Created in Birmingham

• Fundraising Session from the RSC « mid * point
  “the Royal Shakespeare Company would like to share its resources and expertise, and have put togethera fundraising session that will be held in Birmingham on Monday 19 September from 1.30pm -4.30pm”
• Birmingham: Why Bother? • Future Cities of the Future
  As always the rhetorical answer to the rhetorical question is “well, who asked you to bother?”. Still, it’s always a shame when someone gives up
• Supersonic ) Supersonic podcast no.1
  “It’s that time of year again when things start hotting up on the Supersonic front. The wonderful Little Chris of Brumcast fame has lovingly put together a series of podcasts together for your listening pleasure. Here is the first Supersonic special – ENJOY!” Very pleased to hear Little Chris’s voice again
• Birmingham Toolkit
  “The Birmingham Toolkit is designed to help you talk about Birmingham with pride and confidence”
• Enterprise zone ‘to make Birmingham creative hub’
  “The zone – which includes Eastside, Paradise Circus and New Street Station – will attract start-up firms by offering discounts on business rates of up to £275,000 over five years, simplifying planning laws and offering superfast broadband”. Plus other good stuff. Also, George Osborne says there are some iconic buildings here “if you look around”.
• foursquare :: Created in Birmingham
  We have a page on Foursquare now. It’s probably not going to be used much but you never know.

I like to call it the illegal legal underground underground

So says someone (Tony, I think, but I’m not sure) in this decent video – not just a tour around PST but a chat with some of the people involved in starting the venue.

Short feature on Gareth Courage‘s exhibition at We Are Birmingham. Also covers the launch of First Fold Records‘ ‘Premier Pli’ magazine.

Includes interviews with Alex Bermingham, Gareth Courage and John Hanson.

The video’s been put together nicely by 144 who are just setting up by the looks of things. In the meantime have a look at their Vimeo profile. Their short Friendly Fire Band documentary is good too.

Creative Leap was a professional development programme (led by Sampad and The Drum) for new and emerging Birmingham-based artists that ran for roughly a year. It was ended in March this year and a review booklet/brochure landed on my desk the other day with information about everyone who took part.

Eleven individual artists and four small arts companies (twenty-eight artists in total) were selected to take part in Creative Leap. Over the course of the programme, these artists created and showcased fourteen new pieces of work including four dance performances, a multi-media theatre piece, two painting and photography exhibitions, a site-specific mixed media installation, an urban sculpture project, an environmental project, three films and a narrative drama told via animation and mixed media.

I spoke on this at the end of last year and was genuinely very impressed by the calibre of the artists on the programme and how they were being brought on. The review’s worth a flick through.