Created in Birmingham

Via 7 Inch Cinema

Rill Marchant (who was part of the team behind the winning Film Dash entry) is organising regular meet-ups for film makers.

There’s a Facebook group and here’s the info about the next event:

After a chat with some filmys at the 48hr film challenge were going for a relaxed post Sunday lunch vibe for Novembers meet. It’s a good chance to get together and have a natter with other filmy types.

When: Sunday 2nd November from 5 – 7pm (although feel free to stay longer)
Where: The Wellington (http://www.thewellingtonrealale.co.uk/) in the city centre.

37 Bennetts Hill
Birmingham
B2 5SN
(Just up from the Briar Rose Weatherspoons)

Give me an email if you need any help with directions.
Email: rill_marchant@hotmail.com

The pub serves real ale and will let you bring food in and even give you a plate and condiments to eat it with, not to mention the fact it has a resident cat called Welly.

Ill send out a description of how to recognise me closer to the time (white carination and so on).

Hope to see you all soon!

Rill

Heard and Not Seen is

an arts project, led by Sandra Hall and Mitra Memarzia with Friction Arts.  The project aims to create a unique, safe space for people to meet and ask questions with each other, of each other; particularly about faith, religion and spirituality.

The exhibition takes the form of a series of freestanding sculptures displaying responsive video projections, photographs, and installations all contained within a surround sound audio environment and based on months of interviews and workshops with a range of citizens

The exhibition opens at the Mailbox on the 7th of November, running until the 28th, before touring to galleries and community venues regionally, nationally and internationally

I obviously had too much time on my hands back in August because I volunteered to run a 48-hour film competition.  From humble origins Film Dash (as I called it) it gathered pace, got bundled into Hello Digital and culminated in 11 films being produced over a single weekend with one being shown at the Odeon on Sunday night.

I was more than chuffed with how it all went.  Three times as many teams entered than I had cautiously hoped for and the quality of the films was astounding.

I’ve rounded up links to all the films on the Film Dash website and I really do recommend checking them out, they’re all under 5 minutes so it won’t take that long.

The judging panel (which didn’t include myself, thankfully) picked a winner and that is the excellent ‘Dunkirk’ by Team TTV:

Dunkirk from Pete Ashton on Vimeo.

There’s a very good chance I’ll be organising something again next year.  Details to be confirmed/dreamt up later, but it was too fun not to do again.  If you want to get on the Film Dash mailing list just email ‘SUBSCRIBE’ to filmdash@gmail.com.

Starting 1 November and continuing every Saturday until Christmas, Moor Street Markets will set up in the foyer area of Moor Street Station.  The emphasis will be on handmade, small gift items.  Here’s the flyer and some blurb:

Originally started in Summer 2006 by designers Claire and Kelly, the Moor Street Station Markets won the station industry awards but disappeared after the following Christmas. Now they are brought back to you by Moseley Arts Market Coordinator Jamie Lewis, initially for the 2008 Christmas period and most likey for special events throughout the next year. At Moor Street Station Market the emphasis will be on smaller affordable art, craft, jewellery and fashion with wide appeal

I like the way this has been done.  No need for a flashy website or owt, just a simple (free) blog to stick some info on.

Oh, and stalls are still available and they cost a tenner.  See the website for info.

I wasn’t sure whether or not to play this one straight, but then I came across this on the flyer:

Classy.  Anyway, I’m breaking my current ‘must be online to get a mention on CiB rule’ to copy & paste this from the email I’ve been passed:

The orchestra will perform on a regular basis and give professional concerts in venues across Birmingham and Central England. They will perform at important events in the LGBT Community Calendar, such as Birmingham Pride, Birmingham Arts Fest, Fierce Festival, World AIDS Day and, of course, at Christmas.

The BGSO will meet to rehearse on the first and third Sundays of the month from 3.00-6.00pm at The Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Digbeth, starting on Sunday 2nd November 2008 at 3.00pm

For more information, contact Paul by phone or text on 07882 530320, e-mail bgso@btinternet.com or visit the BGSO page at our Website www.dancingbearacademy.co.uk

Tom from Substrakt tried a simple little exercise the other day:

Inspired by the My Day Yesterday group on Flickr, I decided to have a go at condensing my Friday into a single 90 seconds movie

My Day (Friday) from deplorableword on Vimeo.

