The Bridge is a film made by Virtual Extreme Youth Media CIC, based in the Jewellery Quarter, to raise awareness around mental health.
More info via Screen WM.
Archive for May, 2010
As reported by the Outcrowd Collective, Ben Javens now has a tea towel for sale via the rather wonderful To Dry For, a website I only discovered the other week. This is the design:
and, if you like, you can buy one here.
On a slightly related note, one of the strangest bits of merch I ever saw at a gig was Nick Cave tea towels.
It’s nearly the end of term, and you know what that means… showcases! Birmingham City University are already on the case with Exhibit This by its final year Media and Communication students. And the plan is…
…to display their creative work to industry professionals and the general public while celebrating their achievements throughout their degree.
As you can see from the flyer, you can expect work from a range of media disciplines, from photography to web and new media, so if you want to check out some new talent in the field, it might be worth a poke around.
Exhibit This is at The Bond in Digbeth on 7th and 8th June, between 6pm and 8.30pm.
There’s not much info floating around about Emerging apart from a couple of flyers, but it looks mighty interesting all the same. It’s a photography exhibition featuring Niall Patterson, Paul Watt, and Hannah-Beth Todd amongst others, and you can see it at the Custard Factory between 1-8 June, 10am-7pm.
Meanwhile, in related news, Custard Factory have a shiny new website here, and Zellig, the brand new development at Devonshire House, also has a new website here.
- In Birmingham
“In Birmingham is a blog about all things cultural and political happening in Birmingham. It is produced by a group of like-minded writers from the city with the aim of bringing Birmingham together and stimulating lively debate” - Eastside Projects awarded 2010 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Breakthrough Fund « We Are Eastside | Birmingham
“Eastside Projects has been awarded £360,000 from the 2010 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Breakthrough Fund to develop its programme over the next three years” Nice! - Ipex 2010: Engineering Dept Report | Newspaper Club
“I knew it was going to be big, but nothing quite prepares you for 11 halls of the Birmingham NEC. It’s absolutely huge”. Tom from Newspaper Club reports back - Behind the arras theatrical website with news, reviews and all things thespian
This one’s entirely news to me – a West Mids theatre website which looks like it’s been going a while. It’s a bit old school, but it seems to cover quite a range of amateur productions as well as the bigger stuff
Nice idea this:
Who Wants to Be…? is a spontaneous, democratic, live theatrical experience where the public really do take control. People propose ideas, discuss, and then vote on how to spend the evening’s entire box-office takings: Donate it? Invest it? Gamble it? Waste it? Form a collective and make the best idea happen yourself? You, the audience, decide
It says it’s inspired by Birmingham’s City of Culture bid, rather than being part of it, although the Hippodrome and Fierce (who are putting this together) have been involved in the official thing too.
It’s on 11 June Tickets are a tenner and they’re available here.
The shutters are down and the windows have been papered up. It’s as if we were never there.
A big thanks to everyone who’s been involved – to all the staff (Aaron, Dennis, Matt, Aaron, Charlotte, Frankie, Ian, Dan, Ruth and Jess) and all those who stepped in to volunteer their time when they were needed (Mark, Ellie, Jo, Karen, Laura, Nick, Louis, Leonardo… dammit, I’m going to start leaving people out now, sorry! You know who you are though).
Thank you to everyone who hired a stall, performed, exhibited, hung out, attended something, told your friends, written/blogged about us or otherwise documented what we’ve been up to and (most of all) bought something from us over the three months we were open.
HUGE thanks to everyone at Bullring – especially Louise, Rachel, Emma and Holly – who’ve supported us more than anyone could reasonably expect.
And, above all, thanks to Pete for everything he’s managed to accomplish over the past few months.
We’re taking a break for a bit now. Pete’s going to be looking at how to build on what we’ve done over the past 12 weeks (with me helping in the background), so watch this space.
In the meantime, thanks again to everyone who played a part in something that turned out to be even better than we hoped. There’s a bit of a get-together/send-off on Saturday 29 May if you’re about.
