James Griffin is a 22 year old graphic designer working out of this fair city. He’s running a great blog called CMYKern picking up on bits of design that catch his eye, just the sort of blog I have a large soft spot for (they’re great for adding colour to your RSS reader).
The scope of his posts aren’t limited geographically but he does seem to profile some local things every now and again, including this post on Jibbering Art’s recent Shambala exhibition where he makes an excellent point:
Being the second largest city in Britain we need to make the most of this type of event and embrace the cities creativity. I didn’t realize how much stuff there was going on in Birmingham until I moved back here after my studies. Birmingham doesn’t lack creativity, or public space, as is apparent by this exhibition, what it does lack is a medium in which to reach out to people. A medium to let people know what is going on. I stumbled across this exhibition by chance and it saddens me to think that I might not have caught up with this exhibition had it not been for a chance encounter.
Yes! Excellently said. As much as I’d like to trumpet CiB’s efforts in this area, I spend much more time meeting people who don’t read this blog than people who do. There’s much more to be done in making people aware of what’s going on.
Back in April Pete did a round-up of Birmingham creatives on Twitter. There have been many additions since then, including accounts registered in the names of various local companies, festivals, etc who are using the (free!) service in all sorts of ways.
Not all of them are being used all year round or even updated all that regularly, but you never know when someone’s going to pick up an account and start using it again.
Here are the ones I’m aware of, in no particular order:
I also have my suspicions that the person behind The Day Today (occasionally coughing out lines from the show) is a prominent fellow in the city’s media. There’s only circumstantial evidence so far, but I’m on their case.
If you’ve come across any others to add to the list then please shout em up in the comments.
This is a lovely example of how to use that free online stuff (call it blogging, Twittering, social media if you like) to drum up interest in your work.
Twitter is a micro-blogging service. Smile is a creative consultancy. Smile don’t have a blog as such but they have a Twitter account and a Smile website. They’re working on the Baskerville Project (as is Alex Hughes, whose well-timed post has just dropped into my RSS reader) and they’ve put some beautiful photos on their site and Twitterered to tell interested folk like me that they’re there.
I don’t quite know what they’re doing but I’m really interested in seeing the finished product now.
raise issues, concerns and/or promote countercultural events and activities
in and around Birmingham.
Why this has to be done as “a slap in the face to mainstream cultural developments” (which are to be demoted) isn’t yet clear but then I’m a live-and-let-live kinda guy.
There’s been little promotion so far, but targets have included Eastside Projects, Creative Republic and the council (via Artsfest). I’m looking forward to what the people behind this want to champion so will stick with it for a bit and hope the scent of crazy (excessive capitals/question marks and hiding behind a pseudonym) subsides a little.
Which makes me very pleased indeed. Gemma’s posts over at My Fierce Placement have given a great insight into the breadth of work that Fierce Earth are involved with so it’ll be interesting to see what’s posted on the Fierce Earth blog.
As well as producing the Fierce Festival, Fierce Earth provide training via Metapod (for start-up creatives) and Momentum (for producers/curators). They also offer consultancy services, having recently worked with Birmingham Jazz (amongst several others) and are soon to start working with Tindal Street Press.
It looks like they’ll also be using the blog to spread the word about interesting opportunities that they come across. Worth keeping an eye on.
Twitter is a service that’s getting a fair bit of traction in Brum right now. Like most of these things it’s as useful as you find it to be so don’t feel you’re “doing it wrong” if you don’t get it, but I’m finding it rather invaluable so you might too.
It’s a combination of things really. The format is limited to 140 characters so it meshes well with SMS texting meaning you can use it from your phone but it also works on the website and via instant messaging along with a bunch of 3rd party applications (I like Twhirl myself). At it’s core it works along the same lines as Facebook status updates and you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s not much difference, but the magic comes from the way it manages conversations and the fine tuning you can do.
