Created in Birmingham

Digital Central are looking for 10 people from creative companies to take part in their pilot for a ‘serious game‘ which aims to teach business skills to creatives.

From the Digital Central post:

We’re running two workshop in the next month and we’d like to recruit a small number of individuals to help us test the game. Participants get their hands on a free Nintendo DS and Brain Training Game.

The workshops are on:

Wednesday 19th March (Central Birmingham)
Friday 4th April (central Birmingham)

With a launch event over lunchtime on:

Friday 25th April (Coventry)

If you are interested in attending you simply need to be an individual working in a creative industries company.

See the flyer for more info. Note that places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis and participants need to be able to attend all three of the events.

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.

Designer Maker West Midlands is running a couple of Seminar Discussion Days at the Arts Council offices on Granville St.

The events are aimed at supporting mid-career makers wishing to engage in discussion on ideas for new work and developing new markets. The intention is to provide an opportunity for debate, the exchange of ideas and the practical working up of plans for new work and new markets.

21st Jan sees “In Conversation with Leading Practitioners” with “In Conversation with Curators and Gallery Professionals” following on 11th Feb. No mention of cost so I’m guessing they’re free though booking is essential as numbers are limited. Full details including speakers. via D’log

Improvise and Socialise is a “participatory Improvisation Skills workshop” being run as part of Gigbeth on Thursday, November 1st from 9:00pm at the Old Library in the Custard Factory. The only details I can find online are on Facebook (that link should work if you’re registered) but here’s the blurb and contact details.

The ideal opportunity to meet other music leaders and musicians informally, whilst learning new or improving on existing improvisation skills. Models can be taken away and used in sessions with young people.

You will need to bring your own instrument, preferably acoustic, although there will be some amplification available if required (enquire for more details). All instruments, voices and musical styles welcomed - the more diverse the better.
For further details contact Kate Adams on 0121 236 7978 or west-midlands@musicleader.net.

If you could drop me an email stating what instrument/voice you will be bringing, that would help the proceedings.

I could be wrong (to be honest I get all the Creative XYZ things mixed up in my mind and, yes, I get the irony of that) but I think Creative Alliance have a new website. Part of it is a New and events page which should be pretty useful. No RSS feed but this scrape should suffice.

4Talent are running a Commissioning Competition which also combines a talent search and training session. Sort of.

To enter submit “three ideas that you think could work as a 4Talent multimedia feature, along with a current CV and links to a showreel and/or examples of your work.” The successful 10 applicants will then be invited to a workshop featuring “a screening of some best-practice examples of our films, alongside an expert insight of what works for different formats, from talking-head profiles to thematic mini-docs.”

“You’ll then have the chance to introduce yourself and pitch your ideas to the rest of the group. At the end of the day, the best four will be picked by a 4Talent Commissioning Editor and one of our pro producers to receive a £500 commission, and they’ll explain the strengths and weaknesses of the various pitches.”

The Birmingham session is at Maverick Television on Tuesday 16th October. Full details, including examples of what they’re after, on the 4Talent site.

A course for contemporary artists is “a 12 week, 60 hours practice led mentoring programme for fine artists” run by Lara Ratnaraja and Nicola Shipley at Creative Alliance with guest mentoring from Helen Legg and Melissa Nisbett (from the Ikon gallery), Dom Murphy (from TAK!) and Matt Price (possibly from BIAD?).

Previous artists have developed tools to identify galleries and curators and increased their confidence in their practice. In addition, they have developed a catalogue to use as part of their professional portfolio and learnt how to present their work to galleries and commissioners.

Previous participants have gone on to show work at: Ideas Factory V & A Event, New Art Birmingham, The Event, Virtual, Ten4 Magazine, The Out Crowd, Fused Magazine, Rhubarb-Rhubarb International Festival of the Image.

The deadline for applicants is Monday 27th August and you should send a CV, personal statement and representative images of your work to annie@creativealliance.org.uk.

Here’s the flyer and full details of what the the Creative Alliance Out Of Hours schemes are about is on their site.

Lauren Davies writes in with news of a free 2 day course from the Media Skills division of UCE, Explore You Inner Entrepreneur. Run by Annette Naudin the course “has been especially created for individuals working in the creative industries sector and will explore personal values, presentation skills, confidence and will include talks from inspiring guest speakers.”

More details are here and reports from previous sessions are here. The course is on Wednesday 11th & Thursday 12th July 2007 at the New Technology Institute in Birmingham city centre and while it’s free booking is essential. Contact lauren.davies@uce.ac.uk / 0121 204 9880.

Another interesting looking training opportunity from Creative Alliance:

Creative Alliance and Friction Arts bring you a unique opportunity to develop your socially engaged practice and use your art form to connect with hard to reach sectors of the community.

This practice led programme will challenge and test not only your creativity but also your boundaries, whilst also inspiring and giving confidence to anyone who’s considered running workshops or teaching/mentoring with difficult to reach groups. The course is open to all creatives/artists, regardless of your technical practice.

Eligibility: As the core programme is supported by the Learning and Skills Council, utilising public funding from the European Social Fund there are certain eligibility criteria. You must be in some form of employment (i.e. full time, part time or registered self employment) and living in an Objective 2 area – For further clarification on these terms please contact the CA office for advice.

Deadline for Submission: If you are interested in getting involved please send a CV and personal statement to anna@creativealliance.org.uk by Friday 8th June, for a programme start mid June.

What’s in it for me?
This programme is fully funded, so you’ll have free access to a great learning opportunity which results in a level 2 award in progression with awarding body OCN
You will also have the opportunity to take part/develop an end of programme event, this will be negotiated by the course participants and may take the form of a show, conference, catalogue or perhaps something we haven’t even considered, with a secured budget of £2k in place the only limit is the groups imagination.
Invaluable networking and peer to peer support

If you require more information please call Annie or Anna on 0121 224 7308.

This is an interesting looking course run by Birmingham City Council for those who want to get into community arts.

Flying Start 2007

Part time, free of charge, training course (September 2007 to January 2008) for artists working in any art form who are 18+ and living or working in Birmingham or Solihull. Closing date for applications 4th July.

Flying Start is an accredited training scheme for artists who want to work in community and participatory arts and gain workshop/project planning and delivery skills.

It provides:

• Hands on project and workshop delivery experience via work placements with Birmingham arts organisations including The REP, sampad and Sound Futures. Information on other placements available included in application pack.
• An opportunity to work as part of a supportive group of artists on practical course work
• Networking opportunities with other artists, key contacts and potential employers
• Freelance set up information; regular updates on current funding, training and employment opportunities
• Mentoring, support and advice.

For further information or a copy of the information pack, contact Pat Dawson, Birmingham City Council Arts Section on 0121 464 4337 or pat_dawson@birmingham.gov.uk.

No offense intended but I’m not really sure exactly what this is. So I’m reprinting the email in full.

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Here’s the poster / flyer.

and here’s what was in the accompanying Word doc.

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