The next ARC at The Vaults is to be hosted by Companis on 29 September.
Bawdyville promises to be an evening of fun, frolics and titillation(!?) With absurdly arresting gestures, one-on-one performances and installation laced with a healthy dose of humor and frivolity.
If this all sounds rather intriguing, maybe this post on Area will give you an idea of the kind of people Companis are.
Drop by from 6 – 8pm, when there’ll also be free cocktails – if you can catch one!
Birmingham City Council’s Arts and Young People Team have commissioned Hybrid to deliver a series of events and training sessions providing pathways towards your career in the arts. There are four ways that you can take part:
1. Action learning sets to share challenges and find solutions, facilitated by coaches and those with mentoring experience.
2. Visits to arts organisations, to learn more about who, what and how. Visits with confirmed dates are;
3. Panels/ Talks on varying themes, with speakers, discussion and networking opportunities. Held at Apache’s Bar, the following events are coming up;
4. Café style conversations on project development, delivery and evaluation, which will be facilitated by practitioners and arts professionals including Bright Space, Multistory and Birmingham City Council. Also held at Apache’s Bar, the following events are coming up;
The programme takes place until March 2011. To register for an event and find out more, please email karen@hybridconsulting.org.uk, or leave a message on 0121 270 6389
Radio IPS, will be taking over the airwaves on 87.8FM, broadcasting live from 20 – 25 September, at 12 to 5pm each day. Daily contributions will feature the following independent art organisations;
Monday: Capsule
Tuesday: Pro Choice
Wednesday: The Island
Thursday: Caribic Residency
Friday: Formcontent
Saturday: Longmeg (live)
Inernational Project Space’s next project is ‘MORROR’, at the School of Art Bournville.
This Michael Krebber and Michaela Eichwald exhibition opens Wednesday 7 October, 5 – 7pm, and will run until 6 November, opening Wednesdays at 12 – 7pm and Thursday to Saturday at 12 – 5pm.
Admission is free, contact 0121 331 5763 or visit www.internationalprojectspace.org for more information.
Antonio Roberts will be giving a talk on 16 September at Birmingham Linux User Group, presenting the issues affecting artists who adopt open source and free culture into their practice.
After his previously well received talk on the use of open source and art, Antonio is back to discuss issues of copyright and his own experiences as an artist in the world of open source.
Freedom in Creativity will be held at Aston Science Park at 7.30pm. If you can’t make it, the talk will also be broadcast online and made available for streaming shortly afterward.
Picked this up at Artsfest. I can’t find much about it online, but it looks interesting.
20 – 22 September at The Victoria, Green Gorilla Presents – Polite Assassins – A play celebrating an almost forgotten heroine air-brushed out of history, Mary Seacole. Starting at 7:30pm, tickets are £7/ £5 concessions.
’11 Stops. 11 Artists. One great cause.’
On 3 October, Oxjam will be taking over the 11 bus route. Starting outside the Hare and Hounds and proceeding to ride a full lap around Birmingham’s more interesting neighborhoods, stopping en-route at The Bear in Bearwood for a few drinks and live local music. After riding Europe’s longest urban bus route, complete with a mix of musical genres, passengers will be treated to a Sunday lunch at the Hare and Hounds.
The event is ahead of the main OxjamBrum Takeover, presenting 12 hours of live music for the best of Birmingham’s music scene. That takes place 16 October, and early bird wristbands are currently on sale for £4. Bargain!
Tickets for the 11 bus outing will be on sale from 9am on 17 September via www.oxjambrum.org.uk, and with a limited amount of 40, you’ll need to be quick.
The cost? £11. Of course.
On 16 and 17 October 2010 I’m hosting a weekend session designed to help creative people take control of their online lives. The course will be aimed at online beginners/intermediates and will cover:
Places are limited. Tickets cost £150 plus booking fee. It’ll be more than worth your while. Book now.
There’s also ONE £100 ticket for the first person who books. Be quick – once it’s gone, it’s gone. Wow, that went quickly.
Two campaigns kicked off this week which merit a mention.
I Value The Arts has been put together by the National Campaign for the Arts, supported by a slew of promotional partners.
Save the Arts is is organised by the London branch of the Turning Point Network, a national consortium of over 2,000 arts organisations and artists. There’s a list here. They’re after 100,000 signatures for their petition and have a David Shrigley cartoon too:
What to do
Supporting them both will take about 5 minutes. Tops. So, if you’re keen to support the arts and campaign against severe cuts then sign the petition, pledge your support and stick a logo wherever pleases you and ask others to do the same.
Then get on with telling some more people about why supporting art and culture is a good idea.
What not to do
Predictably, members of the arts commentariat have wasted no time in wasting time, busying themselves with arguments, posturing and point-scoring. I’m not linking to them because they don’t deserve the attention. Idiots.
