Created in Birmingham

• Best Believe – Inclusion Inspires
  “a free conference delivered by MusicLeader West Midlands, Youth Music and Symphony Hall on Monday 16th November”
• Loaf Needs YOU! :: Loaf Online
  Tom wants to ‘kickstart a social movement around local food in Birmingham’. Get in touch with him if that sounds like fun
• Ego Theatre and ITV Fixers
  “Leminc has collaborated with ITV Fixers on a unique journey to find nothing but the very BEST of birmingham’s raw, artistic talent. (Actors, Dancers, Singers, Poets, Rappers, Entertainers and any other innnovative production) in order to create a powerful, innovative Musical Theatre with purpose”. At the Library Theatre, 7 Nov
• Game Central / Previous Meetings
  Minutes from the first meeting of the new get-together for West Mids games people
• The criteria for Arts Council England regular funding | Arts Council
  “We have a strategy for the arts which underpins our decisions about funding for individual organisations. This document aims to describe the framework we use in making these decisions”
• Outside IN commissioning leading disabled artists – Audiences Central
  “Outside IN is commissioning new work from three of the UK’s leading Disabled Artists for inclusion in three mainstream galleries in the West Midlands and Welsh Borders from 2010 to 2011″
• Robin Valk – UB40: Live, Loud and Local
  Andrew Dubber interviews Robin Valk
• shona mcquillan
  Artist Shona McQuillan has revamped her site and now has some prints for purchasing
• Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre sold to ATG in £90m deal
  The Ambassador Theatre Group have bought the Alex from Live Nation (along with 15 other venues around the country). No great changes planned, according interviews with folks involved, other than to reduce the amount of time it stands idle – currently around 16 weeks a year

A nice project from the CBSO, Street Maestros will allow people to bid (via eBay for Charity) for various experiences with the world class orchestra.

The chance to win a conducting masterclass with the Andris Nelsons (CBSO’s Music Director) is a pretty big deal, and those who can play violin, viola, double bass or cello might fancy playing on stage with the main orchestra.

Bidding opens on 19 November. Here’s a teaser vid which raised a few smiles:

Spotted via @AnnaAmbrose

This post will mostly be taken up by the flyer, so here’s the essentials:

• First Bite Festival. 12 November. AE Harris. Tickets on the door. £5 (£4 concessions).
• Taking part – The Other Way Works. Friction Theatre. Others (Update – see comment for full line-up. Thanks Katie!).
• Two of the pieces will be selected for commission by mac and Warwick Arts Centre.

Another Birmingham institution makes it into double figures this month – Brilliantly Birmingham, the international contemporary jewellery festival, is celebrating its first decade from 21 November to 28 February.

There’ll be two exhibitions at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery:

• FLUX, the annual selling show which attracts international entries from new and emerging designers, and
• A 10th Anniversary Retrospective featuring the work of seven designers whose work has headlined previous festivals (including Mikaela Lyons, a recent MA graduate from BCU’s School of Jewellery)

The programme will also include:

• Paradigma, an international exchange between Birmingham School of Jewellery (BCU) and the Escola Massana, Barcelona
• A series of professional development seminars sponsored by Business Link and the Assay Office, which is also running a special open day for the public
• ‘Walks in the Quarter’ and Open Workshops
• Exhibitions by individual designer makers such as James Newman and Sara Preisler and a collaboration with Birmingham City University’s New Generation Arts 2010

More info on the Brilliantly Birmingham website.

So, can the Midlands’ creative industries revolutionise the UK economy?

Well, I wasn’t at The Big Debate on Monday, so I can’t tell you what the answer was. Here’s a list of ideas that came out of the event, although if that’s anything to go by the answer was “no, we need to sort ourselves out before telling the rest of the country what to do”.

That may not be an accurate summary though.

If you want to find out for yourselves, the live stream and blog are both archived on the Birmingham Post website. I hear Charles Leadbetter was good.

Personally, I was impressed by the series of blog posts that preceded the main event:

• The Post’s own Marc Reeves wrote an excellent piece criticising the “erratic approach to creating ‘quarters’ across the city” and addressing access to finance saying “Put simply, many in the creative sector need to grow up, put on a suit, and get to know how finance works”. Well worth a read
• Fullrange’s Lee Kemp was persuasive on regional work projects being reserved for regional (in his view a very bad idea)
• Screen WM’s Jason Hall talked about how to prove the impact of creative stuff. Answer – join a network. If there isn’t one for you then start one.

Meanwhile, since the event, Paul Bradshaw has countered those who complained of too much talk and too little action. Dave Harte has done likewise while attempting to lay a few other myths to rest. Rebecca Sykes and Andrew Brightwell have put their thoughts down too.

If anyone was there it’d be good to get your thoughts on the event.

