Created in Birmingham

It’s taken me a while to mention this one although it’s been on my radar for ages.

Birmingham Opera Company are doing Othello on 7 dates between 5-19 December. It’s going to be amazing and epic because, by and large, amazing and epic are what Birmingham Opera Company do.

Like last year’s King Idomeneo, this will be a walkabout performance in a massive industrial building – specifically Argyle Works on Great Barr Street. However, BOC manager Jean Nicholson has suggested that the days of the company putting on shows in this way may be limited.

The performance will incorporate professional opera singers, an amateur chorus (to include Pete Ashton, who’s occasionally seen around these parts and who has been taking photos during rehearsals, including the one below), a new children’s chorus and a dance company of 200 young people as part of the People Dancing programme (read about Smash Bro’z involvement in that).

Here are some bonus bulletpoints:

• In this production, Ronald Samm will be the first black man to play Othello for a professional opera company in the UK
• Pete Ashton’s done a good analysis of the poster and what lies behind it
• Shoes may not be worn in the performance space – socks will be available
• The Saturday shows (5, 12 and 19 Dec) have already sold out
• You really should buy yourself a ticket. Worst case scenario – you won’t know what you missed

Starting today there’s a new way to support Created in Birmingham and help make it sustainable.

It’s called CiB Supporters, costs £75 for 1 year and you can sign up here now.

But wait, there’s an introductory offer!

Oh yes indeedy. Until 10 December (or the first 50 takers, whichever comes first) you can sign up for just £50! Bearing in mind it costs £50 to advertise on the site for a week, that’s dirt cheap. (NB – The offer is only open to online sign-ups – if you need invoicing it’ll cost the full £75. Email us here for that).

In return, you get:

• Your advert/logo (125×125 pixel block) shown on rotation in CiB’s sidebar and linking to your website
• Your advert/logo shown on the CiB Supporters page and linking to your website
• A mention in that month’s ‘Thank You’ post
• Listing on the Supporters tab on the CiB Facebook Page
• Your Twitter name (if you have one) in the CiB Supporters List
• A specially commissioned Christmas card (if you’re a supporter prior to 10 December and you provide your address)

In addition you’ll be helping to make Created in Birmingham sustainable and (although it shouldn’t need saying) you’ll have our thanks too. In fact, we’ll try and find extra ways to thank our supporters over the year.

Please note, if you want to change your advert/logo over the course of the year it’ll cost an extra £15 per change.

We’ve already had a few takers which is superb (and means we’re definitely sending some Christmas cards). You can see those nice peoples in the sidebar on the right already.

I’ve taken the liberty of asking myself a few questions about this, in a contrived way of explaining things a little more. If you have any more questions then please drop me an email or leave a comment.

Why this approach?

We think £75 should put large and small organisations on a similar footing. From our point of view it’s a lot simpler to manage a programme like this than to run weekly advertising (although we’ll be doing that too). We’ve eschewed the option of means-related charging – partly because it’s trickier to administrate, partly because it’s nice how the CiB format treats small and large (roughly) the same.

Who is this aimed at?

CiB helps promote a lot of arts/cultural/etc organisations in the city – I’m hoping that they’ll chip in to help ensure that there’s an outlet for their work.

There’s also a lot of companies that I’m sure would love to market themselves to arts organisations and/or the sort of audience that Created in Birmingham attracts.

Finally, on a cost per impression basis, £75 is incredibly cheap – it’s sale of the century, folks!

What about other people who want to support the site in some way?

People are welcome to use a photo of themselves and link to, for instance, their Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn profiles. Otherwise, we’re looking at other ways for people to support the site – through the many and varied CiB Projects, for example.

Does being a CiB Supporter guarantee me editorial coverage?

Just the mention in the monthly ‘Thank You’ round-up.

De Montfort University’s MA photography students will be showing a load of their work at the Custard Factory from Friday 11 to Saturday 19 December 2009.

ARC is a new monthly event in which regional guest curators will be invited to select a programme of works to be exhibited at The Vaults (what is it with all the events going on there?).

It’ll launch at 6pm on 9 December with an exhibition curated by West Midlands curatorial collective – graft:

Alongside new commissions by Institution of Meaningful Interaction; Mark Baldwin; and Sarah Ruff, graft present an experimental open mic zone for new performance, and performance surgeries for emergent practitioners.