The nice folk from I Am Birmingham came down and filmed us over the weekend. Here’s the video, with contributions from Matt Murtagh and myself:
From the University of Birmingham alumni newsletter*:
A digital heritage revolution that will change the way visitors experience museums, galleries, libraries and archives is being led by the University’s Visual and Spatial Technology Centre (VISTA) and Department of Art History
[...] fundraising is ongoing for a new Heritage and Cultural Learning Hub, a high-tech multimedia hall where researchers will show museums worldwide how technology can enhance their exhibitions
Full blurb here (if you can read it in this pic).
* I know!
Pete and Aaron get on the Internet telly as Birmingham’s City of Culture bid is seen off:
What nice, polite boys.
Those what know say IPEX is the the largest printing and graphic arts trade show in the English-speaking world. It’s at the NEC until 25 May.
Daisy Whitehouse is an illustrator. Murray Somerville is also an illustrator. But together they are Daze-Ray and they’re turning 48 Vyse Street in the Jewellery Quarter into an illustration exhibition from 21-28 May. The opening’s tonight – here’s the Facebook event and here’s the flyer:
The REP have put tickets on sale for the second half of the year. What’s more, they’ve written an eminently copy/paste-able round-up in a blog post about it. That’s always good to see.
Highlights include:
- A new production of the sci-fi spoof Little Shop Of Horrors
- Sir Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard starring Josie Lawrence
- The premiere of an imaginative and high tech drama First Person Shooter
- Direct from the West End and Broadway, Lucy Prebble’s award-winning ENRON
- The National Theatre production of Alan Bennett’s The Habit Of Art
- Simon Stephens returns to The REP with the outstanding Punk Rock
- A witty story about friendship and betrayal amongst IRA sympathisers The Big Fellah
- Our lavish Christmas production The Secret Garden
Tickets for all productions are onsale now – see the full programme of events.
- One Step Beyond! « ACE dance and music
“Find out all about ACE’s Director Gail Parmel” - Brigid McLeer – Resident Artist at The Rea Garden | Behind Closed Doors
“We are pleased to announce that the third artist residency is under way here at The Rea Garden. Artist Brigid Mc Leer has been working down at the site since April in preparation for her ‘durational performance’ ‘One + One (The reading)’” - More music for Birmingham – Audiences Central
“The Digbeth Institute [...] is now set to re-launch on Friday 17 September 2010 under the new name of the hmvInstitute” - Arts keynote speech – Jeremy Hunt
The new Culture Secretary with some ‘thoughts about the role of arts and culture in society’. Includes a small, Birmingham-related mix-up (hat tip Jake Grimley) - The REP Revealed
“we have just published The REP Revealed – a new brochure which celebrates our achievements to date and our aspirations for the future” - Here are some of the treats in store | Moseley Festival
“Events are still coming in, but we already know there is to be…” Follow the link for details - Purple Amp | Music Blog based in Birmingham
A new Brum-centric music blog. Dunno who’s behind it but they’ve heard of CiB. Spooky - All change! (BARG at the mac and other news) | BARG
Good stuff from the pervasive games, etc folks. - Birmingham Hippodrome :: News – Joan Collins to star in Dick Whittington
Joan Collins will star alongside Julian Clary, Nigel Havers, Keith Harris and Orville in this year’s panto. Srsly - The Stage / News / Jeremy Hunt asks DCOMS to plan for £66m cut to budget
To put that in context, I think DCMS gets around £5bn a year, with another £1.5bn in Lottery money. More than happy to be corrected though
From Shaanti’s website:
2010 sees the launch of ‘Shaanti 11, a UK music development organisation that shall continue with the philosophy of creating positive messages and community collision, through championing and celebrating innovative South Asian music, arts and visual communication. Our aim is to enhance and improve the creative economy and music practice across London, Birmingham and throughout the West Midlands region
There’s a vid that gives a flavour of the sort of thing they do:
