Created in Birmingham

A daily look at the last 12 months

April was when I appeared to get my head around who was doing stuff with a whole slew of profiles which I’ve listed at the end of this post. And a bunch of stuff happened too as the arts scene picked up for the Spring and CiB got into its groove.

The Mirage Festival of Arabic films occurred.

Digital Central set up an office at the Birmingham “embassy” in London.

The Treasury’s Spending Review appears foreshadows the anticipated arts cuts.

Advice about using YouTube to build your event’s reputation was given.

The interactive game KR-36 took place as part of The Event.

The Midlands Textile Forum was announced as launching in October. I wonder if that actually happened?

TAK won a Webby.

The International Puppetry Festival was announced.

Brumcast did an Iron Man Records special.

The Town Hall reopening festival was announced.

The Breakin’ Convention at the Hippodrome was announced.

Intrigue was another arts event at Five Ways.

April profiles included Martin John Callanan, the film Whatever Happened to Pete Blaggit, Plimsoul, Betty and the Id, 104 Films, Kate Penberton, Dubtransmissions, The Traditional Arts Team, It’s Just Noise, The Electric Cinema Orchestra, Banner Theatre, Steven Gerrard, Stephanie Mill, Krankpod, A Slice of The Pie, Victor Kills Virginia and TG Collective

A daily look at the last 12 months

March saw the blog stumble for a fortnight as I came down with the worst cold of my life. Seriously. It was a bad one. But still, a hell of a lot came my way.

Name In Lights, the compo to get a name erected atop the library as part of Fierce, started and by all accounts went viral with millions of these scattered around the internet:

Project X Presents started the long road to getting Arts Council funding that ultimately ended in disappointment. Boo. But they went ahead anyway. Yay!

Made in Moseley, the directory of arty types in B13, crossed my path.

Antonio Gould started thinking about Co-working Spaces and I understand something tangible will be coming of this very soon.

The AA-RT show took place.

Supersonic was announced.

The Post reported that there are 60,000 “creatives” in the city though where you draw the line was questioned.

Test Bed, one of many art events taking place at Five Ways, was announced.

The mindboglingly complex and massive Surface Unsigned Festival began filtering 170 bands via the medium of audience reaction.

Rhubarb announced their For Sale exhibition where buildings in Birmingham looked like they were up for sale but, on closer inspection, were exhibiting photographs.

Brian Duffy was interviewed and showed himself to be a thousand times more interesting than you previously imagined. And that’s saying something.

The Rotunda was refurbished in 2007 and there was an accompanying art project.

March profiles included Poppy and the Jezebels, Lewes Herriot, Chris Keenan, Beat 13 and Goodmedia.

March also saw me introduce the blog at the Creative Industries Convention, croaking about it for ten minutes before Ken Loach did his keynote thing, which was pretty weird but did kickstart the process of everyone knowing about this little website.

A daily look at the last 12 months

February saw loads of announcements for festivals, conferences and the like taking place in Birmingham over the year and I did my level best to keep up with them.

Shouted about in Feb were Fierce, BM&AG’s Open Art Show at the Gas Hall, the Plus+ Design Festival, the Moseley Folk Festival, New Art Birmingham, The Event and New Generation Arts. Phew!

On top of this the Digital Film Event for 2008 was announced by Film Birmingham.

Screen WM and Film Birmingham launched their Locations database to encourage more film makers to make movies in the region.

Thanks to D’log cuts in arts funding made their first appearance on the blog.

World TTV day happened and I waved the flag for Birmingham.

A quickly abandoned feature began rounding up gig reviews on other blogs, something I’d like to resuscitate at some point.

Persons and companies profiled on the blog in Feb included TAK!, Temper, The B.E.A.S.T., Simon Peplow, Clusta and Craig Holmes

Over the next 12 days I’ll be summarizing the last 12 months of Birmingham’s arts and creative life as seen through the filter of this this blog. And then, once I’m back in the UK and settled, I’ll catch up on all the news.

January saw this blog taking its first tentative steps as I felt my way around the Birmingham creative environments and, it being January, didn’t find a whole lot to begin with.

