Created in Birmingham

Festival season is starting with all manner of events happening between now and the end of August. Here’s what I know about, if I’ve missed anything then perhaps you could mention it in the comments.

In chronological order:

International Dance Festival Birmingham
Now - 25 May. Various venues in Birmingham.
A month of world class live performance from every corner of the globe with performers from Taiwan, Australia, South Africa, Cuba and Russia.

Fierce Festival
21 May to 1 June. Various venues in Birmingham and West Mids.
In it’s 11th year, the award-winning contemporary performing arts festival has let the audience curate a sizeable chunk of the line-up.

Birmingham Pride 2008
24 - 25 May. Hurst Street and surrounding roads.
The roads will be closed to traffic for street performers and dancers, market stalls and a fairground. The main stage will feature Samantha Mumba and Gabrielle among many others.

The Flyover Show
31 May. Hockley flyover.
A free event to celebrate the very best from the city’s urban communities and reclaim derelict spaces taking place in a ‘forgotten corner of Birmingham’. Line-up includes Soweto Kinch, Bashy and Ty.

BASS Festival 2008
31 May - 29 June. Various venues Birmingham and West Mids.
Short for British Art and Street Sounds, the BASS Festival is a month-long festival celebrating the best of the streets around this year’s theme ‘the elements of hip hop’.

New Generation Arts Festival
5 - 20 June. Various venues in Birmingham.
Focusing on developing and showcasing up and coming graduates alongside rising artistic stars who have studied or live in Birmingham.

Integra
5 - 7 June. Various venues in Birmingham.
The goal of the festival is “to create a software-based open source environment for composing and performing music with live electronics, and test it in real life thanks to new commissions and a big modernisation effort of existing repertoire using obsolete technology.”

Pritchattsbury Free Music Festival 2008
7 June, Pritchatts Park, Edgbaston.
A free student festival held to celebrate the end of exams and is open for anyone. Line-up includes The Holloways, Plan B, Envy & Other Sins, The Anomalies.

Supersonic
11 - 13 July. Custard Factory, Digbeth.
A musical melting pot described as ‘the nexus where metal, folk and noise meet’. Last year it was also described as ‘Festival of the year’ by Plan B magazine. The line-up includes Battles, Harmonia, Efterklang and Julian Cope.

Moseley Folk Festival
29 - 31 August. Moseley Park.
Featuring a selection of the finest in traditional and contemporary folk, the headliners this year are Morcheeba, Jose Gonzalez and Seth Lakeman.

CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, are partnering with Bham City Council for what is apparently “the world’s first climate change festival” between 31 May and 8 June.

They’re promising “no guilt and no finger wagging. This will be collective, dramatic and fun”. CABE’s thinking is that the environmental crisis is largely a planning and design crisis and so the festival will explore how cities are planned, designed and used.

Over to the organisers:

Over nine days, the Climate Change Festival will help you see your city with new eyes. Exhibitions and debates, clay modelling, parkour (free running), street theatre, ideas and fun for anyone aged 9-90. Come along!

You can check out the Climate Change Festival website or thrill to the Council’s own brand of wild enthusiasm but all the action seems to be on Facebook so far. CABE have a fair amount of info too but there are no listings yet (that I can find).

The line-up for this year’s Fierce! Festival, the international performing arts festival, has been announced and can be seen on the events page of their newly updated website. You may recall that a significant number of acts were chosen via a public vote and these have now been programmed into the wider festival too.

The opening party will be held at The Vaults on 16 May and promises burlesque cabaret from Miss High Leg Kick and Fierce’s favourite DJ Joe Egg. Entry is free but you’ll need to RSVP as capacity is limited.

In the lead up to the festival there are a few events being held on Wednesdays at 2pm at BIAD:

• On 30 April Breathe will be creating “sensory performative experiences in interactive environmments” with The Other Way Works “daring and remarkable theatre that draws the audience into the very heart of the experience.
• On Wednesday 7 May at the same time and place it’s the turn of Harminder Singh Judge and Hancock & Kelly Live.
• Finally, on 14 May it’s the conceptual artist Yara El-Shirbini and trans-disciplinary artist Jiva Parthipan who will take the stage.

I’ll go into the specifics of this year’s festival a little nearer the time but the main programme runs from 21 to 31 May, with a bewildering array of shows and events in that time.