Created in Birmingham

It’s nice when you ask for something and then it turns up, even if it takes a while. Four years ago I (Pete, btw) put in a request to the interwebs for a “searchable small gigs database feed site thingy” which I could throw a bunch of criteria into and be given regular updates of stuff happening in my area that might be of interest - a middle ground between my usual sources and the useless torrent of information that most what’s on sites provide. There have been a few attempts since then but Live Brum is the first that’s gotten me slightly excited.

Partly this is the pedigree. It’s run by Josh Hart who recently left Made Media to concentrate on this project. Made, as you may know, built the fantastic Town Hall Symphony Hall website and Live Brum looks to be applying the ideas there to the rest of the city’s venues.

The other part is that its incredibly flexible. You can filter the information in numerous ways and subscribe to those results with ease. Stuff like subscribing to Rock and Pop at the Hare and Hounds is nice enough but being able to subscribe to a search for a band or any keyword is quite lovely.

Lots of other neat things too, such as embedding the event in your blog or website in the same way as YouTube videos, the magic being if the details change on Live Brum those changes will be reflected on your site too. Think of them as dynamic flyers. Here’s one:

And, with my tech-head on, the way Josh has built the site lets him add all sorts of new and innovative features and integration with other social networking sites with ease. This is still early days for the site.

The trick, of course, is making sure the site has all the correct information. From chatting to Josh the other week he’s pretty sure he’s got this sorted out in a sustainable way, partly by ensuring promoters and venues can take their information back out in a variety of ways making it worth their while putting it in. I think there might be a bit of a steep learning curve for some of them here but, frankly, it’s about time the live music industry caught up with the 21st century. And, of course, if this site works then it will put Birmingham miles ahead of most other cities.

So, in short, cautious big grins all round. Nice one.

On May 1st Pete Ashton, being myself, will stop running Created in Birmingham. It’ll be run by Chris Unitt.

First the admin stuff.

If you’re not already doing so, please start sending email to createdinbirmingham [at] gmail.com so that they go directly to Chris.

I’ll still be around as a kind of “blogger emeritus” making sure the handover is smooth. I might even post occasionally but not too much.

Now for the why.

If you’ve been following the blog for a while you’ll have noticed a slowdown in posting recently compared to the heady days of last year. The blunt truth is I’m not as interested in running this blog as I was. The blog worked as a document of someone who knew nothing about how the arts and culture as they explored that world and figured it out. After a year I’m not on that journey anymore. That’s not to say I’ve figured it all out - that would be impossible - but I’m thinking about other things. In short, I’m not the right person to run this site anymore.

But the process of blogging here has been tremendous. I owe this site a lot as it’s given me access to people and ideas I wouldn’t have had otherwise. If I’ve become anything of worth this last year it’s thanks to having a platform on Created in Birmingham to do so. So it makes sense to make that platform available to others.

In discussions with co-founder Stef Lewandowski and Helga Henry of Creative Republic (who source the £500 per month funding for this blog) we came up with a number of ideas for how to take CiB forward most of which were kinda complex and needed some serious planning. Meanwhile the blog was in danger of getting less relevant as I posted less and less. So a decision was made. We’d get someone to take over full time for 6 months. After than we’ll figure out where it goes next.

Chris is, I think, relatively new on the Birmingham arts scene. He’s comfortable with the blogging medium and has started exploring the arts world with his own blog and blogging work for Fierce and New Generation Arts. In other words he’s very similar to how I was last January. He’ll be more focussed on digging out relatively obscure pockets of activity in the city and pushing them on the blog as well as continuing to link to all the relevant online activity - the sort of things I should have been doing but haven’t lately.

More importantly, he’ll be running the blog the way he thinks it should be run. One of the nice things about running CiB is I’ve been making it up as I go along, trying new angles and ways of reporting on the city within a loose remit. While I’d imagine he’ll use what I’ve been doing as an initial template he’s free to tear it all up and start again if he sees fit. The blog format is flexible like that and it’s his to make his own, just as I did.

And then, after 6 months or so, we’ll see where we are. Maybe Chris will be ready to hand over to someone else. Maybe he’ll have set up a team of people with him as editor. Maybe he’ll have done something completely different. All that matters is it’ll be a weblog that links up Birmingham’s artistic and creative communities and inspires others to do the same.

As for myself, this frees me up to take what I’ve learned this last year or so into new places, hopefully exciting and relevant ones. You can, if you want, follow my progress at peteashton.com.

