Created in Birmingham

For the first in our new series of interviews/podcasts we were lucky enough to be welcomed into Soweto Kinch’s flat for tea, Jaffa Cakes and chat.

The driving force behind The Flyover Show – taking place under the Hockley Flyover on Saturday 31 May with big-name guests from the worlds of hip hop and jazz – Soweto Kinch is an award-winning jazz saxophonist, MC, producer, poet and writer.

He talks to Frankie Ward about the background to the project, the problems with his genre classifications (dubbed the War In A Rack), his forthcoming album and the Live Box sessions at The Drum.

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Btw, you may notice stereo issues – I’ll re-up a more balanced file when I get a chance.

Admission to The Flyover Show is free; attendance should be considered essential.

As part of the (ongoing) site redesign I thought it’d be nice to have some more visible contributor profiles so you know who’s writing this stuff. I asked Steve Gerrard if he’d take some snaps of us and the results are in.

So from left to right that’s Danny Smith, Chris Unitt (me), Frankie Ward and Pete Ashton. Hi there. If you see us out at something arty then please come and say hello.

If you’ve not come across him before, Steve is known for his photography (rock gigs, weddings and sometimes both) and has recently opened a studio in the Custard Factory. He’s also the man behind Birmingham Live which gives aspiring music reviewers/photographers a platform and a place to develop.

• BBC on The Flyover Show
  Is there a more essential, free event happening in the city this weekend? Don’t miss out.
• Lots Of Things To See And Do In The West Midlands
  Russ L picks out June’s interestingness so I don’t have to.
• WOIB rounds up Birmingham Gay Pride 08
  The folks on the Whats On In Brum blog had fun and have pics

I’m very much liking the website for the 24th Birmingham International Jazz Festival. I’ll come back to that though. Meanwhile…

The dates/programme/etc for the jazz festival have been released. It’ll take place across a whole host of venues from 4 – 13 July.

Musicians and bands from USA, Spain, France, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, Holland, Czech Republic and Venezuela line up alongside the best from the UK and from the region to present a feast of some 180 concerts in ten days, almost every one free to the public.

Having browsed through the programme there are no acts there that jumped out at me. Now, I’m not the most studious jazzhead in the world so it’s entirely possible I’ve missed someone big so please let me know any top picks in the comments.

Back to the website though, and it’s a joy. It’s nice and clearly laid out, the listings are easy to navigate and it works. So they’ve got the basics right. Beyond that though, what I like that they’ve got a blog (which they’re using) and that they’ve listed the events on Upcoming (so you can slot the ones you want into your (non-physical) calendar easily. They’ve done the same with Last.fm too, which is good to see – I use the event listings there to track which gigs I’ve been to and get recommendations for others.

Also, they’ve got a Flickr account and are accepting reviews on the site itself which you can send via the contact form, by email or by Twitter. Oy yeah, they’re on Twitter too. This is all good, useful stuff and the best local example of this kind of thing that I’ve seen. Hopefully their audience will engage with all of this.

Just to balance out the praise, most of the gigs are free but for the paying ones links to the ticket sellers would be good. Actually, an artists section and links to the artists’ websites would be useful – especially for someone like me who’s interested but clueless as to who these people are.

Last year at LTD Edition, an affordable art market organised by Fused Magazine, 30 artists sold their work to over 100 visitors in one weekend. Kerry from Fused has written to say that this year:

We are bringing a touch of culture (not that it doesn’t have bundles already) to the Custard Factory with 4 art markets planned from July onwards, all happening as an addition to the Sunday Flea

If you’re an artist and want to take part then see the site for the contact information. The blog will carry updates on the artists involved and pictures of their work/what’s going on generally.

The number of good things happening this evening is nuts:

• Fierce’s Platinum Programme is at The Edge, some of it you can drop into, some you have to book.
• Behind Closed Doors are holding the launch of The Secret Garden – an installation round the back of the Custard Factory from 6pm to 8pm.
• Fierce, again, are having a preview screening of Helen, a film entered for the Edinburgh and Sydney film festivals. That’s at 6pm (for drinks with the film at 6.30pm) at the AMC Broadway Plaza cinema. You’ll have to book yourself in on 0121 244 8080 though, no turning up unannounced.
• Creative Networks are holding their regular event at Millennium Point with a talk on how to Power Your Business With Web 2.0 from the CiB-affiliated Pete Ashton and Stef Lewandowski.

There’ll be more too, but those are just the ones I’d have hoped to make it down to. It’s a shame to miss out on things but on the other hand is great to see so much going on around town.

Paper clipping from here.

A free, one-off performance will take place at Ikon Eastside at 10pm on Tuesday 3 June.

The Society of Futopia has been developed by four final year students at BIAD, Birmingham City University and will take place during the New Generation Arts Festival. One of the artists, Gareth Burnett did have a blog he was using as a diary – there’s some interesting stuff there but that seems to have petered out. According to the artists:

The performance is rooted in Futurist Theatre and mixes live performance with film and animation; at its core it is an exploration of the human condition. There is a level of interaction with the audience; instead of conventional lighting the audience will be given torches to discover the characters themselves.

Or, rather more excitingly:

In violence we worship beauty. Destroy. Destroy. Destroy. This is the truth according to the Society of Futopia.

