Created in Birmingham

Some of this might not be hugely relevant/interesting to most but hopefully it’ll be useful to someone out there.  Interestingness will be resumed shortly.

Arts & Business Awards

“Nominations are now open for the 30th Arts & Business Awards, designed to celebrate excellence in the field of arts and business partnerships and sponsorships”
Deadline for nominations is 30 May. Further information might be on their website but, frankly, if they want to deliberately hide it away I’m not going to look for it.

Open 08 West Midands

“Open is a biennial collaboration between Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and Wolverhampton Art Gallery, celebrating the vibrant talent of the art scene in the West Midlands and allowing regional artists the chance to show their work at these prestigious venues.”
The deadline is 28 May 2008. Follow the link for application packs and further details.

Short Cuts Film submissions for ArtsFest

D’log reports that the Short Cuts Film programmers are seeking submissions but warns that the deadline for seeing and agreeing films is tight. I’ve not found any further useful information on this but D’log has the contact details so I’d start there if you’re interested. (Via D’log).

BSCI grant funding suspended

The budgets for Birmingham City Council’s feasibility and creative space grants is now fully committed. If this affects you, or you’d not heard of these grants and are interested then bookmark this page and check back in June. Appreciative nod to Simon Gray.

Changes to Grants for the Arts

From 20 May 2008 several changes to the programme run by Arts Council England will come into effect. Further info on the Arts Council England website. (Via Audiences Central News).

The première of the short film ‘Birmingham: The Creative City’ will be held at the Electric Cinema tomorrow afternoon.

From the Press Release:

Birmingham City Council Creative Development Team and Audiences Central are premiering a short film directed by BAFTA Award Winning Director Natasha Carlish on Tuesday 11 March at The Electric Cinema, Birmingham. Birmingham: The Creative City celebrates some of the personal stories and amazing work delivered as part of the Equal II: The Last Mile programme in Birmingham over the last two years.

The Equal II: The Last Mile programme was established to develop the Creative Industries as a route to employment in Birmingham. This creative business support project was established in 2005 to develop the creative industries as a route to employment for creative talent and arts professionals in Birmingham.

Co-ordinated by Birmingham City Council’s Creative Development Team and funded by the European Social Fund, the Equal II: The Last Mile programme has engaged over 400 individual artists and creative businesses and 18 partner organisations across Birmingham. The programme, and the creative industries, have made a significant contribution to Birmingham’s economy through employment and improved quality of life.

The film, Birmingham: The Creative City is testimony itself to the wealth of creative talent within the region directed by one of the region’s BAFTA award winning directors, Natasha Carlish and Dreamfinder Productions and created with partners including John Mostyn who worked with music for film debutant Bass Flo, Quench Design who titled the films DVD menu and cover artwork and Supercool Design who worked on brand and design elements.

Director Natasha Carlish said: “Nurturing and developing new creative talent in our city is something I feel extremely passionate about. So to be asked to create a film to illustrate just one area of work that is focusing on this very important issue was a real privilege. I was really inspired by the contributors to the film, their determination to success and their stories and I was really lucky to work with some great collaborators such as Endboad, Quench, John Mostyn and Bassflo’, the Audiosuite, Aquila Film and Television and Shefali Oza.”

Talking about the impact of the Equal II: The Last mile programme overall, Paul Cantrill, Head of Creative Development at Birmingham City Council said: “The creative industries are one of the key sectors of growth and expansion in the region. In partnership with 18 organisations across Birmingham, the Equal II: The Last Mile programme has created many opportunities to enrich and support the wide diversity of talent located in this unique city.”

To find out more about the amazing journeys that the beneficiaries and partners have undertaken as part of Equal II: The Last Mile visit www.creativecompass.co.uk.

Unfortunately invitations for the event are now closed. However you can watch the film online.

This is great. Kerry of Fused magazine explains the steps taken to put on a showcase of Birmingham bands at SxSW in Texas with the usual mix of serendipity, funding applications and hard work. Invaluable reading.

