Created in Birmingham

Secret Wars Birmingham is, well, I’ve leave it to the rather excitable blurb:

Secret Wars is happening right now, you just don’t know! Similar to Fight Club it thrives on word of mouth. Put simply, it is a war between artists. The ultimate question however, is who will reign supreme? The only weapon they carry is the Edding pen they hold in their hand.

In the dark backstreets of Digbeth, there’s a bright shining light and a large queue of excited people…

“This is Secret Wars. There can only be one winner…. paint will spill!”

“The World’s premiere street art competition, Innovate don’t imitate!”

The next event is on 17 Jan at The Rainbow and will feature the final battles of the quarter final round, with Tony Cryze vs Newso and Sam Bevlak vs Obenzah.

Here’s a video of what happened at the last event:

Secret wars Brum quarter final from Trav on Vimeo.

Dunc from the Autumn Store has compiled a non-exhaustive list of 101 West Midlands bands. Non-exhaustive because he gave up at 101 and because he set himself two restrictions:

There were two criteria to this, firstly, they must have a myspace page and secondly, they must have spent most of their musical lives inside the West Midlands Bus Network

The result is slightly reminiscent of the Myspace Marathons BiNS’ did for Gigbeth and Dunc’s patience in pulling together that many links to MySpace pages has to be applauded.

Click here to see the list.

(There are a couple of voting days left so please vote CiB – http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-uk-blog/)

If you don’t subscribe to these already I really do implore you to start. Little Chris is one of the region’s best champions of new music. Here’s Brumcast 114:

1. The Conscripts – The Run Down
2. Dastards -Take a left
3. Gillian Stapleton – people pleaser
4. Filthy Cake – A Smile on your face
5. che – shiver
6. The Fores – I’m nobody
7. Amberphonik – Night Sailor
8. 35 seconds – Chew
9. Miss Halliwell – SORGHUM
10. Dead Letter Office – Chairkickers
11. Rawality – BRrum BRum
12. Crash Repeat – Son of the drum
13. Steve Heathcock – White Flag
14. The Lean Yellows – 21st Dream Syndrome
15. The Garcia LX – 70s Dad
16. The Riptides – An English Sentence
17. Jonathan Beckett – about the midlands
18. Tom Lord – Blitzkrieg Flop
19. Malevolent Aspect – Cold Steel Bars
20. Aquila – Let me Go

From Birmingham Arts Lab, circa 1973 (probably). Click the pic for more info.

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Thanks to blairdashpb for sending me this.

One of the best events I went to last year was Kala Phool’s Mother India: 21st Century Remix – a live re-scoring of the Bollywood classic that blew me away. I’ve wittered on about it on my blog.

I was really pleased to hear that the musicians will be in the studio (in Birmingham) next week to record the soundtrack and Kala Phool are trying to put together a national tour for later in the year.

Kala Phool are after a film maker to make a kind of video ‘calling card’ for this. However, the bad news is there’s no budget available for the work. I must say I don’t tend to like posting these sorts of requests but I’m making an exception in this case.

If you’re still interested:

• Filming will happen on Fri/Sat 16-17 January at studios in Aston near The Drum
• They need some short interviews with the people involved and some footage of the band in the studio
• There’s plenty of footage from the live shows already
• They’re looking for something like the video of The Bays and Heritage Orchestra at the Liverpool Phil
• The finished piece will be needed by the end of January

If you can help then email Indy Hunjan at indy@kalaphool.com or call her on 07977 449052.

On 1 February I’m going to stop running Created in Birmingham. It’ll be run by Kate Spragg instead.

Before I start waffling, you may care to know that the ways to get your stuff on CiB won’t change much. Email createdinbirmingham at gmail dot com or, much better, blog about it somewhere yourself (your info needs to be online somewhere to be linkable to, anyway). Or you could advertise on CiB (it’s ridiculously cheap after all).

For those that don’t know Kate, and I’m sure she’ll introduce herself soon enough, I think CiB will be safe in her hands. A while back I blogged about looking for the next CiB person with a list of ideal criteria. I reckon Kate fits the bill well.

I’ll hang around, as Pete has, as a kind of ‘blogger emeritus’ but I doubt very much that Kate will need my help and I’m really looking forward to seeing how she develops the site during her tenure.

I’ve loved running Created in Birmingham but at the same time definitely feel the need to pass it on. I’ve got other projects I want to devote my time to and, besides, I think I’m a little too settled in the role now; it’s a good time to inject some fresh impetus.

Until 1 Feb I’ll post a few more things from my current backlog and am hell-bent on CiB winning the Best UK Blog Award (although that just got a lot tougher) so expect more reminders and please vote daily until Tuesday 13 Jan. Otherwise, I’m going to start stepping back as Kate gets into the swing of things.

If you’re interested in what I’ll be up to you can follow me over at chrisunitt.co.uk and/or on Twitter. I have a few projects I’m working on – Cquestrate, the next Film Dash, Osiris Licensing and a few other things (including Meshed Media) – but I’m always up for discussing interesting projects, especially if there’s a blogging/social media angle.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who has helped me, commented, introduced themselves at an event or just read something on this here blog over the past few months – I’m truly grateful to all of you.