Bullring have launched a new website to unveil their proposed plans for the regeneration of Spiceal Street, creating a hub of restaurants around St. Martins church.
With Jaime Oliver’s Italian restaurant set to open in October, Bullring are preparing to submit their planning application for the new development, with a view for completion in the Autumn of 2011.
What are you thinking? With the Mailbox and Brindley Place do we really need another batch of restaurant chains? Or are you excited at the prospect of finally getting a decent bite to eat without the trek away from the centre? If so you can pledge your support for the project via their site.
On 24 September – 1 October, Friction Arts are holding Inside Out Festival. With artists, installations and performances all hosted at The Edge, the festival will also showcase performances, installations and interventions across Digbeth.
The idea behind this mini-fest is to continue to connect the communities around our HQ – The Edge, through a shared experience of contemporary art – in and around the streets of Digbeth.
There’ll be a series of art trails around the area, taking in works specially made for the festival, but also the street art and built environment of this very special district.
The programme so far has events running across the opening weekend, with a launch party on 24 September in association with Sonic Asylum, featuring live music, installations and artwork. Other events will include art trails, live art and an artist’s brunch.
For more information on currently listed events, plus updates and information on volunteering, take a look at their website.
Recollect is a one off exhibition by Lisa Travers & Kelly Washbourne, taking place Tuesday 28 September 6pm – 9pm at The Vaults.
After their efforts to change Moseley’s art scene back in 2004, with a programme of exhibitions, and the packed-out show ‘Made in Moseley’, Kelly and Lisa are ‘reconnecting’ once more, relishing the opportunity to decorate the Victorian brickwork of the bar with their latest artworks.
Just a quick round up of everything going on this weekend, there’s a lot and we wouldn’t want you to forget and miss out on anything!
Cum Clubbing – Hosted by VIVID, this art party does not look like something to be missed (although it’s happening now, so get down quick). From 8pm – late, VIVID’s project space will be taken over by live music, DJs and visual artists who’ll conspire to create an excitingly strange evening of camp disco. Tickets are £5.
To save time I’m going to be both lazy and efficient, and link you to everyone else who’s been talking about this. Take a look at Digbeth is Good, More Canals than Venice, brianduffyhasabigbrain, and Birmingham: It’s Not Shit.
Zine Festival - Not put off by the scale of Artsfest, this niche festival has a weekend full of events for you to get involved in.
Artsfest – As already mentioned, the weekend of free arts events kicks off this evening and will continue to entertain through to Sunday night. With live performances coming from Centenary Square and Chamberlain Square, along with short films and animations screened at the Crescent, plus various performances and workshops held at theaters and bars across the city, don’t let the miserable weather deter you from leaving the house!
This is a bit self-indulgent and it starts with a brief recap, so please bear with me.
Back in Feb, Ian posted something about BRB presenting some work choregraphed by their dancers. One of the pieces used a track called Printer Jam by Mistabishi and was spotted by the people behind the Drum and Bass Awards, who invited the dancers to perform it at their launch event.
Matt Murtagh saw the piece and tweeted about it. I posted a screenshot of that tweet on CiB.
Anyway… a screenshot of that tweet on CiB made it into a video intro that was featured at BRB’s Royal Gala Performance back in March, in front of a packed Hippodrome audience which included Prince Charles. I was there, and it was odd to see little old CiB up on all of those screens in front of all those people.
The point of all of this (in case you were wondering) is that I’ve just been told that the video’s now up online:
Printer Jam feature from Rob Lindsay on Vimeo.
Kit Holder is the man behind the piece and I’ve got a quote from him about it too:
I’m really happy about how successful it’s been. When I made the piece I didn’t think it would have such longevity, so I’m chuffed to bits that it’s being performed again. It’s a real testament to the dancers and the technical department, to be honest. I jokingly asked all these different things of them and they ran with the ideas and made it all into a real piece!
You can see the piece as part of Artsfest this weekend, with a few other things being performed from 3-4.15pm on the Centenary Square stage.
After being independently published, Birmingham writer Charlie Hill’s first novel ‘The Space Between Things’ is set in Moseley and looks at the free party people and road protesters of the early 1990′s.
Fellow Birmingham author, Jim Crace, described his writing as ‘intelligent and witty’. Jonathan Coe also gave praise for the book;
What I liked very much about the novel was that it vividly captures a moment in Britain’s recent past, and takes us inside a world and a milieu which most readers won’t have known before. And of course, as a tragic love story, it packs a considerable punch.
The book will be out 1 October, along with a launch event on 14 October at Waterstones’ Birmingham High Street branch.
‘The Space Between Things’ can be pre-ordered from Amazon, Waterstones and London Review Bookshop, but you’d like a head start, Charlie has posted the first chapter online.