Copied over wholesale from the Hello Digital blog (cos I’m not writing this twice):

The East Birmingham & North Solihull Regeneration Zone (ebns Ltd), supported by Advantage West Midlands, have been investing in the development of Digbeth and Eastside as a Learning and Leisure Quarter and a centre for the creative industries, particularly the digital media sector. They have been working with a range of partners including Birmingham City Council, the Custard Factory, the Bond, Vivid, Groundwork, the Learning & Skills Council and others to develop a range of projects, create new workspace and provide new learning opportunities.

One of the project ideas now under discussion is the establishment of a Creative Marketplace, and they would like your input to help decide whether there is the demand for this, and if so what it should be.

During Hello Digital they are interested in canvassing your views. Would you like to see a Creative Marketplace in Digbeth / Eastside?

Click here to take the survey

If you’re wondering what a creative marketplace is then read the comment here.

The Visualisation Lab at King’s College London plan to create a “unique, interactive, virtual reality, Cinema History database”

The objective of this first phase was to reconstruct the Kingstanding Odeon, Birmingham, whose 1935 opening represents a key moment in the evolution of purpose-built cinemas

More info here.

Via Tom Lennon

If CiB posts have been a little light over the past few days (and they have) then it’s been because I was doing a blogging/social reporting job for Hello Digital and the associated conference, Hello World.

As a result there’s plenty of stuff (reports from conference sessions, short interviews with speakers, photos and a liveblog) to browse through on the Hello Digital blog.

Personally, I very much enjoyed the whole thing, but that kind of feedback won’t necessarily make for a better event next year.  So, it’s good to see the organisers are already soliciting feedback via their blog.

If you’ve got any gripes, suggestions or requests for more of the same (I thought the calibre of speakers was particularly good) then let them know in the comments on their blog.  Or here if you like, and I’ll pass comments on.

To get you started, I’d ask for:

• The programme (or some of it, or at the very least the dates) to be announced earlier
• Better (and open) wireless internet provision
• Conference sessions to be streamed live to the internet
• More fringe/evening events to be provided/encouraged

• Musicians Wanted
  Any musicians out there want to help with a 3-day project at the Shard End youth centre? It’s with Headliners who do journalism projects for young uns and they’re offering some free publicity
• Buy Art from the Underground – Fused Magazine
  Nice to have Fused back and blogging. They’ve spotted that Simon & Tom Bloor and Juneau Projects were commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the roundel
• Second City Gallery looking for resident artists
  Mark Wilkinson and Sophie Handy weren’t impressed with a lack of collectively rentable, large studio/exhibition spaces so they’ve found their own. Give them a call if you’re interested in getting involved
• FREE training – Creative Launchpad
  Want to attend a course called “Business Planning for a Successful Creative Business”? You’re in luck…
• Job listing for Web Editor Internship, Flatpack Festival
  The Flatpack folk are looking for, essentially, a blogger with benefits. It’s unpaid but doing this sort of thing for Fierce is what started me on my journey to where I am now, and I’ve done ok
• Plus+ Touring the city with the Walking Tours
  I seem to remember the walking tours of Birmingham, with historian Ben Waddington as the guide, went down very well last year. Here are the plans for this year
• Clubbed nominated for the Raindance Award at the British Independent Film Awards
  Based in Cov, filmed in location in Birmingham and co-financed by Screen WM. Hurrah all round!

…is Chris Morgan.

This was officially announced back on 9 October but I only noticed today when a copy of Forward flopped onto my doormat with the information on the back page.

Meanwhile, 13 year old Megan Bradbury is the new Birmingham Young Poet Laureate.

Here’s Chris Morgan’s poem The Car Body Plant:

I always cycled in through pre-dawn
gloom, it seemed, for the 7.15 start,
yellow and sweating beneath my cape,
just one of a tide of half-asleeps
flowing into that infernal manufactory,
smoke-city of the blood-red night, each
of us squeezed into a terrifying conformity;
for them, fat pay-packets like an addiction.

