Created in Birmingham

The Flip Animation Festival is on from 6-8 November (Thurs to Sat) at the Light House in Wolverhampton.

This year the festival will feature the C-Games Conference, a Drawing in the Digital Age symposium, an afternoon of animated Doctor Who and various screenings, talks and so on.

The website’s just coming together but the peeps at the Light House are running The Flip Blog and have put up a few quite charming items already.

For the animators out there, the last date for submissions is 8 August, so get your skates on if you’re planning to send something in.  Here’s how to submit to Flip 08.

• Music Network meeting Thursday 31 July 4pm at The TIC
  “The Birmingham branch of Musicians Union will be supplying luxury chocolate biscuits and good coffee for all. There’s food and drink afterwards supplied by the creative networks lot too. Come and talk about what you’re up to and meet some new people”
• Rosie Kay Dance Company at the Edinburgh Fringe
  Rosie has been invited to show Double Points: K at the festival but could do with some support to help make it happen. Here’s the justgiving page set up for that purpose
• Birmingham fails to make cultural top 10
  Paul Groves doesn’t know what to make of what purports to be a list of the UK’s ‘most cultured local authority areas’. Neither do I. Birmingham comes in 14th behind a slew of London authorities and Manchester
• Baron Davenport’s Charity require someone to copy a (bronze?) bust
  If you can help, or if you know someone who can, then contact Marlene Keenan at mkeenan@barondavenportscharity.org or on 0121 236 8004
• Moseley Folk Festival 2008
  “Moseley Folk Festival is again looking for smiley, happy people to help
  out at the festival”. Details via the link and/or email nicola@moseleyfolk.co.uk
• Bobbie’s 1st Post
  Bobbie Gardner joins the Gigbeth bloggers

Exciting news on the Rhubarb Radio front is best summed up by this photo:

This is in the Custard Factory unit just opposite reception.  From taking the keys on Monday to getting a makeshift studio installed yesterday, things are moving quickly.  The Rhubarb Radio blog has more details but reports that:

we’re waiting the IT & Telephone sockets to be fitted and made live, so very soon after that, we’ll be able to point the master outgoing feed to a beta website, and run some test transmissions

There’s still more than enough time for people to get involved and help shape the development of the station.  There might be a meeting at The Kitchen tomorrow (31 July) at 6pm to discuss programme schedules, availability, training and so on.  It’s perhaps worth checking the blog or contacting Paul Hadley at Dynamics Arts (who are managing the station) for confirmation on that.

Also reported on the Custard Factory blog and by a slightly apprehensive Steve Gerrard on Twitter.

As you may have heard, Project X‘s last event was due to take place at the Que Club in June but was cancelled because the venue couldn’t accommodate the collective’s rather particular needs.  As such they were forced to forego funding from a tie-in with the New Generation Arts Festival.

That was the bad news.  The good news is that PXP will be back with an event on 13 September 2008 at, of all places, the Birmingham United Services Club.

As mentioned in Frankie Ward’s interview with the Capsule ladies, PXP scoured more than 30 venues in the city looking for somewhere they could house three stages, 80 participants and a week of on-site preparation.  The BUSC apparently fits the bill.

The venue is being refitted and will officially re-open in October – apparently hosting Edwards-style club events and live bands in an area of town that’s rapidly becoming the city’s indie/rock quarter, what with Snobs, Island Bar, the Sunflower Lounge, Subside and soon the Academy/Dome all within pogoing distance.  Here’s a pic of the BUSC pre-refit:

The event will

explore and create an unforgettable multi-sensory assault based on the theme of Digital Distopia, inspired by 1984, Bladerunner, and the impending threat of I.D cards

with at least

two rooms, of musicians, performers, dancers, djs, vjs, percussionists, comedians, poets and installations already confirmed and collaborating

All of which makes it one for the diary (that’s 13 September in case you missed it).  Tickets will be on sale soonish.

There’s more info and a couple more pics on the Project X Presents website.

(Note – this post was taken down temporarily while the venue was being confirmed)

At the recent Flummoxed event (part of the Fluxus season) Trevor Woolery gave out flipbooks for people to doodle their own quick flicks on.  The results of which can be seen here:

Flummoxed Flipbook Workshop part 1 from Lonomi Productions on Vimeo.

Thanks to 7 Inch Cinema for the tip-off.

I’m just being cautious here – I wouldn’t say this is nsfw as such but this post does mention a word certain employers might not like to see on their employees’ computers.  We’re all grown-ups though, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

A panoramic view of the Birmingham skyline by Yipski, taken from the 19th floor of the Rotunda, Birmingham.

Found via upyerBrum

Dice Productions have made a new film which

stars Mr Thomas Reid as Giles Quinton, a man who has left his worldly possessions to live outside with nature. Our reporter (Ian Ravenscroft) went to meet him to see his new life outdoors

If you like it then don’t forget to tell them so on the Dice Productions site.

