Created in Birmingham

JamFactory aka Gavin Strange is a brilliant designer from Bristol, but he’s launching his new vinyl toy collection, Droplet, here in Brum which gives me a good excuse to write about him here!

I first discovered JamFactory on Flickr, I think after one of his ‘Free Art Friday‘ pics showed up in Flickr’s interesting pages and have been following him ever since. I had seen the above flyer come through on an RSS feed of my Flickr contacts’ photos, but dismissed it at the time thinking it must be a Bristol-based event. Anyway, serendipity fans, I also happen to be subscribed to a feed of all Twitter ‘tweets’ (posts) that mention Birmingham and while doing a very rapid skim read of that, JamFactory’s name jumped out because he was talking about visiting Birmingham. So I didn’t miss out on him coming to Brum :)

Free Art Friday btw is an excellent idea, hint hint, Brum creatives!

This year, we get to vote on what we want to see as part of the Fierce Festival!

After a decade of stop-you-in-your-tracks live art events and performances FIERCE is trailblazing once more giving you, the audience, the power to program your own festival!

We’ve reserved a range of spaces from theatres to pavements, broom cupboards and dressing rooms. You decide what goes in them.

* Read the artist pitches
* Choose your top three performances and vote!
* Come back to build your festival line up and use the leader board to help you.

Shows with the least votes will be eliminated; the most popular shows will be performed LIVE during Fierce Festival at venues across the West Midlands 23rd – 26th May.

They has a blog too :)

Tonight I am overly excited because I just found out that José González and The Bees are playing at this year’s Moseley Folk Festival. How did I find out this most pleasing nugget of news? Not on the interwebs, oh no, but via hard copy - a flyer I picked up at the Moseley Dance Workshop. The contents of said flyer are absent from the world wide web, so by the magic of photography, I bring you a photo of the flyer:I’m sure it’s gotta be much quicker and easier to put this info online than to arrange to have it designed, printed and distributed?!

Island Bar is holding an all-day acoustic festival from 1.30pm on Easter Sunday (23rd March).

The current issue (PDF link) of Bearded magazine, includes a feature on the West Midlands music scene, more specifically Birmingham and Coventry.

The feature is a handy round-up of the bands to watch as well as local promoters, venues, club nights and record shops.

via Rich Batsford

The Flamenco Birmingham site now has details of the performances and workshops that are part of the first International Dance Festival Birmingham. Performances include The TG Collective on Saturday 3rd May and En Sus 13 on Tuesday 6th May, both at Town Hall.

The site also confirms that there will be another Emoción Flamenco Festival later this year, following the success of the first festival last November. The line up and artists for this festival will be announced over the coming weeks. The site has an RSS feed (yay) so it will be easy to keep up with the news, however (note to their webmaster) I was unable to link to specific pages of interest as the site uses URL masking.

• British Glass Biennale 2008 – Call for entries
  The Biennale is open to UK artists, designers and craftspeople, working in all areas of contemporary glass practice or using glass as a key design element. Deadline for entries 28th March.
  (tags: glass art design craft exhibition)
• Birmingham movie giant who spawned a generation - Birmingham Post
  Thanks to Roger Shannon for alerting me to his article in the Post on Sir Michael Balcon, grandfather of Daniel Day-Lewis and a “genuine movie mogul who had his roots in Birmingham”.
  (tags: film producer movies)
• Popbang rule on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  Ian Cook’s “Popbang rule” sculpture is currently on display at The Studio, Cannon Street. The sculpture is constructed out of recycled and reclaimed materials and has no glue or formal bindings holding it together.
  (tags: sculpture art recycled reclaimed craft)
• Stan’s Cafe Cleansing of Constance Brown (via Podnosh)
  7 PERFORMERS
  73 CHARACTERS
  70 MINUTES
  6 WORDS
  10 TONS OF KIT
  A SET 2M WIDE AND 14M DEEP
  45 AUDIENCE MEMBERS…
  …WILL YOU BE ONE OF THEM?
  (tags: theatre show performance)

• Birmingham Opera show goes on after £330,000 grant - Birmingham Post
  “A threat of closure hanging over Birmingham Opera Company has been lifted after the organisation settled its differences with the Arts Council, which has restored a £330,000 funding package.”
  (tags: opera BirminghamOperaCompany funding ArtsCouncil)

The première of the short film ‘Birmingham: The Creative City’ will be held at the Electric Cinema tomorrow afternoon.

