Created in Birmingham

David Bintley’s the Artistic Director at Birmingham Royal Ballet. Give that man a donation.

Also, BRB are doing The Nutcracker which opens at the Hippodrome tonight.

Hat-tip to @Robintheoffice

BAApp: Walking Architecture is a searchable archive of buildings and tours from across Birmingham including historic, contemporary or conceptual architecture.

It’s an iPhone app built by Substrakt for the Birmingham Architectural Association in collaboration with RIBA West Midlands and the Birmingham & Five Counties Architectural Association. It should arrive in the iTunes store any day now.

If you like that kind of thing, check out OpenBuildings and their mobile apps too.

• @kismetkotch
  “A new arts hub based in Eastside, at club PST”. Don’t know much else about this one just yet
• My kind of town: Birmingham | Travel | The Guardian
  “Who better than an underground club promoter to sniff out the best shopping, food, bars and parties in Birmingham?” Odd that the photo caption says ‘outside Rooty Frooty’
• TEDxBrum – The Next Revolution
  As we draw closer to the big day, this page will be where you can find information of the days schedule, where we’ll be and what to look forward to
• Gay Village Guide Birmingham
  There’s one of those little Area guide things for the Southside/Gay Village area
• Hello Culture 2011
  Pics, slides audio and video from last week’s event
• 166 photographic jobs go as Doubletake Studios in Birmingham city centre collapses
  The 166 workers, including make-up artists and photographers, were based at the studios in Mary Ann Street, off St Paul’s Square
• Identity Drama School Annual Showcase
  Identity Drama School Birmingham presents a powerful collection of hard-hitting, yet often humorous monologues, duologues and original plays drawing inspiration from a wide portfolio of contemporary playwrights, performed by Identity Drama School actors at The Drum Theatre in Birmingham
• Sculpture Commission opportunity
  We are seeking expressions of interest from artists or designers with experience of public art projects, ideally with experience of working in healthcare settings and with at least three years of graduate experience
• 5 Books for Birmingham history, heritage and architecture buffs « Birmingham Conservation Trust
  “Over the last couple of years some of our volunteers have highlighted and reviewed a range of books that might make great presents for heritage enthusiasts”
• Nude show where naked dancers sit in lap of audience to spearhead Birmingham International Dance Festival
  Fairly tragic piece by the Sunday Mercury but then this is the kind of publicity that means the show’ll sell out, so good on them (kinda). And anyway, they clearly haven’t heard the half of it
• Eastside Projects Public Evaluation Event
  “From 27 to 29 October, Eastside Projects in Birmingham, UK held a three day symposium to analyse and evaluate three years of an artist run space as public gallery”. The videos are online, I just wish they had titles
• Open File
  Open File is a curatorial conversation between artist Jack Brindley and curator Tim Dixon. The project began as a blog in February 2011. Launching at Grand Union this November 18th, the project will exist as an on-going series of live events, an open and expanding cumulative publication, and a new web-based archive and resource

I missed this when it was first announced. Fraser Grace is the playwright who wrote, among other things, Breakfast with Mugabe for the RSC, which I remember doing very well.

He’s now at the University of Birmingham, heading up the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts.

I’ve been forwarded the following which has been written by Anita Bhalla, chair of mac’s board of trustees. As it’s an open letter I figure there’s no problem with me reproducing it in full. Excuse me for dispensing with the usual blockquote rigmarole.

———————————————————-

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Supporters,

As you may be aware, Birmingham City Council has recently launched a public consultation process on its budget plans from April 2012 onwards, and we thought it would be of interest to you as a customer and supporter of mac birmingham to hear how the city’s plans are affecting our work.

mac reopened in May 2010 after a £15.2m redevelopment and refurbishment. Birmingham City Council played a major role in the development providing £6.7m of investment and delivering the project under their Partnering Framework with Thomas Vale Construction, one of the region’s award winning construction companies. The rest of the funding came from Arts Council England (£6.2m) and from a highly successful fund-raising appeal with donations from companies, individuals and grant-making trusts (£2.3m). Over 850,000 visits were made to “new” mac in its first year after reopening.

mac’s finances are finely balanced in a mixed economy; in our second year since reopening 26% of our turnover is investment from the City Council. Since our much lauded reopening year our business confidence is established and a growing percentage of our income is earned from box-office, sponsorship and other commercial activities.

As part of its response to the government’s public spending cuts, the City Council has already substantially reduced the amount of funding it gives to all the arts organisations in the city and in April this year mac birmingham’s grant was cut by 14%, a cash reduction of £107,000 per annum.

To cope with this significant reduction in income we have driven further the plans which were developed prior to reopening, maximising efficiency, amending our programming plans and increasing our efforts to maximise all other income streams. Throughout the planning and delivery of the mac/sampad Building Project we sought to maximise future efficiency through, for example, creating a flexible staffing structure, delivering a cost-efficient building with an effective building management system, reducing our carbon footprint and our running costs, increasing recycling, using digital technology to manage our building and our communications. Our shared office space has also allowed us provide improved facilities for our partners sampad and for other artists, arts companies and community agencies who share the mac creative hub.

Whilst we fully recognise that we cannot be exempt from the public spending cuts being imposed at the moment, there are few options available for further reducing costs without severely damaging our services. Whilst we continue to look for greater efficiencies and sharing of services we do fear that any further cuts in BCC funding will lead to a serious “downward spiral” in which the inevitable reductions in artistic activity will lead to lower earned income and funding. Further investment secured from additional sources may well then be withdrawn due to our diminished capacity to deliver our agreed programme.