As part of the redevelopment of Digbeth coach station, National Express are working with EC-Arts on the Digbeth Public Art Project. It’ll be launched in December and will feature three permanent commissions:

• Boundary – “In essence the boundary fence of the Coach Station will be public art in both form and function”
• Irish Quarter Visual Art – “designed by artist Dave Sherry… The visual art installation will represent the Irish Quarter and encapsulates the history and vitality of the area, creating a landmark for the Irish Quarter and the City”
• Short Film – made by a group oy young people, this “will document the public art process, community engagement, artist interviews, workshops, events and the fabrication and installation process”

Birmingham’s People comes from the folks at Birmingham Photospace and is a continuation of the portrait project they carried out over the Artsfest weekend in September.

The website has been featuring the portraits taken, including the latest of ‘Radway’ (below) who, unless I’m mistaken, is none other than Violet Attack from the Birmingham Blitz Derby Dames.

The project will be exhibited at The Drum from 7 December 2009 to 29 January 2010. You can also sign up to attend the (free) private view and artists talk on 9 December.

It’s actually a little tricky to find out about local music around the city, I find. This is the stuff I know about, feel free to add other stuff in the comments.

News

Brum Notes is the website for the free, monthly music and lifestyle magazine (Nov issue out now, Oct one online here).

The Birmingham Post have news and reviews here and the Birmingham Mail do rock/pop news.

Fused Magazine‘s site does the odd bit of music news, as does the website for sister magazine Area.

Surge Music takes a wider, Midlands-wide view of things, with articles and lists of gigs, bands and venues.

Cul-de-Sac turned out to be a false dawn for this sort of thing, but may come back one day.

@birminghamlive and @brumpunks are good sources for concert info too.

Reviews

Birmingham Live is the obvious choice here – someone from their ranks of volunteer reviewers and photographers will be at a gig in Birmingham pretty much every evening. Steve Gerrard organises this one (Lee Allen and I have also chipped in occasionally).

The Hearing Aid is a blog by someone called The Baron who goes to an impressive number of local gigs.

The Birmingham Mail do gig reviews too.

Get-togethers

The Birmingham Music Network meets monthly at the Department of Technology, Engineering and the Environment (T.E.E.) at Millennium Point. Their website has a good range of resources too.

Audio

I’m on shakier ground here – which radio shows promote local talent There’s Brumcast on Rhubarb Radio and Introducing on BBC WM. I don’t know enough about the shows on New Style Radio, Aston FM or any others.

Are there any Birmingham-based mp3 blogs worth talking about?

Anything else?

Let me know in the comments. Just to be clear, we’re not looking for bands/venues/promoters to plug themselves but if that’s you, where do you look to get featured?

Oh, and see also Birmingham listings.

(pic – The Editors by Steve Gerrard from the opening night of the new Academy)

Kirsty Davies got in touch the other week. I asked for a little bit of information about herself and this is what she said:

After finishing a HND in jewellery and silversmithing I went on to work with a jewellery and manufacturing company within the jewellery quarter for 3 and half years. From there I went onto completing in degree in jewellery design gaining first class honours.

I have now set up a jewellery and accessory company under my name Kirsty Davies.

My aim as a designer is to create items that are inspired but not dictated to by fashion by creating beautifully different pieces.

My products are fresh, fun and exciting and as well as using precious materials, experiment with unconventional materials such as neoprene usually reserved for wetsuits.

An exciting piece I that I’m launching for spring summer is the make it, wear it, love it neoprene jewellery accessory, which is assembled by the consumer and customised as a corsage, necklace, head piece, bag accessory….the list goes on.

• Best of the West Awards 2010 – Art Commission Brief
  A new awards programme for all museums, galleries and heritage groups in the West Midlands is after someone to design them a trophy for one of their categories. Details here.
• Made in the Black Country
  It’s “a site for the Black Country Museums to tell stories and showcase objects from our industrial past”
• Chris Keenan at the Centre for Fine Art Photography
  “Chris Keenan’s portrait of Tom, a Prefab home owner in Moseley, Birmingham, will be exhibited in the prestigious Portraits Exhibition at the Centre for Fine Art Photography, Colorado, USA”
• What’s happening around The REP and Centenary Square currently?
  Centenary Square’s a bit of a mess
• Birmingham Hippodrome :: A Night Less Ordinary
  The Hippodrome have free tickets available for U26′s for Alistair McGowan and a couple of Welsh National Opera shows
• Creative Communities | TAK!
  “This month Creative Review features a piece on Creative Communities. I was asked to offer my thoughts on the creative community we belong to, that is of Digbeth and the Custard Factory” Here’s Dom’s unedited thoughts
• Media Stars Shine at RTS Midlands Awards
  Congrats to all the big winners. Incidentally, what exactly are they putting in the water at the University of Lincoln?

