Created in Birmingham

The Designer Vintage Bridal Show is taking place at Highbury Hall on 19 & 20 February, gathering a whole bunch of independent, local designers under one roof to offer inspiration for vintage inspired weddings, while supporting homegrown talent.

Just a few of the exhibitors include Ragged Rose Jewellery, Rachel Simpson shoes, exclusive Edgbaston based boutique The Wedding Club, Emma Case Photography and The Boutique Baking Company for Couture cakes, amongst many others.

Tickets are available to pre-book online for £8, or £12 on the door.

CiB celebrated it’s fourth Birthday, a stir was caused when a leaked document of recommended cuts to local art organisations sparked concern over their future, and legendary Birmingham promoters, Leftfoot, celebrated their 1oth anniversary.

Birmingham Royal Ballet and mac managed to raise a decent amount of money through The Big Arts Give, while Moseley Folk and OxjamBrum ended the year with a Christmas Ceilidh and Flatpack released a few highlights set for their 2011 festival.

We also featured a few independently made Christmas cards by local designers, took a look at what can be expected from the new Library of Birmingham interior and the much anticipated budget for Birmingham art organisations was announced by Birmingham City Council.

As the year drew to a close, Rhubarb Radio made a plea for help, the 2010 Twitpanto production of Jack and the Beanstalk took place and we took a look at what Birmingham’s creative minds had come up with for the festive season.

Christmas Day television treated us to Birmingham Royal Ballet, with a prime Christmas dinner slot on BBC1, while Birmingham Opera Company also made it onto BBC4 for post dinner relaxation.

Capital’s first Festival of New Writing took place, International Project Space launched a new film programme and the final ARC of 2010 took place with Important Artefacts.

Brilliantly Birmingham kicked off together with the fifth annual FLUX exhibition, Aedas Presents launched a new monthly art programme and Art of Ideas finally arrived with a host of associated events running over four days.

The We Are Birmingham Shop opened its doors with a drinks reception, Chris gave a debrief of the Arts Council briefing on funding and the West Midlands creative jobs board, Jobplot, returned with a fresh makeover.

November also saw the launch of The Pilot Project, Jennifer Tee’s exhibition, Memento Park opened at Eastside Projects, and Chris attended the wedding of the year.

Lucy McLauchlan returned with her paintbrushes to add something a little interesting to the Moseley Road hoardings, while VIVID launched their latest project, Language, and as December approached, the Christmas fairs sprung into action.

As winter kicked in, we bid a Blonde Farewell to Ikon Eastside, got crafty with Craftspace, said hello to Creative Central and looked ahead to Flatpack and Fierce’s joint 2011 venture.

October brought with it the Tory Party Conference while BCMG launched their 2010/11 season, and we looked ahead to the Witching Hour exhibition, featuring a collection of local exhibiting artists, both internationally renowned and emerging.

The Art Bar opened featuring exhibitions and a connection with the Custard Factory’s Sauce Gallery, the Union Black Film Festival took place with a string of events and screenings. Meanwhile Punch and OOM Gallery published photographer, Pogus Caesar’s book, Musik Kinda Sweet

October was also the month of The Big Draw, with an array of activities popping up in association all over the city. We took a look at what Shout Festival had in store for 2010 and, with the help of 40 local bands and musicians, OxjamBrum took over 6 venues in Birmingham for 12 hours of music.

We gave a run down of various Halloween festivities taking place around the city, plus Invisible City hosted Media Circus, celebrating creative Birmingham, and Moseley Folk and Symphony Hall launched the monthly Folk For Free.

Oh and more arts cuts were announced.

Nikki Pugh gave us all a sneak peak inside the Make-It Zone development in Moseley, EC-arts and a handful of artists took over four of Digbeth’s billboards with the 48 Sheet project and the International Dance Festival revealed their showreel, with highlights from earlier in the year.

With yet another packed programme, Artsfest 2010 took place on the same weekend as Birmingham Zine Fest and VIVID’s Cum Clubbing, while Friction Arts also held Inside Out Festival towards the end of the month.

Bullring announced their plans to spice up Spiceal Street with a regeneration which will see a hub of new restaurants appear in the space by St. Martins church, and with a wave of fresh cuts, the ‘Save the Arts’ and ‘I Value the Arts’ campaigns were launched.

