Day to day blog of Artist Paul Hirst as he creates new work on his art residency at the Bond in Birmingham

is a series of inspiring working sessions for ANY visual artists, photographers, writers, poets, musicians, filmmakers and any other creatives! Factory Nights is not a discussion event, seminar or workshop. Factory Nights are free sessions that simply provide an opportunity for creative people to come together in an interesting venue and supportive environment to make work or initiate ideas

The organisers are Rednile Projects and they’ve put out a call for “artists and anyone creative” for the next one:

Factory Night @ The Historic JA Crabtree & Co. Ltd. Factory (now the characterful  Lyndon House Hotel), on Thursday 16th February 2012, 6-8pm . In collaboration with Multistory and The Crabtree Society

I’d seen the Google Art Project and I knew they’d started mapping inside shopping centres, airports and comic shops but I didn’t know they were doing anything in the UK. Fancy that.

a show in which we make work in direct competition with other artists on topics chosen at random, both selected by an impartial curator Charlie Levine

There’s a preview show from 5pm - 7pm on Thursday 26 January at Colmore Plaza. For more info head to:

• The Aedas Presents blog
• Sparrow+Castice‘s website

From The Hubb on Twitter:

#soulinthemachine Khyle raja drawing upon @thehubb1 walls pic.twitter.com/KuSs6jxr

That’s for an exhibition called Soul in the Machine that’s opening tomorrow.

This one’s kinda brilliant. Fierce Festival are looking for 60 dachsunds from around the West Mids to take part in one of the projects featuring in next year’s festival:

Bennett Miller’s ‘Dachshund U.N.’ is a replica of the former United Nations office in Geneva which will hold a meeting of the Commission of Human Rights. Each of the 47 nations will be represented by a dachshund.  The piece is a ‘playful and often chaotic comment on the aspirations of the Commission of Human Rights, and our capacity as humans to imagine and achieve a universal system of justice.’

Watch the video. I’m very much looking forward to this happening.

If you want your dog to get involved then More Canals Than Venice has the contact details.

VIVID is inviting people from Birmingham to take part in a collective recitation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with artist Monica Ross. Take this chance to learn a small part of the Declaration of Human Rights and recite it in public, in your own language, as part of this unique performance.

More detail and contact info is available via Vivid’s Facebook page.

There’s even more info about the project on Monica Ross’s website.

Lee Basford‘s series of nine sculptures, titled The Process of Being Human, has been exhibited at SCOPE Miami. Today’s the last day of the show, so pop in if you’re in the area.

Harun Morrison (half of Fierce Festival) is also half of They Are Here and Their Wonderlands (which is at the MAC from 26 November) is

an international group exhibition, curated by multi-disciplinary collective They Are Here. Contemporary artists have been drawn together to explore the space given to make-believe and folklore in post-industrial 21st century European society.

The pic above is The Wind Can Always Turn by Susanne Ludwig.

At the same time The Event was on a few weeks back, there was another exhibition called EGO going on in Minerva Works. The next instalment, EGO 2, launches on 18 November.

Curated by Robert E.V. Walsh, featuring work by Paul Newman, James Fowkes, Chris Clinton, Alexi K and Robert EV Walsh with guest artists Zarina Keyani, Kevin Ryan, Nita Walters and Mark Carroll.