Created in Birmingham

Feed in Millennium Point are running what they call a Contact Night with Vanley Burke aimed at Matthew Boulton students but open to the public.

He will be discussing his background, how he became a photographer and his role in documenting black culture and british people for the last 40 years.

Tickets are £3.50 and it takes place on Wednesday 16th April, 6:45 - 7:30pm.

The Making the Transition seminar is all about how to make the transition into work or employment within the music industry. Speaking at the seminar will be a selected number of key local music industry figures. They will share with you their stories and experiences within the music industry. Their knowledge will give you an insight into working within the music industry and will help you to make decisions to further your career, increase your own employability and create new work opportunities.

Speakers include Gavin Monaghan, Joe Robertson, Robin Valk, Clare Edwards, Andrew Dubber, Jon Cotton and John Mostyn. The day-long event is free (booking advised) and takes place at South Birmingham College on Saturday March 8th.

Full details in this PDF (4.7MB) or at the MySpace.

You probably know Paul Murphy as the poet in the hat who joins The Destroyers on stage to rant about a fascist regime and have an awareness that he’s also a singer / songwriter of some repute and well respected within the city. Or at least that’s where I was regarding him. So it was nice to discover this movie of him talking about the c21Vox project:

I don’t know how old this is or the exact status of the project (though I’m sure someone will elucidate in the comment, hint hint…) but it’s great to hear Paul talk about this work. If proof were needed that he’s a key figure on the scene with a sharp mind and a good heart, this should suffice.

Nu Century Arts is an organisation established in 2000 and based in Handsworth who are “dedicated to the development and promotion of performing arts in the African-Caribbean community”

The company’s work encompasses a professional theatre group, organising a regular live music event ‘The Live Box’, literature in the shape of ‘Wired Up’ magazine and a broad range of education work, from jazz workshops, to youth theatre and group trips as far a field as South Africa and the United States.

Given Birmingham’s location within the United Kingdom and the breadth of talent within the city, Nu Century Arts has maintained that its artists should not be marginal, but play a central role in the cultural direction of the country; have access to the fullest possible range of skills; and produce the highest quality work. Moreover, it seeks to provide a consistent base and a framework promoting new African Caribbean work, irrespective of political/ cultural trends and fashions.

The do work in a variety of venues including The Drum and The Rep and the artists listed on their site include Soweto Kinch, Julie Dexter, Eska Mtungwazi and Shabaka Hutchins.

Awareness came to me from Osahon Orchard who is running a free 10 week acting course for over 19 year olds as a “way to regain confidence as well as get back into performing” at 16 Grosevenor Road B20 3NP. Contact him on osahon.orchard [at] ntlworld.com for details.

BIAD has a new website and rather than just tell you that I thought it’d be nice to reproduce a few of the images from their gallery there.

Sonia Poli - BA Visual Communication

Helen Freeman - BA Fashion and Textiles

Francesca Prowse - BA Visual Communication

Hat tip to D’log

[Update: My mistake - it’s running until Feb 29th.]

Model Cities was a neat sounding exhibition currently on at M.A.D.E. of photos from the Model Buildings project run by Stans Cafe at St Albans School last year before it was rebuilt. The children were encouraged to imagine “that small details of the old school were architectural features of the new school” using tiny people.

The exhibition finished yesterday (oops) but is on until Feb 29th (Here’s the flyer) and you can find out more about the Delicate Balance collection of seventeen projects here.

I also love this little film they made at the end, so much so I uploaded it to YouTube on their behalf. ;)

A brief update to the Margaret Street closure blogged about here in April. A comment left on that post from BIAD Fine Art course director John Wigley implies it won’t go ahead quite as planned. If I may quote:

To reassure everybody and to end speculation, at present, as far as we are concerned working in the building, they are not going to sell the Margaret Street site. Certainly it has been a marketing and publicity blunder of spectacular proportions, seemingly unaware of how strong the voice would be in protest, and how much the building is valued as a purpose built centre of creative practice. It would seem, however, that sense has prevailed.

Yay!

The big drama school thing in Eastside has been officially announced. Here’s some coverage:

Government News Network
BBC News
Education Guardian
The Stirrer
The Post will presumably have something later next week, as is their way.

Anyone thinking of doing an MA in History, Film and Television at Birmingham Uni should pop along to the open day on Wednesday December 5th. Details on this poster.

BIAD, the Birmingham Institute for Art and Design at UCE BCU, has a new website.