Above all it’s an example of what I’m calling an “ambient stream”. Nothing on Twitter is actually that important, unless it is. You can just check in every so often and get a feel of what your community/ies are up to. If there’s anything of relevance that’s great but if not then it’s no great loss. You can spend hours communicating with people or just ignore the service for a day – it doesn’t matter.
I find it useful for random meetups. If someone “tweets” (as it’s known) that they’re in a certain cafe or pub then I might pop in if I’m in the area. Or I might not. Or if I’m looking for help or advice with something I can send out a quick message and see if anyone’s free with no obligation.
(Oh, here’s a handy video which might help. Or not.)
Anyway, if you think it might be useful have a play and see what you think. But be aware it took me a good year to get my head around what I might use it for so it might not hit you at first.
So here’s a list of some of the Birmingham-types who are on Twitter that Created in Birmingham readers might want to follow. You might also want to scan through the list of people I’m following if it takes your fancy. I’ve tried to keep this list more arts/design than tech but there are, of course, overlaps.
I should probably stop there. The a good strategy would be to find some people you already know or are connected to and look at who they’re following. And if you fancy some really unfocused ambient Twitter-noise you could subscribe to this feed of Birmingham Twitterers.
Yes, it’s all kinda pointless. That’s kinda the point.
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Okay, here’s a good case study. Immediately after writing this I’m thinking what I might do before going home today. A tweet from Kerry pops up on my computer that she’s “going to ikon to private view for ruth claxton exhibition”. Hmm. That sounds interesting. Didn’t know about that. I may well pop up there.
A meetup of people who blog in Birmingham took place last night. It went rather well I thought.
I’m keeping a roundup running on my blog, collective memory style, of links to stuff that’s come out of it including a video of the “unpanel” discussion. Many cool ideas and plans came out of the evening (the big theme was probably coworking spaces) and now we’ve got and solid and enthusiastic core community there’ll be many more of these to come.
This year’s New Generation Arts festival, run by BCU across the city, is being blogged right on the main website, which is nice to see. Along with general news it’s split into four categories with a dedicated blogger for each one:
Usually I just put these notices in the bulleted links but this one’s worth noting in it’s own post.
A few weeks back I had a chat over tea with Emily and Elise, the two, yes two, people who run the entirety of ArtsFest about how they might use blogs and that to help the ArtsFest cause. After much working through the issues doing this as a council project with all the red tape that entails I left them with some ideas and I’m delighted to say they’ve taken the plunge.
ArtsFest365 is, as the name implies, an attempt to broaden the ArtsFest mission across the whole year. It’s still early days as they find their feet but I’m liking what I see so far.
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 SXSWion 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.
The Birmingham Music Network, managed by Mark Badger of Iron Man Records and others, has a new blog inspired by Created in Birmingham apparently, right down to using the same theme. Which kinda gives the game away on how I made this blog look like it does. But I’m not bothered – it gives me the motivation to give this place a much needed overhaul at some point. And at the end of the day it’s all about the content.
CiB can’t hope to cover all the musical activity going on in the city along with everything else. The Music Network blog can try harder so if you’re of a musical creating disposition get over there and join.
The second Birmingham Bloggers Meetup is on Monday, February 18 at the Dragon Inn on Hurst St (used to be an O’Neills). That link is the Facebook event page so for those not using the evil beastie here’s the skinny.
The meet starts at 7.00 and should last for a couple of hours at least. There’s no agenda and you just need to have a blog or be interested in blogging to attend.
The pub has wifi the with the username “sponsored” and the password “service”. Look for mildly nerdy types with laptops.
So far 17 people are confirmed as attending. Which is rather a lot really when you think about it. We’re gonna need a bigger table…
The fifth and final edition of Antonio Gould’s New Media 4Casts is online covering how engaging with the blogging community can help creative types reach new customers across the world. The core example, which I’d encourage you to check out, is Emily Malcom’s Black Apple blog. Subscribe on the site or listen here:
[audio:http://www.channel4.com/4talent/media/midlands/new_media/audio/socialmedia4cast.mp3]