The Stirrer has a short interview with Sally Luton of the Arts Council where she lays out the conditions for Birmingham Opera Company to continue to receive funding. Here’s the meat:

“The issue has never been, ‘is this good quality work?’ The issue is that the work happens infrequently, so how can we ensure that a company which claims to be about community opera actually is part of the community.

“Each of their projects tends be a one-off which is very exciting, but what happens afterwards? Can we have a programme of year round activities, maybe by developing partnerships? That’s the issue.

D’log has the full list of Arts Council cuts in the West Midlands and rather than repeat them here I’ll send you over to him. He’s got links to them all and commentary.

Actually, his commentary on Midwest was taken to task by Nikki Pugh who gives a nice account of her experiences with the organisation.

In related news it seems the Birmingham Opera Company have been saved. Sort of. According to The Stirrer there’s no money for this financial year but funding for 2009-10 has been “reserved”. General manager Jean Nicholson is quoted as saying “Hopefully, this can be the start of a new relationship with them. We’ll have the chance to restate what we can do, they can tell us what they expect from us, and hopefully we can meet somewhere in the middle.”

I’ve not been completely on the ball in keeping up with the Arts Council shenanigans but D’log has so if you need to catch up go read him.

It’s always a good thing to come across a contrary view when the prevailing opinion seems pretty unanimous, especially when that view is well thought out and comes from the grass roots.

Paul Burns reckons many of the funding decisions made by the Arts Council might be correct and explains at length. Go read the whole thing but in summary:

• It’s been managed really badly. This episode illustrates some serious problems with the way the Arts Council operates. “Many of these decisions may be right, but the process and its lack of transparency is obscuring this.”
• “Cutting funding per-se is not bad. No arts organisations should receive funding ad infinitum, and no-one working in the arts should expect the government to pay their wage.”
• “The Arts Council is responsible for arts development in England, which suggests change, renewal, growth and transition - not the maintenance of the status quo.”
• “Statements about “no confidence” in Arts Council England, or the organisation being “no longer fit for purpose” do not help the arts in any way. What do we replace it with?”

I could go on but I’ll just be reprinting the whole post.

Paul, trading as Wechtie, works in “contemporary dance, music and visual arts” and is currently with DanceXchange. His weblog mostly covers contemporary dance.

Note: when writing to me about this Paul said he’d not mentioned his blog before “as it’s rather niche”. This is the wrong attitude! I’ve been waiting for someone to start a dance-related blog all year! Niche is good!

It seems Tory MP Michael Fabricant got his facts wrong when he said the Birmingham Rep was “no longer going to receive it’s funding” in the House of Commons. Anthony Herron inquired and is happy to report “the REP is not facing cuts it is likely to get an inflationary increase.” Thanks Ant.

Sour note - terrific and concise defence of Birmingham Opera Company in the Times by Richard Morrison. Hard to pick a small bit so here’s three paragraphs:

Well, as anyone who has dealt with the Arts Council will expect, the reasons have nothing to do with art or excellence. The Arts Council is miffed that BOC hasn’t established a “third income stream”. In other words, it doesn’t get much private funding, so relies too heavily on public subsidy.

That’s firstly untrue (its recent Traviata was backed by £50,000 from the Moores Foundation); secondly based on too narrow a definition of private support (many local companies support it “in kind” by donating premises or goods – such as those coffins in Giovanni); and thirdly misses the point. Of course swanky sponsors aren’t going to be attracted to opera presented on gritty industrial estates: where would they ply their clients with champers and canapés? But does this mean that opera must always be staged in venues where the middle-classes feel comfortable? Is that the view of James Purnell, the new Culture Secretary?

The underlying truth seems to be that Vick is a maverick, and the company he created and to which he lovingly returns (between directing engagements with every great opera company in the world) is created in his image - ie, structurally unconventional. Far too much so, clearly, for the pen-pushers at the Arts Council, who complain about BOC’s “high-risk strategy” as if risk is a bad thing in the arts.

via D’log

If you’re at all interested in following the Arts Council funding cuts and how they affect the region you really should be reading D’log who is compiling reports from across the web like a blogger possessed. Good work, sir.

