenary Square when a capacity crowd of 15,000 saw the internationally-renowned companies perform on stage for the first time together and received rapturous applause.

On Friday evening around 10,000 young people revelled to the sounds of the latest up and coming indie bands from the region, whilst down at Eastside, Curzon Street more than 3,200 people experienced BLAST (Fri and Sat evenings) which literally blew the audience away with a close encounter of the rail kind. The huge art installation included 30 steam boilers and a whistle orchestra, giant hot pipe organ and amazing pyrotechnics that lit and thundered through the Birmingham sky.

Saturday has seen the best numbers yet for the festival and more than 100,000 local people and visitors enjoyed music, street theatre, comedy and art in the city centre.

Birmingham Town Hall say hundreds of people visited, whilst the Museum and Art gallery saw its visitor numbers treble on Saturday alone, to 3,000, with a further 2,000 on Sunday to listen to music and choirs singing in its galleries.

Councillor Ray Hassall, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Sport and Culture said: “The UK’s largest free arts festival, Artsfest’s has been a resounding success with hundreds and thousands of local people and visitors enjoying the best that the city and the midlands has to offer in arts and culture.”

He added: “We will certainly will be looking at future ArtsFests and will continue to develop and improve this event.”

The remarkable weekend drew to a close with the finale Carnival, with participation from some of the leading Carnival Artists (including Someone at the Door Samba band, Off Our Trolley and Purple Mermaid Circus). From Central Square (Brindleyplace) to along Broad Street into Centenary Square, the sound of live carnival rhythms filled the streets. The dazzling costumes were made by young people from across Birmingham who joined the dancing throngs for the grand finale.

So that’s confirmation that Artsfest will return next year, despite scurrilous rumours to contrary.

Photo by myself of Mango Trio on Sunday afternoon.

by Nikki Pugh.