International Project Space launched a week long programme of radio shows featuring a selection of independent art organisations, plus The British Science Festival took place, with a programme full of thought provoking seminars and events, and the Walsall Word Cloud began to take shape.

Brian Griffin’s retrospective exhibition, Face to Face, landed in Snowhill, we took a look at some of the highlights ahead of the Birmingham Book Festival and Sampad launched Radiu5 with a call for young volunteers.

The latest version of The Big City Plan was announced and the We Are Birmingham shop put out a call for people wanting to get involved.

Creative Open Workshops announced the new weekly Handmade market for Birmingham’s city centre, Dirty Bristow magazine was launched with a Summer Fete, and Central Library was treated to a bit of makeover, curtsy of Lucy McLauchlan’s birds.

2010 also saw the return of The British Glass Biennale in Stourbridge, The Public welcomed video artist Bill Viola’s exhibition The Fall into Paradise and the anticipation for Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Cinderella started to build as Creating Cinderalla began charting the show’s development.

We took a look at an audio slideshow on The Diskery, put together by Sam Coley, along with couple of locally produced music videos, including Moseley folk faves, Goodnight Lenin’s debut single ‘Crook in The Creek’.

Goodnight Lenin – Crook In The Creek from Prime Objective on Vimeo.

New quarterly Birmingham based magazine, LABB, was launched, and with not long until Artsfest 2010, we took a look at some of the big acts scheduled for the festival, along with the latest information on the Black International Film Festival.

The Photography Collective and Birmingham Photo Space teamed up with Rhubarb Rhubarb to bring us the Contact Exhibition, featuring a selection of local photographers, while Mohammad Ali’s Writing on the Wall documentary was premiered at mac.

Just past the halfway point…

Pete kicked off discussions about how to follow on from the CiB Shop, The Little Chill looked like fun and involved pretty much every promoter in town and Supersonic’s line-up started coming together.

There was a lot of kerfuffle around the filming of Turbulence, with lots of people getting involved in that too, and people seemed to be printing big flyers for things. I didn’t make it to Taste of Birmingham but people tell me it was pretty good. We also flagged up the work of Sweaty Eskimo.

BARG announced some fun and games at the Mac, Haji Noor Deen visited The Hubb, the Cut Out Shop folks made The DIY Times and I did a bit of a write-up from the BE Festival. New Art Gallery Walsall hosted the Taylor Wessing Photography Prize for a while and the entirely excellent-looking Six Summer Saturdays started.

There was news of cuts from the new government and I tried to wrap my head around the mess that was being made of sorting out a LEP for Birmingham/West Midlands. The flyering/postering issue got another run out too.

Birmingham didn’t get the nod for City of Culture 2013. Ah well.

Summer brought with it degree show time of year and also the first Birmingham European Theatre Festival (which I’m pleased to see will be back again this year). Listings started coming out for the HMV Institute too.

The days were getting longer, which was probably just as well for Rhubarb Rhubarb, who seemed to doing loads. Birmingham presented its final bid for the City of Culture and we crossed our fingers. Temper filled the streets with fashion icons. We looked at the trailer for Soulboy and discovered the blog for Reuben Colley Fine Arts.

The Arts Council announced a 0.5% cut in funding to RFO’s. Boo. We found some familiar faces in Synth Eastwood’s video tomfoolery from the Flatpack Festival. Treasured at the MAC looked good.

Bright Space started looking for people to get involved in Platform and I asked ‘Does Birmingham Future interest you?‘ and got a fairly resounding ‘Um, who?’. Theatre folk came together and spoke easy, the newly opened Zellig hosted the Bass Festival’s Fight The Power exhibition and there was talk of verbalising and visualisation.

Creative Republic launched Invisible City and Marketing Birmingham released a new promotional video for the city that featured a host of creative talent.

A couple of weeks back I put up a survey because I was interested in seeing which websites or online services people use to find out what’s going on around Birmingham.

We’ve had 100 submissions, which seems like a good place to draw things to a close and have a look at the results:

Listings/what’s on

70 – Venues’ own websites
49 – CiBmail
30 – Birmingham City Council – What’s On
29 – Live Brum
18 – What’s on in Brum
17 – Ticketmaster
14 – Visit Birmingham
10 – Scene Central
6 – Birmingham Alive
4 – Birmingham Gig Guide
4 – What’s On Midlands (online)

Suggestions left in the ‘other’ box included The Ticketsellers, Last.fm, Songkick, Ents24, Brum Notes, finditinbirmingham.com, More Canals Than Venice, The Wire and Upcoming.

