Created in Birmingham

Hello, As Pete mentioned, I’m Danny and I will be your guest blogger for a while, I will be trying to give you all the Birmingham friendly creative news that I find, although my main priority will be not screwing up like deleting the internet, getting Pete sued into the ground, or accidentally starting a Civil War. If there is something that you feel should be covered and I have missed, drop me a line at artiseasy(at)hotmail(dot)co(dot)uk.

I don’t feel so much that I have been given the keys to a brand new sports car, as much as that I’ve been given the keys to an 18 wheeler lorry and its my job not to plough that bugger into a bus queue full of nuns and orphans. So without further adoing

• “Australian lawyer, novelist and human rights campaigner Randa Abdel- Fattah will be at a special event on the eve of Birmingham’s second annual Writers Awards evening”.

• A nice interview with Catherine O’Flynn, winner of the Costa First Novel Award here.

• Audiances Central normally have some good opportunities, these caught my eye, or rather caught my girlfriends eye, she’s giving me a hand and lovely hands they are too.

Oops, in all the excitement I clean forgot to tell anyone about this. I’ll be one of the speakers or whathaveyou at the Moseley Creative Forum event tomorrow. I’ve no idea what I’ll be talking about, which is usually for the best, but will be on hand for chats and stuff should you want to chat and stuff.

And there are other people talking too who will me much better prepared and much more interesting I’m sure.

See also: Made in Moseley, a directory of pretentious types creative sorts in the B13 post code. I wonder, if they haven’t already, if this should be extended to B14?

From Lord Harry of Palmer:

Invitation to:

SSSI – Sites of Social Special Interest No.3

Harbourne Victorian gents toilet.

Join Harry Palmer on a pictorial survey of one of Birmingham’s last remaining Victorian still-in-use toilets

Sat 22nd March 12-1pm. Meet outside Harbourne Library (top of the high street).

Please bring a sketch pad and pens.

Contact/correspondence plot40 [at] hotmail.com
blog: www.myspace.com/eccentriccity

Thanks to Julia for covering Created in Birmingham while I was away. However, on returning I’m still kinda stupid busy so, since he’d previously expressed an interest in doing this kind of blogging, have asked Danny Smith to have a go for a few days. We were in the pub Sunday and he was telling me of stuff and about people I’d not heard of so should hopefully add a bit of variety.

Take it away Danny!

• £9.2m funding to promote arts in Birmingham – Birmingham Post
  Major arts organisations in Birmingham are to get a three-year funding deal from the city council for the first time.Bodies including the CBSO, Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre will share a £9.2 million pot.
  (tags: funding CBSO BRB Rep theatre orchestra ballet)
• Report back on Graffiti Art Festival in Kings Heath Park
  Martin Mullaney’s Road to Damascus continues apace. “I’m of the opinion that the presence
  of skateboarders in public spaces helps make the area feel safe.” !!!
  (tags: graffiti kingsheath martinmullaney inacityarts)
• Spaghetti Gazetti: Local chorus triumphs in area selection stage of Radio 3 Choir of the Year
  The National Barbershop Youth Chorus, a choir from Birmingham, was a winner in the open category of the Area Selection Stage for the prestigious BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year competition, held at The Warwick Arts Centre this weekend.
  (tags: choir competition BBC Radio3 ChoirOfTheYear)

Do you use the social bookmarking service del.icio.us? Do you come across links that might be of interest to Created in Birmingham readers? Can you really not be faffed to email me the link? If you can answer all these questions with a Yes then read on. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about and have no interest in finding out then don’t worry.)

Next time you bookmark something add the tag for:peteashton. This will put it in this list which I’m monitoring. If I think it’s worthy then I can post it here with just a couple of clicks.

Easy!

Island Bar is holding an all-day acoustic festival from 1.30pm on Easter Sunday (23rd March).

The current issue (PDF link) of Bearded magazine, includes a feature on the West Midlands music scene, more specifically Birmingham and Coventry.

The feature is a handy round-up of the bands to watch as well as local promoters, venues, club nights and record shops.

via Rich Batsford

While the ceremony for the Guardian Media Awards might have been a bit of a farce, the philosophy behind the awards is a good one, celebrating innovation rather than some arbitrary metric of “success”. And I don’t just say that because Created in Birmingham got one. In Monday’s Guardian there was a supplement featuring interviews with all the winners and I was rather pleased with how mine came out, particularly as it was conducted by phone with me still in bed.

Oddly the articles don’t seem to be online so I’ve scanned the blogging spread.

The full size jpeg weighs in at 1.5mb and I have some copies of the supplement if those recording the cultural history of Birmingham think it a worthy addition to their files.