D’log notices in this Times Parliamentary sketch that the Birmingham Rep is, apparently, losing some funding in the current round of arts cuts. Nothing else in the news that I can see. Anyone know for sure? And if so, what it might affect?

As you may already be aware Birmingham Opera is facing an uncertain future, possibly closure, after their Arts Council grant was cut as part of the bloody cull of last month. The Post has all the details which I’ll attempt to parse here:

They currently get £324,000 from the Arts Council and £197,000 from the city council. While the former has been removed they can apply for a “project grant” capped at £100,000, though getting this is not guaranteed.

According to The Post “The Arts Council is understood to have disapproved of the company’s decision to bring Vick’s production of La Traviata to the NIA, regarding it as too great a financial risk.

This production (blogged about in advance here and here with post-performance responses collated here and here) sold 9,908 of the 10,000 seats and, while profits were slim, was generally considered a success. Here’s a photo:

What sets Birmingham Opera apart from other opera companies is their pathalogical desire to bring people into opera who wouldn’t normally do it, not just watching but performing. Which, personally, confuses the hell out of me since I thought that’s what you needed to do to get Arts Council funding these days.

The closing quote from the AC does sort of answer this though:

“While we recognise the quality of Birmingham Opera Company’s work, we have been talking to them for some time to flag our concerns about aspects of their business and financial models. We are still in constructive talks to explore other funding opportunities available to them.”

In other words, they were told to sort the books out or face losing the money and they didn’t. Of course the timing of this decision, coming along with a massive reduction in arts funding, does make this reasoning rather suspect.

Naturally, Birmingham Opera are planning to fight this and have a chance to appeal this month. One thing they want to do is get a forum or similar set up on their website so their wide and disparate support network can come together and build a strategy. This needs to happen as soon as possible so if someone web-savvy can help them get something up and running quickly please get in touch with them. I don’t think it needs to be anything complicated - phpbb should do. (I’d do it but I’m sort of not around…)

The 2007 review will continue tomorrow…

D’log continues his coverage of Arts Council cuts. The Guardian article he links to gives a bit of context:

Nearly 200 arts organisations in England have been told that their funding will end from next April in the biggest and most bloody cull since the Arts Council was set up more than 50 years ago.

Many organisations will, however, have had good news. Of the 990 bodies which get funding, three-quarters have been told to expect inflation or above rises.

and informs us that Birmingham Jazz are getting a grant increase from £23,000 to £71,500 so we should hopefully see some interesting work from them next year building on the success of Rush Hour Blues. Who knows, they might even get that blog going again.

An amusing spoof at theSpoof.com with a Birmingham angle:

Shoppers in Birmingham’s City Centre were confronted by the spectacular vision of the city’s Arts Czar this morning. As they feebly attempted to keep their minds on their Christmas shopping their imaginations were captured by the charismatic figure of Theodore Parker Bowles, Birmingham’s Arts Czar since 2000.

Wearing nothing but his specially commissioned pink latex body suit, accessorised with juxtaposing vivid blue codpiece and shimmering nipple tassels, Parker Bowles strutted his stuff along Corporation Street between 10 and 11 am, hoisting a placard demanding “Attention for THE ARTS”.

via D’log who takes it as a cue to look at “the coming Arts Council bloodbath.” He writes:

As I wrote on the 23rd November it seems like the recent official spin about a “rise” in arts funding was actually a smokescreen for cuts. But I didn’t realise how massive those cuts would be.

Sobering stuff.

Ooh, I wish Vivid had some way to link to specific things on their site. Something like, I dunno, a blog. Hint hint.

Here’s a couple of interesting things currently on their front page. The first is a European Media Artists in Residence Exchange.

The newly established European Media Art Network will give 16 production awards to emerging media art talent to explore the creative possibilities of innovative content for new media platforms.