My green boiler-suit, APPRENTICE
on chest pocket, possessed me,
marking me out, to be sent
for left-handed screwdrivers, for tubs
of elbow grease, for a laff. My O levels
and RP accent made me an outsider,
fuelled a mutual misunderstanding,
and a soupcon (my word, not theirs) of guilt.

Huge presses shook the floor, crunching
improbable shapes from steel sheets,
Richter six point something as I walked past;
older press operators all lacked
a finger, blood sacrifice to inattention;
hearing dimmed by decades of carcrash;
I never asked about their hearts or souls.
On assembly lines, spotwelding guns

were like futuristic weapons from a movie,
spitting chains of sparks across gangways
as their superhero crab-claws pinched,
and the air smelled sharply of lung-
destroying metal dust. Always loud hissing
and screeching, as of dying breaths,
as bodies were tortured into shape

8Sixteen32 is on at The Rep from 5-8 November.  You’re invited “to follow the intertwining paths of five MCs as they go head-to-head in a fierce lyrical battle”.

The Decypher Collective presented a work in progress back in 2007 but this here is the finished article.  The collective:

originally formed after taking part in huge grime workshops put on by Punch Records and the Rep theatre. Hailing from various crews and production houses from all over Birmingham these intervals came together to develop the UKs first ever example of Grime Theatre

It’s the list of people involved that made my ears prick up though – Punch, Polarbear, Charlie Dark and Mark de Clive Lowe.

Here’s the trailer:

And here’s the flyer:

• First Light Movies: Win Hammer film posters here!
  First Light’s blog has got off to a good start and now they’ve got a competition going. Have a look at one of the films they’ve funded and, by commenting on it, you can win yourself a poster
• stereographic » Plus+ 2008 – call for help…
  Can anyone help Stereographic out? They need:
  (1) a mannequin – full sized / male or female. (If by any chance anyone has a reflective mannequin that would be a mega bonus!)
  (2) any ‘discarded design’ fellow designers / artists / companies have that they want to get rid of – things like demo prints / failed pitch designs / overruns on brochures etc
• WOW: Hello, my name is Sarah :)
  Sarah Carter is “a design student that loves branding and typography”. She’s been working on Baskerville: The Animated Movie and did some live drawing at Re-Sketch at The Rainbow. This is her blog
• Miss Halliwell make their back catalogue available for free download!
  Little Chris spots that Miss Halliwell (not Geri) have put their two EPs up online for free
• Modulate says “Hello” with digital technology
  “some of our members have been working away in the background on one of the interactive installations, “Field of Light ”, a project dreamed up by the PLUS team, who also devised ’Illuminate‘”
• Plus+: Booking Tickets NOW OPEN
  £40 (25 conc) for four days, £15 (10 conc) for one. Get em while they’re hot.
• Anthony J Hughes on arts funding
  Interesting piece – “Funding as a concept and the funding and economic redevelopment projects aimed at supporting ‘creative industries’ has actually become a system supporting government ‘intervention’ and policy”
• stitches and hos October
  The 8th meeting of the “monthly knitting hootenanny” at the Hare & Hounds is on Tues 28 October

Little Chris hits us with the latest Brumcast which happens to include a few bands I’ve heard of.  The tracklisting reads thusly:

1. Copter – Can’t Help It
2. Machine Boy – Jamie
3. Chapters – Fakes In Our Friends
4. Kramer Vs Kramer Vs Godzilla – Rukus
5. The Brascoes – First Impressions Of You
6. Gas – Microscopic
7. Suddenly, Phantoms! – A Second Year
8. Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones – Octopus I love You
9. DIGO – On the money DIGO rmx feat. Kate Fletcher
10. Calories – A bear a bison
11. Wülfstabber – 7
12. Einstellung – Tot (version 2)
13. God Complex – Legions
14. Johnny Foreigner – Sometimes, In The Bullring
15. The Fores – Roll Of The Dice
16. Regiment XV – Reflections MP3
17. Cat Green Bike – Adventure Potential