Who can you spot? (No pun intended.)

via BiNS

The Flamenco Birmingham site now has details of the performances and workshops that are part of the first International Dance Festival Birmingham. Performances include The TG Collective on Saturday 3rd May and En Sus 13 on Tuesday 6th May, both at Town Hall.

The site also confirms that there will be another Emoción Flamenco Festival later this year, following the success of the first festival last November. The line up and artists for this festival will be announced over the coming weeks. The site has an RSS feed (yay) so it will be easy to keep up with the news, however (note to their webmaster) I was unable to link to specific pages of interest as the site uses URL masking.

• British Glass Biennale 2008 – Call for entries
  The Biennale is open to UK artists, designers and craftspeople, working in all areas of contemporary glass practice or using glass as a key design element. Deadline for entries 28th March.
  (tags: glass art design craft exhibition)
• Birmingham movie giant who spawned a generation – Birmingham Post
  Thanks to Roger Shannon for alerting me to his article in the Post on Sir Michael Balcon, grandfather of Daniel Day-Lewis and a “genuine movie mogul who had his roots in Birmingham”.
  (tags: film producer movies)
• Popbang rule on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
  Ian Cook’s “Popbang rule” sculpture is currently on display at The Studio, Cannon Street. The sculpture is constructed out of recycled and reclaimed materials and has no glue or formal bindings holding it together.
  (tags: sculpture art recycled reclaimed craft)
• Stan’s Cafe Cleansing of Constance Brown (via Podnosh)
  7 PERFORMERS
  73 CHARACTERS
  70 MINUTES
  6 WORDS
  10 TONS OF KIT
  A SET 2M WIDE AND 14M DEEP
  45 AUDIENCE MEMBERS…
  …WILL YOU BE ONE OF THEM?
  (tags: theatre show performance)

• Birmingham Opera show goes on after £330,000 grant – Birmingham Post
  “A threat of closure hanging over Birmingham Opera Company has been lifted after the organisation settled its differences with the Arts Council, which has restored a £330,000 funding package.”
  (tags: opera BirminghamOperaCompany funding ArtsCouncil)

The première of the short film ‘Birmingham: The Creative City’ will be held at the Electric Cinema tomorrow afternoon.

From the Press Release:

Birmingham City Council Creative Development Team and Audiences Central are premiering a short film directed by BAFTA Award Winning Director Natasha Carlish on Tuesday 11 March at The Electric Cinema, Birmingham. Birmingham: The Creative City celebrates some of the personal stories and amazing work delivered as part of the Equal II: The Last Mile programme in Birmingham over the last two years.

The Equal II: The Last Mile programme was established to develop the Creative Industries as a route to employment in Birmingham. This creative business support project was established in 2005 to develop the creative industries as a route to employment for creative talent and arts professionals in Birmingham.

Co-ordinated by Birmingham City Council’s Creative Development Team and funded by the European Social Fund, the Equal II: The Last Mile programme has engaged over 400 individual artists and creative businesses and 18 partner organisations across Birmingham. The programme, and the creative industries, have made a significant contribution to Birmingham’s economy through employment and improved quality of life.

The film, Birmingham: The Creative City is testimony itself to the wealth of creative talent within the region directed by one of the region’s BAFTA award winning directors, Natasha Carlish and Dreamfinder Productions and created with partners including John Mostyn who worked with music for film debutant Bass Flo, Quench Design who titled the films DVD menu and cover artwork and Supercool Design who worked on brand and design elements.

Director Natasha Carlish said: “Nurturing and developing new creative talent in our city is something I feel extremely passionate about. So to be asked to create a film to illustrate just one area of work that is focusing on this very important issue was a real privilege. I was really inspired by the contributors to the film, their determination to success and their stories and I was really lucky to work with some great collaborators such as Endboad, Quench, John Mostyn and Bassflo’, the Audiosuite, Aquila Film and Television and Shefali Oza.”

Talking about the impact of the Equal II: The Last mile programme overall, Paul Cantrill, Head of Creative Development at Birmingham City Council said: “The creative industries are one of the key sectors of growth and expansion in the region. In partnership with 18 organisations across Birmingham, the Equal II: The Last Mile programme has created many opportunities to enrich and support the wide diversity of talent located in this unique city.”

To find out more about the amazing journeys that the beneficiaries and partners have undertaken as part of Equal II: The Last Mile visit www.creativecompass.co.uk.

Unfortunately invitations for the event are now closed. However you can watch the film online.

• Wishful Linking
  Mark McGuinness has created a new blog, Wishful Linking, to share links that may be useful and/or interesting to you as a creative professional.

  Not Brum-specific, but could be useful. via Podnosh.

  (tags: links resource)