How you can help

Birmingham’s arts infrastructure and activities have, for so long, been a vital tool in the city’s aim to improve the quality of life for its citizens, its inward investment performance and its status as a true global city. Evidence of the hugely beneficial impact of the creative industries can be found at www.birminghamartspartnership.co.uk

City based cultural organisations contribute £271m to the region’s economy per year. This is generated from almost 2 million attendances, with arts attenders generating £40m in Additional Visitor Spend (AVS). This represents a return on investment of £29 for every £1 that Birmingham City Council spends on funding the arts.

All of the city’s arts organisations believe that we are now at the tipping point where incremental reductions in costs are no longer achievable.

If you share our concerns and would not want to see the City Council reduce its funding to the independent arts organisations any further, I would urge you to make your views known to the City Council before the end of November.

• By filling out an online survey at  www.birmingham.gov.uk/budgetviews
• By emailing to budget_views@birmingham.gov.uk
• By text message to: 07786 200 403
• By writing to Budget Views, Room B119, The Council House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, B1 1BB

You may have received a similar plea from other arts organisations and we would urge you to respond to any one of us. Representation needs to be made before the end of November in order to be effective.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for your continuing support of mac birmingham.

Anita Bhalla
Chair of mac Board of Trustees

Made in Sutton is an arts forum created in Sutton Coldfield. Others have been created across Birmingham (see info on the Birmingham City Council arts pages for the others).

Their first meeting is on Saturday (26 November) and they say:

All local arts organisations are welcome to participate, so whether you run an amateur dramatics society or provide dance classes we’d love to hear from you.

I Like Theatre is a lovely, simple idea and a nice progression from last year’s theatre pledge cards.

Note: a mention of the West Midlands Theatre Awards 2012. You saw it there first.

I Like Theatre was prompted by Ian Craddock at Old Joint Stock Theatre from an initial idea and Pledge Card from James Yarker at Stan’s Cafe / @ A E Harris.

144 do films, like this one of Brotherhood of Filth – a three piece dubstep turntablist outfit featuring Malicious DJ, The Doctor and DJ Switch (three times DMC World Champion). It was recorded at the Bulls Head in Moseley.

• Yam Big Richard
  Richard’s DJing, hacks, collages and write-ups from events
• Warwick Bar
  A website for Minerva Works, the small industrial estate in Digbeth currently home to Grand Union Studios, Fazeley Park, Street Print and Clifton Steel
• Fast Forward – 6.8 million items in our collections! Phew « Museum Network Warwickshire
  Fast Forward 2010, the 6th bi-annual survey of West Midlands museums. In all, 170 of you participated, 79% of all our museums! Covering organisational health, collections, and users, it is a wide-ranging and detailed picture of museum provision throughout the West Midlands in 2010
• The Event, Various venues, Birmingham – Reviews
  A review of The Event in the Independent
• BASS FESTIVAL 2012- Commissions NOW OPEN!
  To mark the 50th anniversary of Jamaican Independence and to welcome the Jamaican Olympic team to Birmingham BASS will have JAMAICA as its theme in 2012
• Dancing for the Games | Blog | Moving Earth open workshops
  sampad‘s Dancing for the Games project Moving Earth is holding open workshops in Birmingham on Saturday 26 November.
• Michael’s Animation blog
  Michael Price is studying animation at BCU
• BBC Performing Arts Funds announce fellowships
  The BBC Performing Arts Fund announced recently that 13 dance organisations across the UK had been awarded a grant as part of its Dance Fellowships scheme, including ACE Dance and Music and Warwick Arts Centre’s Boys Dancing
• “Long-Eared Furry Things” – blog – frilly
  Bunnies, generally
• Eastside Projects Public Evaluation Event
  “From 27 to 29 October, Eastside Projects in Birmingham, UK held a three day symposium to analyse and evaluate three years of an artist run space as public gallery”. The videos are online, I just wish they had titles
• Open File
  Open File is a curatorial conversation between artist Jack Brindley and curator Tim Dixon. The project began as a blog in February 2011. Launching at Grand Union this November 18th, the project will exist as an on-going series of live events, an open and expanding cumulative publication, and a new web-based archive and resource

Yesterday lunchtime I went along to the launch of International Dance Festival Birmingham 2012. For the uninitiated, IDFB is a massive festival of dance organised by Dancexchange and the Hippodrome.

There’s a good round-up of what’s being planned over on West Midlands Dance.

There’s plenty of good stuff lined up, but the bits that made me nudge the person next to me and go ‘huh, that’ll be interesting’ were:

• Wings of Desire (the big dance spectacular in Victoria Sq), with Circa and 2FaCeD DaNcE Company
• Dave St-Pierre Company – Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde! (which generated a tonne of controversy in London a couple of months ago)

I like IDFB. It was probably the first one, back in 2008, that got me interested in dance in the first place. I then worked on the 2010 festival and managed to pack in 18 shows over the course of its month-long run. This one looks like being another good one.

Whack-a-Cake is a game that was built by:

volunteers from the UK tech community as part of the “Children in Need Tech Challenge” hosted at The Oxygen Accelerator in Birmingham.

600 schoolchildren in the Birmingham area were asked to come up with a game idea and the characters that they saw being part of it. The best entries were shortlisted and asked to come to Oxygen and face a “Dragons Den” panel of game developers, designers and local businessmen

It was built in a 48-hour flurry over the weekend. Here’s the full list of people who made it happen.