The vid is also currently being featured on Dailymotion, which is pretty good going.

• Police Bastard – Keep an active mind
  A Film By Iron Man Records, Birmingham, England (58mins)
• YouTube – Aerosolarabic feedthepoor mural
  Video showing the painting of the mural in Sparkhill that Aldi wanted removed
• Digbeth Is Good – Vika Verb’s Flying Graffiti
  Nicky Getgood was also surprised by the flying items around the Custard Factory and has more pics
• Clusta: We’ve won a Graphis Gold Award
  Congrats to Clusta. They’ve won an award for their website designings.
• Why is Art and Culture used to stimulate redevelopment?
  Simon from the Birmingham Eastside blog has been asked some questions related to the above on his blog. Suggestions for answers are welcome.

Back on 15 May, Creative Republic (who are currently funding CiB) hosted a talk from Paul Kaynes, Regional Creative Programmer for the Cultural Olympiad.

For those that don’t know, the Olympiad is not the Olympics.  The Olympiad is a 4 year period of cultural activity running up to the Olympics that starts as soon as the next Games in Beijing finish.

Paul spoke in general terms about how creative people/businesses/organisations in the West Midlands could get involved.  His talk was videoed and an edited-down version has just been posted on the Creative Republic site.

Props to Pete for some excellent video-embedding tomfoolery.

I was sat at the back typing notes as the talk went on – you can see them in their unedited glory at  chrisunitt.co.uk.

Unfortunately the Gigbeth website & blog are having a few issues at the moment so, in case you can’t go there directly, here’s the announcement:

Well ladies, gents and those who merely resemble humans, I am pleased and rather smug to let you know that in November you’ll have the opportunity to ‘hear the rhythm of the boogiddy beat’ live when The Sugarhill Gang perform at Saturday night’s Gigbeth!

Fused happen to have an interview with the Sugarhill Gang in their current issue.

Tickets will go on sale in August and we can expect to see a few more acts announced soon too.  If you want to get involved with the Gigbeth street team CiB’s Frankie Ward is organising the street team so if you want to get involved with that give her a shout at frankiepromotes[@]gmail.com or via the Gigbeth Facebook group.

Ltd Edition.  Sunday 27 July 2008 (tying in with the Sunday Flea).  Affordable art from contemporary artists.  Custard Factory.  Here’s a link to some info about the artists taking part.

Walking round to grab some food at Rootys earlier, I was surprised to see this floating about:

I’ve tried to find some infomation about it but, other than rumours of a flyer (no pun intended) knocking about, the sole font of knowledge is Pete Ashton’s post from the other week on the Custard Factory blog.  From that I learn that it’s an installation by artist Vika Verb:

a challenging reminder of where we are and how we got here – is in the form of poetry inspired graffitti which will float above the Custard Factory in Birmingham. It is the first of a series of similar installations at the Custard Factory.

and it’ll be properly unveiled at 5pm today.

I assume that’s what it is anyway – what are the odds of their being two big inflatables floating round the Custard Factory today?

In a nutshell, a version of Mother India (seminal 1957 Bollywood flick) has been re-visualised and re-scored and will be officially launched at The Drum (who co-commissioned it) on 2 August at 7.30pm.

This looks pretty much essential and I’m gutted that I’m not going to be around to see it.  Instead, I’m going to torture myself by going through a few links.

This version of Mother India (or MI21 as they would have us call it) has been re-cut and remixed by Josh Ford, with the score re-interpreted by (ex-world champion) DJ Tigerstyle accompanied by Matt Constantine (cello) and David Shaw (drums).  The Renderghost (great name) has been involved too.  The music sounds fantastic and you get get a sneak peak on the Kala Phool MySpace.

The organisers assure us that, although it’ll appeal to a contemporary audience, it’ll stay true to the source material.  After the screening there’ll be a panel discussion to round things off.

This project has been co-commissioned by The Drum and is launching in Birmingham (although it has been shown at Drop Beats Not Bombs) before touring nationally and, perhaps, internationally.

For more info, see the MI21 eflyer on Scribd (you can zoom in if the text is too small).

The next event from Animation Forum West Midlands is at Concrete in the Jewellery Quarter on 11 August 2008.  Called ‘Ads On Walls‘, it’s an opportunity for local animators to get together for a natter, showcase their work and generally get to know each other a bit more (call it networking if you must).

Many Forum members often don’t realise how many animation studios and companies there are dotted around the region, and part of the ‘big idea’ behind Ad’s on Walls, is to introduce animators to what’s actually going on, on their doorstep.

The Shorts On Walls event that AFWM ran a few months back was well worth going to (even for a non-animator like myself) and this one seems to be following a similar format.

If you’d like to go along then entry is free but you’ll need to RSVP to david.luke.allen@bcu.ac.uk or call 0121 204 9886.

If you’d like your work to be screened at the event then submissions are open – get in touch on the above details to find out where to send a DVD of your work.