• CiB needs votes
  Drat, we’re languishing in 2nd now. Please vote (again, if you already have). If CiB has ever promoted anything of yours, please could you return the favour?
• Art Stalking: One Day Comic & Feature: Architecture
  “Works by Henrik Schrat (with guests) & Shezad Dawood form an installation at ESP that feels very different from the opening exhibition there”
• It’s behind me. Twitter pantomime, a social media experiment
  Jon Bounds rounds up and generally tries to explain what Twitpanto, the Twitter pantomime, was all about
• Laundry – an association of multi-disciplinary artists
  Members of Laundry have visited “Hania, Crete, to negotiate and plan a Creative Laboratory with the Etz Hayyim Synagogue, as part of the Intercultural Dialogue project with Borderland Foundation and New Culture Foundation”
• 7 Inch Cinema » The Way We Were
  Ian rounds up an interesting and varied 2008 when he should be writing the Flatpack brochure
• Media Talent Bank – January member of the month
  Garazi Gardner is member of the month for January and is “a freelance photographer based in Birmingham who specialises in fashion, portrait and both live and promotional music photography”
• Enduring America
  Enduring America is a blog about US politics and foreign policy straight outta Birmingham Uni. Contributors include Scott Lucas, Prof of American Studies, and PhD student Mike Dunn

Punch Records are running a series of seminars that will be held at the Symphony Hall once a month from 28 January to 28 April. The topics and speakers are:

• Women In The Arts – speakers include Sarah Love (MTV and BBC 1XTRA), Sacha Brookes (Galaxy), Reena Combo (Editor, Lifestyle) and Justice Williams
• Live Performance – speakers include Skinnyman, Baby J and Witness
• Digital Dialogues – speakers include Karen Pearson and Simon from Doubleshot
• Music Moguls – speakers include Nigel Wells (CEO RWD magazone), Jordon Kesington (Urban Music Awards CEO), Disorda from Suspect Packages and Don from RGS Entertainment

Places are free but limited. Click here for more info.

(Reminder – vote for Created in Birmingham, we’re back in 2nd place now!)

• Vote for Created in Birmingham (another shameless plea)
  If you’ve not yet voted, please do.
  If you have voted please vote again (you can vote DAILY until Tues 13 Jan)
• Birmingham Photospace: Choose a Photographer
  Birmingham Photospace, the people looking to establish a permanent photo gallery in Birmingham, are asking which photographer you’d like to see exhibiting in the city
• Big Brum Quiz of the Year 2008 – Birmingham: It’s Not Shit
  I got 71%. I’m sure you can do better
• Birmingham Jazz News – Sammy Goulbourne: Barack Obama Mixtape
  In honour of 2009 and of Barack Obama’s Election victory, Birmingham Jazz’s friend Sammy Goulbourne has recorded a mixtape for you to download
• ESRC report on Future Management of the UK’s Creative Industries.
  Nick summarises the report which he also paraphrases as “Whoah – this is all a bit confusing. Can we do some more research please?”

Thanks to D’log for pointing out the Birmingham connections to two of the designs featured in the Royal Mail’s British Design Classics (PDF) set of stamps.

The Supermarine Spitfire, designed by RJ Mitchell, was produced in Castle Bromwich.

The Mini was first produced at Longbridge in 1959.

(Reminder – vote for Created in Birmingham DAILY in the 2008 Weblog Awards)

A little while back Fullrange Films gave Nicky Getgood a Flip camera on the condition that she use it to document Digbeth, as is generally her wont on Digbeth is Good.

The first one she did was the Richard Trengrouse Tour of historical Digbeth.

Next up was Ben Waddington’s Digbeth Type and Architecture Tour, the videos have been embedded into a Google map and are viewable one after the other here.

The Ikon Gallery is running family workshops over the half-term holiday on 17 and 19 Feb from 2-4pm. That’s in addition to the regular ones they’re running on 7 Feb and 7 March from 2-5pm.

Places are free but need to be reserved in advance.

The themes for (and links to) these workshops are:

• 7 Feb – This workshop will explore the themes and ideas of the current Zhang Enli exhibition
• 17 Feb – This workshop will explore Armando Andrade Tudela’s current exhibition
• 19 Feb – Zhang Enli again
• 7 March – Armando Andrade Tudela again

Also, from 6.30-8pm at the School of Art, Margaret Street, the Ikon will be hosting Zhang Enli and Jiang Jiehong in Conversation (with English interpretation). Again, places are free but should be reserved.

(Please vote daily for CiB in the 2008 Weblog Awards)

This is the work of Superrbilly

Via debut

Please click the pic and vote for Created in Birmingham. There’s no registration required and it’ll take two seconds, tops. You can vote once a day.

Someone has kindly nominated Created in Birmingham for the award of Best UK Blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards.

It’s a public vote and we’re up against a few of the big politicos – as I type this we’re in 2nd and a Spectator-hosted blog is winning – so any support (votes, forwarding, re-blogging, re-tweeting, etc and so on) would be gratefully received.

It was about this time last year that CiB won the MediaGuardian Award, so I’m hoping I don’t let the side down in the award-winning stakes, especially as I’m passing the reins on in a few weeks. Speaking of which, I should also say that Pete Ashton’s blog has been nominated too, and rightly so.

230 Miles of Love is an interesting project – a series of sat-nav triggered comedy sketches that are triggered as you drive along the M6. It’s been put out to publicise the charity Motivation.

You can download the audio from the website and play it via a Garmin or TomTom satnav thingy or a GPS-enabled smartphone or PDA. It’ll play on your computer too if you want a taster.

In case you’re interested in creating something similar yourself then have a look at Geovative for the tech behind the scenes.

There’s a bit of a review here from The Guardian and I’ve downloaded them for the next time I’m out and about. If anyone else has a go I’d be interested to hear what you think.