A Bigger Ikon? Jonathan Watkins, director of the Ikon gallery, and architect Glenn Howells talk to Terry Grimley about their notions for a large gallery of modern art in Birmingham and why it would be more than the sum of its parts. This came closer to reality in November when the Ikon, along with BM&AG and Walsall’s New Art Gallery got £1m to spend on contemporary international art, this kickstarting the new gallery’s collection. Here’s the money quote:

“The more institutions you have, the more artistic activity you can attract, the more artists decide to stay. Then an art market might start to happen. Commercial galleries might decide Birmingham is a good place to be.”

The Flatpack Film Festival was announced and I took it upon myself to profile some of the films and filmakers. After a pieces on Mark Locke and the opening film I resorted to a much more sensible big overview in three parts.

The future of the Academy venue was mused over.

Digital Central released their Live Music Venues Survey

Birmingham is declared a “musical hot spot” as The Twang start their journey into the spotlight of fame and all that.

And finally, The Birmingham Mountain Film Festival took place.

Art Stalking Ana goes to see KateGoes… Interesting to see them reviewed from an “Art” perspective.

Newest Music Strategies. Dubber’s taking his blog in a new direction this year:

In 2007, we learned about the new music business environment. In 2008, we claim it, take the reins and start driving it in a direction that suits us. It’s a direction that’s good for consumers, good for artists, good for entrepreneurs and good for music. It uses the new technologies, but it is not subject to them.

Feed, “a platform to showcase their work to a professional standard, enabling students to work across different mediums of design for print, motion and interactive graphics in addition to media, photography, music and art” coming out of Mathew Boulton College, has a weblog.

Here’s a long, positive and detailed review of the Binary Oppositions CD that accompanied the exhibition of Birmingham art in Brescia, northern Italy. The CD is sold out but I have seen digital copies floating around the interwebs. Keep your eyes peeled. via Klunk

Nice interview with Joel Wilson aka rapper Joel the Custodian on the predominantly American Music Mamma’s blog.

Here’s the Brum-specific bit:

What is the current music scene like there in Birmingham?
Birmingham, the city that spawned Black Sabbath [and recently the Editors and the Streets] has over 1 million inhabitants. Despite the wealth of creativity and access to local government funding few local music scenes grow or have a national impact. The still too unfocused but flashy annual Artsfest has the potential to gain notoriety around across Europe. As far as I can tell Birmingham remains a city with fragmented, inward focused musical cliques, some of which could be doing some damage in the music business but instead are just quietly sauntering along. Some entrepreneurs are trying to change things.

He then goes on to list a bunch of bands he likes from the area including Distophia, Misty’s Big Adventure, Death Is Not Welcome Here, Highlighter Islanders, Jo Hamilton, Carina Round, Moneytree, Ross Spencer and Chrissy Van Dyke along with new-to-me hiphop label Zang.

And, as always, it gets more interesting after that as he talks about his actual work.

Photo nicked from interview. Found via Technorati.

Joanna Geary had a follow-up chat with Michael Woolf after he expressed interest in helping Birmingham improve it’s image after the Plus+ festival. He suggests we ask this question:

If Birmingham was a person, or a family, what would it be like? If it was a verb, what would happen if you Birmingham-ed?

Personally that sounds a little corny to my cynical brain but what the hell, she’s soliciting suggestions in the comments of her blog. Do your worst!

Animation Forum has a new website with a members area for people to upload their work to and connect with others in the area. Interestingly they’re also using a Facebook group for discussions which is a sensible move – using a service that already exists and most people are already on.

Download the PDF for free.

A brief update to the Margaret Street closure blogged about here in April. A comment left on that post from BIAD Fine Art course director John Wigley implies it won’t go ahead quite as planned. If I may quote:

To reassure everybody and to end speculation, at present, as far as we are concerned working in the building, they are not going to sell the Margaret Street site. Certainly it has been a marketing and publicity blunder of spectacular proportions, seemingly unaware of how strong the voice would be in protest, and how much the building is valued as a purpose built centre of creative practice. It would seem, however, that sense has prevailed.

Yay!

Here’s the Friction Arts Xmas letter.

Local band news: Steve Gerrard informs that Envy and Other Sins are in the final of the Mobile Act Unsigned compo (“the search for the best new band in Britain”) which could see them win a record deal with A&M. While wishing them all the best I’m amused to see the prize includes “hefty cash advance” – that’ll be a loan then.

Meanwhile Johnny 2 Bad, who usually earn their bread as a UB40 tribute band, have become the first reggae band to chart in Lithuania, according to The Music Network, in a teamup with local songstress Asta Pilypaite. It looks like they might make the Xmas number one!