This exciting exhibition is presented to launch ARC, a new monthly event in which regional guest curators will be invited to select a programme of works to be exhibited at The Vaults, in the heart of Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter

Announcement time.

Created in Birmingham are going to be running the mulled wine stall at the Kings Heath Big Christmas Party on 5 December. Woo-hoo!

Stop. Flyer time:

If you’re about then please do come and say hi, this blogging stuff is lovely but real life’s great too. Also, the money you spend at our stall will go towards the Kings Heath Centre Partnership and the maintenance of this fair website. Oh yeah, but please drink moderately (we should have hot chocolate for sale too).

There are details of the event here and a PDF of the programme here. Good things that are happening:

• Muchuu performing at 5pm
• a farmers market
• a vintage market at the Hare & Hounds
• Creative Open Workshops decorating Santa’s grotto from 10am-1pm
• stalls selling stuff by local designer/makers

This’ll be CiB Project 001 and the first of many. In fact, details of CiB Project 002 are coming soon and it’s a good un. Oh yes.

I’d not heard of Swishing before – seems it’s a kind of fancy swap shop. HOX Boutique (who run a fairly new shop on Corporation Street) will be holding a Swishing event on Saturday 28 Nov at The Vaults in the Jewellery Quarter.

It’ll start at 2pm which is when ladies can go along and hand in their unwanted items. There’ll be free drinks, games and DJ-related fun. At 3.30pm HOX are putting on a fashion show and after that ladies can start shopping (gentlemen are welcome too, but entry’s not free for us – we have to pay a tenner to get in).

Here’s the HOX Boutique Fashion Show flyer:

• genzai·chi » fizzPOP: thoughts about meeting, sharing and learning
  Lots of good stuff about fizzPOP and the recent Howduino session
• My Jewellery Quarter : Birmingham designer becomes first UK jewellery maker to open in China
  “Fei Liu, who already sells his stunning designs at Harrods, Liberty and Harvey Nichols, has opened a stand-alone shop in Beijing as part of his plans to expand outside the UK”
• Tindal Street author shortlisted for Costa
  Raphael Selbourne’s ‘Beauty’ has been shortlisted in the First Novel category
• Screen WM – TV leading light unveils code of practice plansfor media interns
  “GMTV chair and Skillset chairman Clive Jones will tomorrow (November 25) set out plans to make graduate internships in the Creative Media Industries as fair and open as possible”
• Erdington Arts Forum
  Pretty much as soon as I came across it, this blog went quiet. Here’s hopeing it’s just on sabbatical (or has moved somewhere else – anyone know?)
• Chinaplate Theatre > The Optimists
  “The Optimists is China Plate’s new development opportunity for young professional makers. Bridging the gap between training and the industry The Optimists supports the artistic careers of the future”
• Hippodrome chief says stage is set to help lift Birmingham’s spirits
  Interview with Stuart Griffiths in the BPo

Last week I went along to Wolverhampton Art Gallery to hear about the Arts Council’s new national campaign for the arts – due to start in April 2010. Here’s the opening presentation that was delivered by Julie Eaglen, Arts Council WM’s Audience Development Officer.

The standout point from the presentation for me is this bit:

… despite the significant efforts of arts organisations and the Arts Council to broaden audiences – and there has been, and is, some really excellent work going on – our statistics show that there has been no significant shift in the profile of people who engage with the arts over the past three years.

This means that we can’t simply continue doing more of the same; it’s not working. We need a new approach

You can read the presentation to see how this is to be achieved (and from the tone of language used, it has to be achieved), but in a nutshell there’ll be:

• a programme of arts engagement activity
• a large-scale broadcast, media and marketing campaign
• targeting of an identified group of 12.8 million people who currently have some interest in the arts but have expressed an inclination/desire to do or see more
• a new national arts web portal

Locally, the programme is being coordinated by Audiences Central. Each region has been asked to pick a hot-spot to focus their activity on and in the West Mids it’ll be the Black Country. It’s hoped that the rest of the region will benefit from a ‘halo effect’ from this activity and from the national media campaign.

On this last point, the idea is to develop a brand and kitemark that venues, promoters, organisations, etc will want to apply to their work in the same way that many food producers have voluntarily taken up the 5-a-day brand.