And, needless to say, thanks to you all for providing the reason and subject matter for this blog to have worked as well as it has. I am eternally grateful.

And so, once we’ve removed all the references to me on the site and replaced them with him, take it away Chris!

• Lots of filmnights going on
  7 Inch Cinema round up the local activity.
  (tags: cinema film 7inch)
• Experiments with retail
  Andrew Dubber introduces Liquid Crunch, his new online music shop where you can “return” the mp3 if you don’t like it for a full refund.
  (tags: dubber liquidcrunch music internet mp3)

News to me here is that the Moselely Folk Festival is a three day event this year, starting at 3pm on the Friday. Other than that it looks to be the usual mix of old school folkie classics, nu-folk (or whatever) and quirky stuff. Nice!

Here’s the lineup and tickets are on sale with a weekend pass at £55.

via RussL

• 27 Thoughts On Blogging For The Artist
  Useful. I’d agree with all of this.
  (tags: blogging tips artist via:jonbounds)
• 383news - » Broadstreet.co.uk Launches
  John383 talks us through the new Broad Street website which has a lot of really cool features on it that you wouldn’t normally expect for a Business Improvement District site.
  (tags: 383 internet website design)
• Jazz and hip-hop star Soweto Kinch joins Creative Networks
  “Birmingham’s multi award-winning jazz and hip-hop musician, Soweto Kinch, will join this month’s Creative Networks event, to explore the resurgence of live music and its positive impact on local communities.”
  (tags: events sowetokinch music networking live community)

Here’s the “outline design” for the new BIAD campus in Eastside, as revealed on Simon Howes’ Eastside blog.

Millennium Point is in the foreground and the red blob is Curzon St Station. Simon also has a top down map which pleasingly shows how much open space they’re planning to leave, which is nice as I like the amount of green currently there.

A number of you have been contacting me over this appearing on Google:

In short, nothing to worry about, it’s all in hand, just waiting for Google to process the site before removing the warning.

In long, we were running WordPress 2.2 which was vulnerable to hacking and someone hacked it. Nothing major, just a bit of link spam. We’ve upgraded to the more secure WordPress 2.5 and cleared away all the spam so all it right with the world.

• Brum Guide - it’s wiki’d
  Jon Bounds has started at wiki for Birmingham with some rather neat mapping involved. Like Wikipedia only different. And about Brum. Get adding stuff.
  (tags: wiki internet birmingham jonbounds)
• Catherine Bray’s Weblog
  Another journalist with a blog, this time from the 4Talent stable. She’s finding her feet so go say hi. (And do scroll down to the excellent Torchwood review!)
  (tags: blogging catbray 4talent)
• Zuki - Proof
  A blog by the artist Edward Bond. I don’t like to give value judgments in these links but this is a really fantastic blog. Read it now.
  (tags: via:bins blogs art)
• Youmeo - “The ultimate UK social network”
  Interesting looking service out of Coventry that aparently has 500,000 users
  (tags: youmeo internet)

7inch Cinema have a new website! And it’s very bloggy by the looks of things with RSS and everything. Worth checking out the other sections too as they’ve crammed it full of some really good writings.

• Opportunities for media firms at Channel 4’s digital hub - Birmingham Post
  “The race is on for West Midland businesses to cash in on a new Channel 4 digital hub in Birmingham, after it was revealed the broadcaster will soon launch similar centres across the country.”
  (tags: channel4 screenwm birminghampost media digital)
• Birmingham: maligned and misunderstood
  Catherine O’Flynn reflects on the Art of Ideas talks of last week.
  (tags: birmingham artofideas catherineoflynn)
• Wonderleague Shoppe
  New online store for Bunny Bissoux
  (tags: bunnybissoux shop internet)
• BMAGiC
  is “Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery’s online database. It gives you information about the objects in our collection. Every month we add more images of objects for you to look at.”
  (tags: bmag bmagic art gallery online)
• Handsworth Self Portraits
  Taken in the summer 1979.
  (tags: photography handsworth)
• Master classes
  A 2006 article by Melvin Bragg on the launch of Birmingham’s National Academy of Writing.
  (tags: writing literature melvinbragg bcu education)
• Eight Eyed Sea Bass: Dolby Digital
  “EESB are currently the only visual and sound facility in the Midlands region to be awarded this license by Dolby, direct from America.”
  (tags: eesb dolby audiovisual film visual sound)
• Woom
  Autumn Dunc bigs up the gallery in Hockley as a potential gig space. Hmm…
  (tags: woom gallery gigs)

The next Pub Conversations conversation, where an artist and a guest of their choice discuss stuff in a pub, takes place on April 29th in the Lamp Tavern on Barford St. Melanie Carvalho and Ross Birrell are the speakers and there are usually questions from the audience. Free but spaces are limited so email selfservice [at] hotmail.co.uk to book. And while the recording will be podcasted the Lamp is a lovely little pub.