The international residency programme has been running since 1995 and has worked with artists including Dane Watkins, Paul Harrison & John Wood, Martin Howse, Kypros Kyprianou, and Mike Stubbs.

Media artists in the fields of digital media (including internet and computer based art, video and sound) are invited to apply for a two month residency with one of the following partner organisations: Impakt (Netherlands), Werkleitz Gesellschaft (Germany), Interspace (Bulgaria) and Vivid.

Residents will receive: A grant of 2.000 Euro, Free accommodation, Up to 250 Euro in travel expenses, Access to technical facilities and media labs, Individual exhibition following residency, Major group exhibition in 2009 in Halle (Saale), Germany

Applications have to be in by January 7th. Here’s the application form (Word.doc)

Ben Callaway - ‘Carousel’

The second is a screening of Fresh Moves: New Moving Images from the UK, “a collection of film and video works by 24 of the best emerging and established UK-based artists” introduced by Laure Prouvost, curator at tank.tv

Compiled by a panel including Hans Ulrich Obrist, director of Serpentine Gallery, and Stuart Comer, curator of film and video at Tate Modern, Fresh Moves encompasses fictional narrative, digital film, animation, montage and installation-based film work. Exploring a variety of subjects including politics, identity and aesthetic practices, the collection celebrates not only the artists featured, but the art of moving images as a whole.

The screening takes place on Thursday December 6th at 6pm for a 6.30 start. Tickets are £3/£2 and you’re advised to dress warmly, Vivid being effectively a warehouse space, albeit a very nice one!

via Creative Wolverhampton

Birmingham a pioneer of the digital age is the mildly eyebrow raising headline of this Post feature by Culture Secretary James Purnell about our Digital Film and Media Festival scheduled to take place in October 2008.

The details of next year’s festival are still being put together, but I can reveal that it will be a four-day showcase and it will give everyone in the region the chance to really get stuck in to experimenting in a digital world.

When plans for this were being mooted earlier in the year there was a lot of emphasis on the weight of governmental support (both local, regional and national) behind it and, with this announcement that the city council has committed their portion of the cash it looks to be becoming a reality.

It’ll be interesting to see how this develops over the next year. There’s more to “digital” that just using computers - it’s about embracing the culture that digital environments encourage. One to watch.

There’s an ongoing debate as to the role of public money in the creation of art. Some say it’s essential and a natural continuation of the patronage system of days gone by while others question the strings attached to taking money from vested interests, especially when the government is involved.

Artist Jan Bowman is in the latter camp and has written an impassioned article on why artists shouldn’t accept state funding on Spiked.

Artists have always had to work around their patrons’ whims and political agendas. However, New Labour’s social agenda is more intrusive than the most autocratic client could ever be.

[…]

Were we living in a society where the arts were under attack and artists starved in garrets, there might be a case for artists to claw as much as they can out of the state. Today, there is no justification for it financially; even less from the viewpoint of artistic survival.

A comparison between the work of designers and artists is useful here. A designer only gets state support because the fundamental value of their work can be judged objectively. With fine artists this is impossible, since art deals with individual feelings and emotions and its direct value is unquantifiable. The state can only judge artists’ work in terms of how it fits in with government agendas. This is like trying to measure how blue something is with a ruler.

The result is a burgeoning fellowship of ‘artists’ and ‘arts practitioners’ who owe their careers entirely to the state and who survive by ticking the right boxes in return for accommodating to the government’s propaganda requirements. For all Tessa Jowell’s fine words about the unique, transcendent value of art, New Labour will accept an awful lot of rubbish from artists so long as the results send the right ‘message’ about smoking, drinking, child abuse, internet porn, recycling, or any other current government obsession - even better if the process involves sufficient members of the public, from nursery upwards.

I’m not sure where I stand on this, and admittedly as someone who isn’t a working artist my opinion isn’t all that relavent. On the one hand I think it’s useful to have a financially secure environment for artists to work in - doing compromised work is better than doing no work at all - but on the other hand most of the great artists I admire don’t work for the government. They’re too independent in vision for that.