From the Press Release:

Birmingham City Council Creative Development Team and Audiences Central are premiering a short film directed by BAFTA Award Winning Director Natasha Carlish on Tuesday 11 March at The Electric Cinema, Birmingham. Birmingham: The Creative City celebrates some of the personal stories and amazing work delivered as part of the Equal II: The Last Mile programme in Birmingham over the last two years.

The Equal II: The Last Mile programme was established to develop the Creative Industries as a route to employment in Birmingham. This creative business support project was established in 2005 to develop the creative industries as a route to employment for creative talent and arts professionals in Birmingham.

Co-ordinated by Birmingham City Council’s Creative Development Team and funded by the European Social Fund, the Equal II: The Last Mile programme has engaged over 400 individual artists and creative businesses and 18 partner organisations across Birmingham. The programme, and the creative industries, have made a significant contribution to Birmingham’s economy through employment and improved quality of life.

The film, Birmingham: The Creative City is testimony itself to the wealth of creative talent within the region directed by one of the region’s BAFTA award winning directors, Natasha Carlish and Dreamfinder Productions and created with partners including John Mostyn who worked with music for film debutant Bass Flo, Quench Design who titled the films DVD menu and cover artwork and Supercool Design who worked on brand and design elements.

Director Natasha Carlish said: “Nurturing and developing new creative talent in our city is something I feel extremely passionate about. So to be asked to create a film to illustrate just one area of work that is focusing on this very important issue was a real privilege. I was really inspired by the contributors to the film, their determination to success and their stories and I was really lucky to work with some great collaborators such as Endboad, Quench, John Mostyn and Bassflo’, the Audiosuite, Aquila Film and Television and Shefali Oza.”

Talking about the impact of the Equal II: The Last mile programme overall, Paul Cantrill, Head of Creative Development at Birmingham City Council said: “The creative industries are one of the key sectors of growth and expansion in the region. In partnership with 18 organisations across Birmingham, the Equal II: The Last Mile programme has created many opportunities to enrich and support the wide diversity of talent located in this unique city.”

To find out more about the amazing journeys that the beneficiaries and partners have undertaken as part of Equal II: The Last Mile visit www.creativecompass.co.uk.

Unfortunately invitations for the event are now closed. However you can watch the film online.

• Wishful Linking
  Mark McGuinness has created a new blog, Wishful Linking, to share links that may be useful and/or interesting to you as a creative professional.

  Not Brum-specific, but could be useful. via Podnosh.

  (tags: links resource)

Brum-based eccentric publishers The Eccentric City are giving away a whole pound every month to the person who can put it to the best use. What’s more, it’s totally free to enter and you could even see your idea in print. So get yer thinking caps on and you could be in the money! The deadline for this month’s proposals is 15th March.

The Big Picture are seeking artists/design teams to help with the following projects:

World Record Attempt (deadline for proposals 18th March)

Audiences Central wants to appoint an artist or artist/design team to break the world record for the largest photo mosaic in the world, as the culmination of our ‘Big Picture’ project.

The current record is 94,392 photographs covering an area of 562.85 m2 (6,058.46 ft2). Both numbers need to be surpassed in order to break the record.

MMS Upload Project (deadline for proposals 25th March)

Audiences Central wants to appoint an artist or artist/design team to produce an engaging online concept that will drive MMS photo uploads to the ‘Big Picture’ project.

The same artist/team may apply for both projects.

Digital Central are looking for 10 people from creative companies to take part in their pilot for a ‘serious game‘ which aims to teach business skills to creatives.

From the Digital Central post:

We’re running two workshop in the next month and we’d like to recruit a small number of individuals to help us test the game. Participants get their hands on a free Nintendo DS and Brain Training Game.

The workshops are on:

Wednesday 19th March (Central Birmingham)
Friday 4th April (central Birmingham)

With a launch event over lunchtime on:

Friday 25th April (Coventry)

If you are interested in attending you simply need to be an individual working in a creative industries company.