There are a couple of nice things about this. The most obvious is the extensive gallery of graduates’ work which serves to show off the grads and their alma mata, though links to their sites would make it really useful. The second is the news page which appears to cover a whole range of activities connected to the institute from colaborations with IKON, public lectures and events and new publications by staff.

While it might not be obvious, this new site is pretty much a blog. Indeed, it’s using Drupal, a powerful free content management system that understands the best things about weblogs. This also means they have RSS feeds - a first for an academic website that’s ostensibly all about the PR. No idea who’s behind it all but, compared to the parent site it’s a breath of fresh air.

via Nikki Pugh

Drumvoice is “a Birmingham based company that brings exciting hands-on West African drumming, singing and dance workshops to education and the community”. Lead by Sarah Westwood they do projects in schools and arts organisations as well as running a adult group, Drumvoice Orchestra, who perform at events like Artsfest..

Alongside this is The Rhythm Business which brings drumming into the corporate environment for team building exercises.

The rather useful looking Skyscraper City forum prints the email sent out by UCE’s Vice Chancellor David Tidmarsh telling staff and students that he’s soon to be BCU’s Vice Chancellor. I won’t post the whole thing but here’s an exceprt or two that caught my eye.

Through our research and consultation exercise, we have confirmed that by using the shorter, stronger title of Birmingham City University, we will have a more recognisable and powerful name that will give us a much stronger identity in the market place. We believe that we will all benefit if the University is more easily recognised for its achievements by using a shorter, stronger name.

This is a name that clearly identifies both our status and location in Birmingham and also chimes well with our mission to be a centre of excellence in learning, creativity and enterprise, promoting economic, social and cultural well being.

[…]

As one of our many ambitions, our long-term estates plan will create a major new city centre campus at Eastside, near Millennium Point and we are committed to further investment at Perry Barr and Westbourne Road, to improve and enhance facilities at both campuses.

Thanks to Simon Howes for the tipoff

The Solihull College Fine Art Degree show for 2007 runs from June 9th to 21st from 10am - 4pm (noon on Saturdays) with a Private View on the 8th at 6-8pm. The Fine Art degree at Solihull has something of a reputation apparently with many graduates going on to professional arts careers so this should be worth checking out at the Blossomfield Campus (map). Phone 0121 678 7001/2 for more details.

Any other degree shows happening in the area (other than New Generation Arts which I’ve got covered) do let me know.

Hi8tus are looking at the feasibility of setting up and running a Comic School cementing their work in supporting comic book illustration through the Stripsearch program.

It’s worth emphasizing that this is at a very early stage - the tender for the feasibility study has only just gone out - but it’s worth noting as there isn’t anything like this in this country, though it was tried in London in the late 80s and early 90s. In the US there are a number of classes and departments at colleges and schools for comic art so it’s not necessarily a pipe dream.

If anyone does take up the tender and wants some contacts for those who’ve tried it before do get in touch as I can probably help you. (Your first port of call will probably be Paul Gravett.)

Here’s the consultancy brief (PDF).

Out Of Hours is a networking and social event for people working in the culture sector that tales place at the Light House in Wolverhampton. The next one is Monday March 5th, 5.30-7.30pm

This evening we’re overflowing with interesting things to see, watch and listen to. There will be a screening of 7 Inch Cinema’s SloMo challenge, which ran for the first time last summer and will include clips from the original festival that inspired it. The challenge: to make a one-minute film using slow-motion in some way. The screening will be attended by a number of the filmmakers who will introduce their work.

This evening also marks the opening of the exhibition from Malooma, AKA Glen Tapper. Glen’s work is influenced by street graffiti, clean graphic design and is crammed with pop culture references. He depicts images of iconic film stars, using bold colours, text and strong lines. Finally, we are also welcoming Geraldine McCullagh and Jo Willis from BBC Big Screen who are on the look out for films and will give a short talk about the philosophy behind the Big Screen and the sort of content that they are looking for.

In addition we’ll have our resident VJs, Cinecull, a Wolverhampton based video production company, who provide an exclusive live audio-visual backdrop for Out of Hours.

Entrance is free. Contact plot@light-house.co.uk for further details.

Tomorrow has a Postgrad Open Day at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD) covering the departments of Visual Communication, Architecture, Fashion, Textiles and 3D Design, Theoretical and Historical Studies, Media and Communications and Art.

This has been your absurdly-short-notice post for today. via D’log.