This is for the Birmingham Art Zine (BAZ) launch night, 5 November at The White Swan in Digbeth, 6-9pm:

BAZ are well aware that a room full of people reading a small pink text heavy magazine – looking to see if their names are mentioned – is not really a recipe for a great night out so we’ve gone for a short opening so you can all get on down to Mark Essen’s gig at The Anchor afterwards

They’ll also be taking part in Grand Union’s artists’ publishing fair as part of The Event on 6 November 12-9pm.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff to explore on BAZ’s website, PDF’s unfortunately, so I only made it through a few. Titles like ‘Ikon sculpture tried to eat my missus‘ are pretty compelling though. The intro to ‘The Editorial‘ gives you a good flavour of the sort of thing:

It’s been another hectic year in the Birmingham ART World: the emergence of a hard-line rap and gangster culture amongst feuding art institutions; the ensuing war and bloodshed, punctuated only by games of Institutional Cricket; the rise of Northfield as the cities ‘real’ creative quarter; Berlin trying to steal our ART scene; the building of the worlds first ART themed adventure park in Ladywood; The Public being converted into the world’s largest public toilets; and the rapid spread of wild animals in Birmingham ARTISTS studios.

I’m playing catch-up on this one. I’ve heard the idea of a contemporary art museum for Birmingham (or Tate Birmingham, as it’s been referred to in some quarters) mentioned in passing a few times but that’s it, so consider this a glorified links round-up as I try to find out what info has thus far passed me by.

So, in chronological order…

At the end of June this year, Terry Grimley revealed that a feasibility study was being undertaken into developing such a museum. The Arts Council and AWM had each chucked in £90k and the city council have apparently also contributed £200k ‘to enable Ikon to mount a programme of high-profile events in Eastside as a test bed’.

The idea for this was first mooted in 2006, around the time Ikon Eastside was first opened. Unfortunately I can’t find Terry Grimley’s article from back then.

Coun Martin Mullaney was quoted saying:

I’m keen to support this. We want it to be on a par with Tate Modern and the Guggenheim in Bilbao

and suggesting the site of the wholesale markets as the location. The Birmingham Central blog picked up on this, adding:

With the Wholesale Markets moving and a large space being created it would offer a central focal point to attract visitors to the Southside area and build on the creativity of Digbeth.

The idea was discussed by a panel at The Art of Ideas II – A New Museum for the 21st Century on 8 July, but I’ve no idea what was said. Does anyone know if there was a recording?

A few weeks later, The Guardian’s Matt Price asked ‘Does England really need another contemporary art museum?‘ He put some bones on the proposal:

From the public discussion earlier this month, it was clear that Watkins (Jonathan Watkins, director of Ikon, and the person leading the proposal) is thinking big: he wants vast spaces capable of presenting large-scale sculptures and installations, with an acquisitions policy aiming to collect the most celebrated artists currently working around the world

He also pointed out some of the rationale behind the project – that many towns:

don’t actually own much of the art they show; public collections of contemporary art around England simply aren’t as good as they should be. Arts Council England acknowledged this in a 2006 report, bluntly asserting that “regional collections in England do not represent the visual art of our time”

Providing some balance, he goes on to point out that many West Mids museums have good, specialist collections of contemporary art and that developing these might be worthwhile (not to mention cheaper). However, the conclusion to the article, and so Matt’s answer to the question, is ‘yes, it could be really good if it works’. Well, yes…

Curator and writer, Charlie Levine, chipped in with an article ‘Tricky: A new museum for Birmingham?‘. Although initially convinced by the arguments espoused at the Art of Ideas II, she sounded a few cautious notes and wondered whether it would not be better to invest in and support local, emerging artists ‘to create a successful and supportive art economy’.

Which leads us to the item that sparked this post – a news piece on the Arts Council website proclaiming that ‘Our chair welcomes plans for Birmingham contemporary art museum‘.

Arts Council chair Liz Forgan, at Ikon’s annual dinner this week, said:

It is truly ambitious. I know that it is early days, and the feasibility study is only just being developed. But Birmingham needs the visual arts to flourish in the city; it needs to realise its aspirations for the visual arts that it has already achieved in other art forms. People may say that it’s not an auspicious time to raise funds for such an ambitious project. But I say ambition is good!

We at the Arts Council support ambition and excellence and we will do our utmost to support you in this endeavour. Of course I can’t make any commitments, and I am sure you wouldn’t expect me to – not here, not tonight anyway! But I do want to say that we have supported you, we are supporting you and now we are keen to try to apply some of the innovation we have talked about tonight to find new ways of supporting you.

Although she also made some odd claims about Ikon’s existence halting the proliferation of lap dancing clubs in the city. You can download Liz Forgan’s speech here.

So where does that leave us? Well, the feasability study’s yet to be completed and there’s been very little mention of the cost of the thing so far, which must be a big issue at the moment. There seems to be a lot of intial support for the idea though, so I guess we wait and see what that report says.