Christopher Woods reports on the Lost And Found exhibition that took place on the Festival of Xtreme Building site last month.
Put on by two UCE graduates, Natalie Wilson and Katharine Kavanagh (under the moniker of Kipipeo arts), the exhibition’s sole purpose was to bring to the surface all those things people discard or lose, and give you a little food for thought, to take a minute to just wonder the situations and circumstances that resulted in the items being where they were. All of the items were tagged with the date of, and where, they were found (or discovered), plus any backstory if there was any.
Christopher’s post continues and here’s his montage of some of the objects. Click through for links to the individual photos.
The Going Deaf For A Fortnight fortnight has started with a review by Russ L of a night at the Flapper. If you’re going to any gigs over the next 14 days, review them on your blog and leave a note on the GDFAF blog.
On Friday I spent a bit of time with the Town Hall Symphony Hall people talking about how they might approach their forthcoming weblog. Since this would probably be useful for other similar organisations looking to blog I figured I might as well publish my notes on my blog. I should also add that I’m available for this kind of consultancy work.
And to stop this being a blatant piece of self promotion, John Bounds has written a similar piece from his own perspective.
Conservative councilor Deirdre Alden blogs about the re-opening of Town Hall in her usual inimitable style, as does The Stirrer.
Sarah Ingram is writing a blog “tracking the progress of my BA course in Graphic Design at Birmingham City University.”
Joanna Geary, journalist at the Post, has started blogging and not as part of the Post’s official excursion into the medium. The CiB hook is she often writes about media and creative industries for the paper and her third post should be of interest.
The conversation pattern is as follows:
Person A is pouring their heart and soul into project/business/event B. Person A is being supported in this endevour by one or more of the bodies in the city that are responsible for delivering funding/support.
However, during this process person A discovers something they believe is a flaw in the system. It may be something political, or something about the way the thing is structured that means it’s making it difficult to achieve goal B.
Now, person A wants to do something about removing that barrier, but knows that confronting the organisation directly will, in all likelihood, not only jeopardise funding/help from that organisation but potentially blacklist them with the others as well. This is because, in this city, there seems to be a dislike of those that speak out in opposition to the way things are run and an unspoken code that these bodies will ALWAYS publicly support each other (even if if privately they have difficulties working together).
So, as is always the case, person A keeps quiet, doesn’t criticise and they compromise and jump the hoops that the funders/enablers want them to. Or, alternatively, B sinks without a trace.
Read it all.
Rich Batsford reflects on putting on a self-promoted solo concert at the Old Joint Stock
Bobbie Gardner, the Community Musician, has a new weblog. Same spirit as the old one but with extra bells.
Illustrator and designer Jane Anderson has a weblog.
Well, would you look at that. The Custard Factory has a new website and it appears to be based around a blog! Who saw that coming? In fact it appears to be pretty influenced by this very blog in tone and style. Hmm…
Yes, I’m running it, but I’d be a fool not to plug it here. Expect a little bit of cross posting as I struggle to decide which blog gets what but it should all balance out in the end.
(And for the record I think I’ve hit my quota limit for blog running. Happy to help out with advice though.)
Russ L’s Lots Of Things To See And Do In The West Midlands: October 2007 is up. As ever, you think it’s going to be a load of heavy metal and boxing and he goes and surprises you. Some good stuff that slipped past my radar in here.
Russ L’s Artsfest report is the most comprehensive and link-heavy I’ve seen so far.
Paul Bradshaw’s posts on how journalism can adapt to the online world are, I think, relevant to non-journalists who want to use blogs, etc to get their message out there. So go read The News Diamond and How a blog can put you on the road to success, parse them for your sector, learn and apply. These articles are CiB approved reading.
Mark Badger’s Iron Man Records blog is on something of a roll at the moment with loads of posts on the subjects surrounding his world. This one on the Music Network should be of interest.
If you’re at all interested in what this blog (along with Jon at BiNS, Nick at Podnosh, Adrian at The Stirrer and others) is trying to achieve you really should put aside half an hour to listen to this interview with Simon St. Laurent who’s been running an ultra-local blog, Living in Dryden, in the States for a number of years.
A lot of what he says rings true with my experiences, especially the notion of taking information that’s already being spread around in emails and word of mouth and widening the scope of the conversation, along with the trials of explaining to people how incredibly easy it all is. If you don’t have half an hour the good stuff in in the first 10 minutes.
[audio:http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/itconversations-1849.mp3]
Related to this, Podnosh Nick is planning a meetup of some description soon. Nothing confirmed yet but if you’re on Facebook keep tabs on the Birmingham Bloggers group.
Thanks to Jez for the heads up.