With Jan’s thoughts in mind this piece on Digital Central was amusing.

Culture West Midlands are holding a symposium to address the lack of attention cultural agencies and organisations have given to the issue of climate change.

I’m sure the people involved with Culture West Midlands have everyone’s best interests at heart but there’s certainly something prescriptive about that sentence. Hmm.

The next round of script grants from Screen WM is open to submissions.

The scheme offers writers based in the West Midlands region up to £5,000 to help develop ideas and treatments into original screenplays, improve existing drafts, or adapt an existing work.

The deadline is Friday 5th November.

On Friday the Department for Culture Media and Sport announced with great fanfare an extra £50 million of funding for the Arts Council by 2011.

The organisation’s funding will rise from £417 million this year to £467 million in 2010\11, a real-terms increase year-on-year of 1.1 per cent (or 12 per cent in cash terms across the whole period). Grant aid to England’s national museums and galleries will increase from £302 million this year to £332 million in 10/11, an increase of slightly above inflation.

The Arts Council’s response is pretty jubilant, as you’d expect.

“This is fantastic news - the Government has acted on the case we have made for the arts.

“It’s a recognition of the work of our artists and arts organisations whose energy and imagination have made our cultural life genuinely the envy of the world.”

Good news, obviously, given the concerns about the Olympics taking all the cash, but let’s keep things in a little perspective. The proposed replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent system is budgeted at £15-20 billion. Good to see we’ve got our priorities straight.

Thanks to Jack Dour for the heads up

The next Out of Hours at Light House is on Monday 3rd September, 5.30-7.30pm and is all about funding. While it takes place in Wolverhampton a lot of these organisations are West Mids-wide so this is pretty relevant to Birmingham folks. (And Light House is a lovely place to visit.)

Guests at this informal chatting session include:

Marina Ibrahim: SP/ARK

Nigel Jordan: Wolverhampton University Creative Media Technology project.

Matt Stocker: Advantage Creative Fund

Chris Adams: Creative and Knowledge Industries Business Adviser for Business Link West Midlands.

Dave Taylor: TIC

Dave Roberts: Creative Launchpad

Sarah Bell: Music for Media Project

Peter McLuskie: PLOT

They’ll all spend five minutes of so explaining what they do and who they can help and then there’ll be a chance to mingle and ask them stuff.

At the Fierce launch party I noticed a banner by the entrance. It was about 5ft high and covered in the logos of all the agencies, sponsors and other organsations who had funded the festival. It stood as a testament to the work Fierce had done in making the festival possible but it was also mildly ludicrous. What was the purpose of this banner? Did anyone actually look at it in detail and take it in? Whatever, the launch was a lot of fun and festival was a big success so I guess it didn’t matter.

On Wednesday I popped along to the Rhubarb Rhubarb Light Sale at Curzon St Station, another great arts event put on with a not insubstantial amount of sponsorship and funding. Hanging outside the venue were two huge banners flapping in the wind, one of which looks like this:

A little over a third of the notice is devoted to logos, most of which are illegible from the street and hardly any of which are of interest to the general punter. Hewlett Packard I get since they’re in the photo printing business and local establishment like the MAC have some recognition, but most of them are insider brands. And, frankly, it looks pretty naff, not to mention ugly. There’s no denying the involvement of government agencies and private industry is essential to arts provision in this age but when did this obsession with cramming all the brands in one aesthetic car crash become the acceptable norm? What train of thought leads a sponsor to say, yes, you can have a substantial amount of money but we insist you spoil your publicity by including our cryptic logo? And has anyone done any research into what effect all this has on the general public’s perception of the event? I suspect it might be a little negative, tainting the work with the notion that it’s taking money from sick children or something. I know when I see the “Arts Council Supported” logo I have to fight back prejudices even though I completely understand the importance of getting that funding.

Since this is the creative sector we’re talking about can’t we be a little more creative with how sponsorship is declared?

I’d welcome comments on this.