Will Buckingham, the dude behind the Birmingham Words blog, is moving on but isn’t letting the site die. It’s to be taken over by the National Academy of Writing at BCU and will be run by students studying there.
Running Birmingham Words over these five years or so has been a huge amount of fun. But now that we are reaching the end of this particular funding period, it seems time to take stock. As editor, webmaster and general power-behind-the-kitchen-chair at Birmingham words, I am feeling like a change of scene, both for the good of site and also because I myself am planning to move on to other (although not necessarily greater) things.
As a result, I have been in discussion with the National Academy of Writing at Birmingham City University, and they have expressed a strong interest in stepping into the breach and adopting Birmingham Words as an on-going project for students at the Academy. This would, I hope, give a new impetus to the site, and would not only secure a longer-term future for it, but would also give allow it to continue to grow and develop.
More details on the change.
Nick Booth has organised a get together for Birmingham bloggers. Details are on Facebook but if you’re not that way inclined here’s the skinny.
Thursday, January 10, 2008, 5:30pm – 7:00pm at the Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath. Then on to the Hare and Hounds. All are welcome.
“First chance for Birmingham bloggers to get together for a yack. No formality, no agenda – we’ll have plenty to talk about!”
Stef Lewandowski’s putting down more of his crazy ideas. The latest one comes out of his work with the Big City Plan people – he reckons they should write their masterplan as a Wiki and explains how this might work at length. Fascinating stuff, and encouraging that the powers that be seem to get it.
Right, let’s see what the online-o-sphere can give us for this weekend’s giggery.
First up, there’s a group on Flickr for you to add your photos. All are welcome.
Conference
David Nikel reports and Dunc Autumn Store responds on the subject of promoters.
Robin Valk is interviewed by The Stirrer at the conference about the state of local radio. Discussion thread follows.
Andrew Dubber reports on his own panel involving six 14 year old girls being quizzed by industry figures about how they consume music. Fascinating stuff.
Opening Ceremony and Thursday night
Birmingham It’s Not Shit reviews the opening ceremony and cites the blitz spirit along with liking the multi-genre supergroup aspect.
The Hearing Aid wonders where everyone was.
Danny Smith critiques all the acts.
Friday night
David Nikel is liveblogging from the Nightingale venue.
BiNS reviews the bands by checking out their shoes.
The Hearing Aid did the Barfly.
Danny Smith catches a few bands
Saturday night
BiNS reviews the bands using graphs. I wish I’d thought of that.
Andy Pryke checks out Misty’s and Shady Bard.
Danny Smith does the rounds and seems pretty impressed.
General
BiNS offers constructive criticism and lists a few favourite things.
Anthony Herron reports on the conference and Friday night at the Sanctuary.
More to be added – leave links in the comments as usual.
The following went to this and wrote about it.
Any more?
I’m liking the Audiences Central news feed as it ably covers the sort of city and funding related stuff that’s important but which I don’t want to clog this blog up with. If it’s not already on your daily reading list subscribe now.
I don’t write this merely to plug Pete’s Birmingham Gig Guide. While I hope some of you will check it out and follow my tips I also hope some of you will take a look, decide I’m an idiot with my stupid tastes and start your own. Or something inbetween.
My thinking for starting this is two-fold. On the one hand I come across a lot of information about gigs in my daily work but I don’t have a decent venue to push them. Created in Birmingham is supposed to be impartial (something I find hard to be about music) and my personal blog has a wider reach that the West Mids so filling it with flyers would not be wise.
More pertinently this is an example of something I’ve been banging on about recently – that while comprehensive gig listings are a good idea they’re just the first stage in building the audience levels in Birmingham. What’s needed is a system of recommendation, filtering all this raw information into something useful. This can be done in a number of ways automagically (I like Last FM’s events section which recommends gigs based on your listening patterns) but I think there’s a special place for personal curatorship, if that’s even a word.
The point here is I’m not setting myself up as an authority. I’m not saying “This is the best stuff going on” or making some kind of objective statement. All I’m saying is if I had all the time and money in the world I’d go to these gigs. The events are linked by me and if, having perused my choices for a bit, you think we’ve got something in common then you’re more likely to try something new.
Now take this idea and expand it. Imagine if everyone who spends most of their time in Birmingham’s arts and music scene were to be running something along these lines, effectively curating the city into manageable packets of goodness. Ian’s 7inch listings are a good example of this. If you like the mindset behind 7 Inch Cinema then the chances are you’ll like the stuff they like. Multiply this, ooh, 100 times and even if you only follow five or so people you’ll probably see your gigging increasing exponentially.
Okay, enough with the evangelising. If you want to give this a go I’d recommend using Tumblr a low-impact blogging service that lets you grab images from websites and post them in seconds. Perfect for grabbing flyers from MySpace. I’d use it myself if I wasn’t already doing so.
As always, this isn’t a new idea. If you’re already curating Birmingham’s live scene in some way this isn’t aimed at you and feel free to leave a link to your stuff in the comments.
I’m not going to go crazy looking for them but here’s the collective memory post for Plus:
Rich Batsford went to the Friday night party.
Viggy La Q visited on the Sunday.
Charlotte Carey reports on the Michael Wolf talk.
Stef Lewandowski promises a series of posts: Moving Type Found is the first.
Any more reports, leave a comment.
Just came across Klunk.org, a collective blog that, while not explicitly Birmingham-centric appears to be based here.
This website is the place to find information about the Klunk Kollective. Which basically is a bunch of like minded folks interested in creating digital media. My name is Gary Judge (aka Arcade) and I am the founding member of the community and the administrator of the website.
This website is the virtual hub of the community is a place where interested parties can stay connected, swap ideas, promote themselves and sell some of their wares. Collectively Klunk aims to become an authority in the digital arts medium enabling its members access to information and facilities they would have difficulty getting on their own.
We are currently particularly interested in graphic designers, video artists and musicians who like to play live joining the ranks…So if you would like to join in please get in touch explaining what you do and what you think you can bring to the table.
A recent post is entitled Not much going on in Brum which I found kinda amusing. My calendar is rammed right now with more events that I can physically go to, but then I’ve spent the last year throwing myself right into the middle of everything. A couple of years back I might have thought the same.
On the one hand I’d love for people to know all the stuff without having to work too hard at it, but on the other hand if you want to find the really interesting things you really should expect to work for it. Is there a middle ground?
(Unfortunately Klunk require registration to comment, which is fair enough but not something I would recommend if you want to get the wider debate going.)
It seems there were a fair number of bloggers at the Pram / Modified Toy Orchestra / Shady Bard gig at the Town Hall on Monday if the Going Deaf For A Fortnight project is anything to go by. If you reviewed the gig leave a comment on that post and it’ll be included.
Dunc of promoters The Autumn Store has started a lovely little blog that makes me very happy. Already he’s covering all the bases I like to see. Travelling to Bristol to a mini-fest in the wonderful Here shop there, Reviewing a local gig and, best of all, talking about the trials of putting up posters. I have high hopes for this.
Here’s the main Autumn Store site and their next gig is on November 3rd at the Island Bar.
Much activity in blogland at the moment.
Apropos of nothing, a fantastically odd post from Richard McComb on pop videos. Good to see the Post are starting to understand what their blog is for!