Success will be measured via the national Taking Part survey and the Active Peoples survey (for local authorities that use an indicator called NI11 – hopefully that’ll mean something to someone).

I’m not sure what the budget for the national campaign is but, after much talk of ‘limited resources’, it transpired that the amount of cash available for the West Mids (and therefore the Black Country) is £200,000 over two years. Consequently there was much talk about partnership working and the reliance on organisations finding a benefit in piggybacking on the national campaign.

In the meantime, the Arts Council have set up a website at Hello Art where you can find out a little more and sign up for future updates. It’d be also be worth following Audiences Central for updates about the West Mids focus.

Finally (and because someone asked me to keep count):

• Mentions of The Big Picture – 7
• Mentions of the 5-a-day campaign – 7

Acclaimed monkey/pop band drawer Jamie Hewlett is touring some work around at the moment with Oxfam:

Under Water Colours is a sensitive and thought-provoking collection of nine watercolours created by Hewlett following a trip he made with Oxfam to Char Atra in Bangladesh earlier this year

The paintings will be at the Art Lounge in the Mailbox until Sunday 29 Nov.

Emma Hardicker is a local artist who’s exhibited in that many places around Birmingham that I’m surprised I’ve not come across her before:

This print is based on Birmingham’s iconic buildings. There are twelve recognisable pieces of architecture in the silkscreen print, placed together to create an architectural pattern in an illustrative way. Have fun trying to find them all

On her about page we learn the following:

I work as an artist producing clean, crisp prints, full of colour, texture and strong pattern. I am a member of Birmingham Printmakers, where I specialise in silkscreen printing. I design and hand print my work to make quality finished pieces of art for your wall. Working from my studio, I also create paintings in oils and acrylics creating landscapes of pattern in rich colours

She has a few prints and cards on sale as well as a poster available via the TfL website, created as part of The Outer Limits – Beyond Zone 1 Poster Competition.

Thanks to Rob Strong, who saw Emma’s work at the Botanical Gardens over the weekend, for the heads up.

On Monday the 7th of December from 12 noon till 11:00 pm The White Horse will be transformed into a space that local artists and designers can use to display, sell and promote their work

If you have any work that you would like to display / sell at the first art bazaar on the 7th of December please contact Shelli on shelli.graham@googlemail.com. Deadline for submissions is Friday the 4th of December.

I used to live opposite the White Horse in Harborne a few years back – it was a nice little pub and I didn’t expect them to be doing this sort of thing. The email I had mentioned this exhibition launching “plans to convert the pub into a long term art space, hosting regular exhibitions” so good for them.

Rachel Tighe is an artist living and working in Tamworth:

Her choice of subject matter to draw from and be inspired by is the public areas which surround us within towns, illustrating these panoramic views may give people a sense of space

She recently exhibited at the Wedge Gallery in Lichfield and is now working on several commissions around the Midlands (but is always seeking more of those).

James Parslow is:

a passionate and talented photographer/designer hailing from Birmingham England. He’s worked as a Graphic Designer for a wide range of clients and also as freelance photographer on various projects. He also enjoys creating more personal work and is always looking to channel new creative ideas and concepts into his work

He’s also available for commissions/freelance work. Contact details here.

Press release copy/paste time:

The fruits of Birmingham’s rich artistic heritage and its influence on modern art will be the focus of an innovative evening exhibition called BOTANICA, which will take place at the Kitchen Garden Café on Thursday 26 November from 6-9.30pm.

BOTANICA will display botanical drawings sourced from the archives of the Birmingham School of Art alongside newly commissioned works of art by local artists who have been inspired by the archive collection

Jonny Kelham, Jorom and Tony Jukes are the local artists and will be showing new work. It’s a free event too.

The pic is of Woody Nightshade (or Solanum dulcamara to you and I).

Sam Pierpoint is an illustrator and designer based in Birmingham and Southampton. She completed a BA in Graphic Design with a 2:1 at The Nottingham Trent University. She’s an illustrator by day and a techno dj by night with a passion for quirky shapes and patterns, unconventional colour schemes, jazz, soul, tech, minimal, house and general obscurity in all it’s glory!

By layering and a diverse range of papers, building her work in 3d and breaking away from the standard rule of illustrating on the page, Sam has made her work come to life and is excited about how much further she can push her style.

She’s on Twitter and has a Tumblr too.