See the flyer for more info. Note that places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis and participants need to be able to attend all three of the events.

• Birmingham artist Frank Smith is a picture of promise at 79 - Birmingham Mail
  A BIRMINGHAM artist is being hailed as one of the art world’s most exciting newcomers at the age of 79.
  (tags: art artist painter)
• March listings from 7inch cinema
  All the filmic goigns-on, news of a BECTU petition to allow MAC staff to get thier jobs back after the rebuilding work and a new 7inch website in the offing.
  (tags: 7inchcinema film listings birminghamuk)
• Birmingham: Shaping the City book launch « Crowded
  “Last night was the launch of the RIBA book titled, Birmingham: Shaping the City. A hardback book showcasing various architectural projects, for which the city should be proud.” Craig Holmes was there, he took photos .
  (tags: photography books RIBA birminghamuk)

Martin Mullaney’s blog brings news of a Graffiti Art Festival, to be held in Kings Heath Park on the weekend of 15th-16th March from 12noon to 6pm each day.

From Martin’s blog:

The Festival is being jointly organised by Bishop Challoner School and In A City Arts, 21 York Road. The Festival is being funded from Community Chest Funds awarded by the Moseley and Kings Heath Ward Committee.

The Festival is part of a series of measures to move local teenagers from graffiti tagging, which upsets residents, to the legal form of graffiti art.

The tennis courts in Kings Heath Park will be filled with 75metres of 8foot high boards. The next door basketball court will have ramps for skateboarders and BMXers. There will also be food and music.

Professional graffiti artists will be on hand to show off their skills and advise younger teenage artists - young people who wish to participate will be able to come along through booking a place through the new ‘INACITY Arts’ Graffitti shop on York Road who will give them a time slot and will manage the Graffiti element of the day itself. Teenagers who are known to be taggers will not be allowed to use the paint facilites.

There will also be a marque in case of poor weather

If the event is a success, then funds will be made available for more during the Spring and Summer.

Martin also announces that there will be a full time managed legal graffiti zone behind Kings Heath Baptist Church on the High Street opening in mid-March.

In A City Arts MySpace page.

Via Podnosh.

• Noise probe has publican baffled - Birmingham Mail
  John Tighe of the Spotted Dog in Digbeth, who is currently fighting a noise abatement order, doubts whether an official report is truly independent.
  (tags: music venue live council keepdigbethvibrant birminghamuk upyerbrum)

I hate to get all serious on you in my first proper guest post, but local musician and blogger Christopher Woods has been on the telly to warn musicians and music fans to protect their hearing.

From the BBC article:

Christopher Woods, a musician from Birmingham who is training to be a sound engineer, has already, at the age of just 21, experienced damage to his hearing caused by playing and listening to loud music.

He said: “The damage is permanent. I have been told my hearing will never improve.

“Many people who have been working in the industry for a long time have a sustained level of hearing loss, and it is too late.”

Personally, I do believe that my hearing has been damaged from years of gig-going and clubbing. Does anyone think that promoters/bands should be making earplugs available at their gigs?

Hello, my name is Julia Gilbert, your Created in Birmingham guest blogger. You may also know me from such social media tools as Flickr, del.icio.us, Tumblr and Twitter.

While Pete is taking a well-deserved trip across the pond to attend SXSWi on behalf of us Brummies. I’ll be taking up the reins, so that nothing urgent gets missed.

I am not a professional ‘creative’ so have no work of my own to promote, although I am a big fan of creative activity, especially stuff happening locally. I have lived in Brum for 11 years now, so consider myself an honorary Brummie.

My own blog has suffered a severe lack of activity of late, but having attended the recent Brum Bloggers meetup, I feel a new surge of enthusiasm and hope to get it back on track soon! I also blog much more regularly on The Kitten Channel, and occasionally on BiNS (where I am the Typo Fairy, who comes and magically fixes Jon’s typos before he hits Publish or sometimes after if he’s being impatient!).

Hopefully Pete will be able to forward any important emails to me, but if you have some urgent news and you want to make sure I get it, feel free to copy me in on julia.gilbert AT gmail.com.

Just hope I don’t break anything!