Fused inform of an exhibition by local artist Gail Troth taking place at Three White Walls from April 24th - 3rd June.

Is this truly a participatory Universe?

Who makes up your world view are they the poets, writers, and philosophers who give us visions people gifted with some exceptional ability to sense and express the dream that is any age?

Or… Do you consider that each of us by the nature of our consciousness and the need of that consciousness to integrate its experience is a visionary on at least some small scale?

Pete James, custodian of Birmingham Library’s legendary photographic archive, sends through info of From Canton to Guangzhou, part of Birmingham’s China Festival running through this year at BM&AG.

This exhibition presents the work of two photographers who have made very different visual records of Birmingham’s Sister City in China. It contrasts the photographs of buildings and street scenes taken in the historic city of Canton (now known as Guangzhou) by the European photographer Felice Beato in 1860 with those of the contemporary Chinese photographer Xu Peiwu (1997 - 2007), whose work witnesses the dynamic change during the urbanization and rise of Pearl River New City in Guangzhou.

The exhibition runs from 3 May to 10 August at BMAG with the official opening on Thursday 8 May. Invite only, by the looks of things, so if you wanna go contact kath.leahy [at] birmingham.gov.uk, tel: 0121 303 8775.

Probably more interesting than hobnobbing in the Round Room is a seminar in the afternoon of the 8th at 2pm at BIAD, Margaret Street with Pete, Dr Jiang Jiehong (Director, Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, BIAD), photographer Xu Peiwu and Cheng-Hsuan Kao (PhD Candidate, Kings College London). Here’s the flyer (PDF).

• Bearos is 10 Years Young!
  Dunc Autumnstore on the Birmingham record label that started with the seminal zine “We Brought Our Friends” and carried on for a decade.
  (tags: bearos music history)
• Building sites | Birmingham: It’s Not Shit
  Jon Bounds rounds up some new blogs from, of, and about Birmingham.
  (tags: blogs blogging)

• Scott Johnston
  Interviewed by Swanshurst School students
  (tags: film scottjohnston fierce)

• Carnival Connect
  “A network for artists and producers in the West Midlands to promote work, share ideas and information and to recieve training and networking opportunities. It is also a source of information for anyone wanting more information about Carnival Arts.”
  (tags: via:dlog carnival)
• Your Conscience
  A blog by one of the people involved in Wunderkammer. I think. It’s all a bit obfuscated. ;)
  (tags: blogs art wunderkammer)
• Eastside Projects launches 2nd May
  D’log gathers the links for this interesting new gallery space in Digbeth.
  (tags: eastsideprojects digbeth eastside gallery art)

These little images are rather tantalizing…

Coinciding with her exhibition at Ikon, a stunning new series of works by Ruth Claxton will be shown at The Barber Institute of Fine Arts from 2 April – 6 July. Using postcards of works from the Barber’s permanent collection, Claxton has manipulated the top layer of the cards to raise questions about the nature of representation and our relationship with the object.

Here’s the winners of the My Fierce Festival public vote competition thingy:

Theatres
Whisper (Proto-type Theater)
Playing The Victim (Switch)
I Told It To A Mannequin (Francesca Millican Slater & Lindsey Price)

Public Spaces
The Fête Encounter (Various Artists)
B1 Labyrinths (Needless Allies)
It Sank With The Shape Of Us (Victoria Pratt)

Unconventional Spaces
The Moment Before We Kiss (Michael David Jones)
The Divine Edgar (Scott Johnston/Film Ficciones)
Foot Washing Foor The Sole (Adrian Howells)

These will take place over the May Bank Holiday weekend, 23 to 26 May, as part of the Fierce Festival.

Birmingham invaded by alien soft toys using Twitter. And that’s just the start…

A very last minute notice from Sandra at Friction Arts of an event that seems to have parallels with their Reality Estate shindig.

This show is the result of a project where Director Cees Bavius & writer Pieta Bot set up ‘shop’ in a disused supermarket in an urban district of Rotterdam… The performers for this show ranged from 14 to 83 years old and their here to share their stories! For some of our visitors this is their first trip outside of Holland so please join us to welcome them and see the show.

That’s tomorrow.