The performance will also be filmed and exhibited alongside a set of photographs based around science and genetics in the future, religious structures and the human condition. This exhibition runs from 17th June – 20th June. On the subject of filming, here’s a trailer they prepared earlier:

• Live Box Special at The Drum
  This season of the Soweto Kinch-hosted Live Box draws to a close with Yusa, a young Cuban singer and multi-instrumentalist.
• Volunteer Placement with The Big Picture
  The Big Picture are after someone to spend two weeks scanning photos submitted by the general public to contribute to their world record total.
• University to Showcase £150m Eastside Plans
  The city centre campus will look after the Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, and the faculty of Media and Performance Arts. The plans will be on show on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning at Millenium Point.
• Cast of 17
  There’s excitement over on BiNS with the news that Bill Drummond will be up to larks in Birmingham on 21 June.
• Miscellaneous crew roles available
  Jobs going on a no-budget independent feature film being shot in Birmingham, entitled “Wasters”.

Welcome to the new design of Created in Birmingham.

We felt that the site could do with a spring clean and some updating, with the layout top of the list.  We we’ve not gone for a major overhaul, just a few changes that will allow the site to grow a little.

The extra sidebar will allow some extra functionality and features to be added which will make the site an even more useful place to visit. These will be brought in over the next week(ish) so keep your eyes peeled.

There are still a few things to tweak and some other changes going on, so please consider this a work in progress. Allow me one more bit of navel-gazing for now though…

The font we’ve used is Baskerville, which was created by Birmingham’s celebrated typographer and printer John Baskerville in the 1700s. It’s simple, elegant and, still in use worldwide 200 years later, and therefore a shining example of the city’s creative endeavours.

Something I only found out about recently is that Fierce have a live art training and mentoring project. As part of this year’s festival six West Mids artists will be presenting works-in-progress at The Edge on Thursday 29 and Friday 30 May.

• Nesting (Katy Acquaye-Tonge). 2pm to 9pm.
• The Place Where I Learnt How To Ride A Bike (Natalia Morris). 2pm to 9pm.
• Too Punk To Pray (Sufi Punk). 7pm.
• Cycle Dialogues (Sima Gonsai). 2pm to 7pm.
• Nocioception II: Narrative To Concept (Sobriety Twist). 8pm.
• Into The Space (Feng Ru Lee). 11pm. Must book in advance on 0121 244 8080 and it’ll be at Crowd6 in Bearwood on Friday 30 May, not at The Edge

By all means investigate what’s going on with each but hopefully there’ll be plenty to just drop in and see, which is what I’ll probably do.

On Saturday 31 May, at Green Street Warehouse, B12 0NE

Frank Bretscheider, musician, composer, video artist and co-founder of the Geman based Raster-Norton label… will give a performance at Modulate.

As with many things of this ilk, most of the reviews and descriptions I’ve found are purposefully obtuse.  However, you get some idea of what this audio/visual performance will consist of when you read that Frank has:

a strong interest in the possibilities of an exchange between visual art and music by various means such as computer graphics, video or graphic composition

It could certainly be an interesting way to spend a Saturday night and make a good counterpoint to the Flyover Show earlier in the day.

• Birmingham: England’s 2nd largest city is a true musical melting point
  Short vid about Birmingham’s musical heritage from Guardian.co.uk/02 Wireless “whatever your favoured musical genre, you’re sure to find it in the midlands”. Spotted by Simon Howes.
• Birmingham International Film Society (B.I.F.S) Facebook Group
  BIFS has a Facebook group. Next step, a blog with film times, some info about the society, future plans, etc? Pretty please?
• Colour have a blog
  Colour is a West Midlands-based promotions group, founded in 2006. “Our focus is bringing leftfield folk, electronica, ‘indie’ and other mainstream-eschewing artists to the area through our live events and DJ sets”.
• Birmingham Daily Photo
  Daily photos of Birmingham, as you might expect. Spotted by BiNS.

A project that has been taking shape for the past year is just coming to completion with a film, book and exhibition. The project

records the personal life of Birmingham’s most iconic building, unveiling the many human stories that have influenced and shaped its existence.

The exhibition can be seen at:

• the Central Library (6th floor) from 2 June to 5 July
• Three White Walls Gallery, The Mailbox 14 June to 15 July

The book includes a DVD of the film and is available at The Art Lounge in the Mailbox and at the RIBA Book Shop.

Jon Bounds has covered this in more depth than I could both on BiNS and on his Birmingham Post blog, both of which deserve your attention.

Eryka Isaak makes “one-off sculptural lighting, inspired by carnivorous, Jurassic and extra-terrestrial plant life”.

From her workshop in Kings Heath she has used various glass-forming techniques to create floor, wall and table lamps as well as huge chandeliers, while “exploring the relationships between glass, copper, concrete, light and stone”.

You may have seen some of her work in bars around Birmingham including Poppy Red, Equator and Denial. Otherwise you can also see her work in the Art Lounge in the Mailbox and on her website.

I was browsing the internet a couple of years ago and I came across a little character with a yellow t-shirt and a red cap. I thought he was pretty cool and used him as my avatar on Facebook and Twitter for a while. I didn’t think much more of it.

Then the other day I was browsing the Jibbering Art website to see what they had on offer and, lo and behold, I came across some prints by that same artist – Tom Lewis.

He was born in Birmingham and works as an artist and illustrator in Warwick. If asked how he’s ended up where he has he’ll tell you that

The story is too long to be told now although, briefly, it led to the creation of a mythological 18th century French philosopher, the forging of a sword and the images that you see today.

That’s Mr Tilly at the top there. Prints are available from his own site and from Jibbering Art.