Arts/culture news

80 – Created in Birmingham
76 – Blogs/social network updates from individual artists/organisations
34 – Digbeth is Good
32 – BiNS
32 – More Canals Than Venice
24 – Birmingham Post/Mail (online)
20 – Arts Council England Arts News
15 – Audiences Central

Others included Ryan’s Gig Guide, An Craic, We Are Eastside and Area Magazine.

Who filled out the survey?

We had a roughly 50:50 male/female split, a wide spread of ages (with a slight skew to 18-25 and 26-35) and pretty much everyone has a B postcode, with a smattering of WV and DY’s too.

Any conclusions?

Nothing really concrete, but it was interesting. I’ve got an idea of the level of web traffic of some of the sites listed, so I know that the results certainly doesn’t indicate which are the most popular websites around the city. However, you could say that this shows which other websites overlap with CiB’s readership.

If anything, I was expecting the Post & Mail to come up a bit higher. Nice to see Live Brum up there.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out and/or forward on the survey.

The CiB Shop wound up after three hectic months, with Pete announcing the impending announcing the impending closure. Before that, INKwell popped into the shop for some screen printing, the City of Culture bid got it’s send-off and The Story Exchange popped in.

The Created in Birmingham closed its shutters for the last time at the end of the month. Someone kissed the feedback book:

International Dance Festival Birmingham came to an end too, while Ian looked forward to what was in store at the 2010 BASS Festival and I had a peek at the Lichfield Festival’s line-up.

RoguePlay left the Custard Factory, I noticed Writing West Midlands for the first time, Ikon announced their series of ‘Favourite Things’ talks, the Daze-Ray exhibition occupied a corner of the Jewellery Quarter and IPEX took over the NEC.

hobbypopMUSEUM spent some time at Eastside Projects, the annual Cure Leukemia Art Auction took place, Ben Javens made a tea towel, end-of-year-show season started up and there was a photography exhibition at the Custard Factory.

I went to visit the flashy gizmos at University of Birmingham’s Heritage and Culture Learning Hub too.

April was a busy month by the looks of things. The 4am Project took the opportunity of the fourth day of the fourth month to take an early morning photowalk, there was a look at what could be expected from the MAC reopening, International Dance Festival Birmingham got into gear and all sorts of events popped up in the CiB Shop.

The CiB Shop window was jazzed up with the help of Birmingham Royal Ballet, Art Detection Services set up their workshop in store and Shady Bird popped by to play a set. In other CiB news, CiBmail was launched.

The Rainbow announced their plans for developments and expansion both upstairs and below, we said goodbye to more independent record shops and sampad celebrated their 20th anniversary.

Trove showed some science, we had a nosey at CBSO’s summer programme and some behind the scenes footage from The Electric showed up.

Not My Type brought together “a veritable who’s who of Brum talent” (to quote myself) and, in other illustration-related news, the Love To Print crowd released Patterns #1.

Other things to look back on and go ‘oh yeah, I remember that’ include Such Tweet Sorrow, BAP’s document on Birmingham’s Creative Capital, the Big Culture Blog and a call for “more of the Simon Rattle effect”. Also, In Our Backyard looked interesting and Chris Bates made a video for Munchbreak’s Television:

Into March and while Capsule took Home of Metal to SXSW and Flatpack were readying another festival, Rhubarb Rhubarb opened the Rhubarb East Gallery

Pete took a break from the CiB Shop to give an update 2 weeks in, The Photography Collective formed and held their first meeting and We Are Eastside launched linking up Eastside’s creative organisations. Project Brutal was announced too.

The Bulls Head shared a few mixes from some of their guests and residents, Tindal Street released Alan Apperley’s Indeterminate Creatures, we had a look at As One’s work (as it seemed to be springing up all over the place) and Juice Aleem asked us to rock his hologram, with the video being filmed at Boxxed.

February started on a low note with news of funding cuts to the arts and culture sector. Boo.

British Dance Edition took over the city, the Custard Factory waved goodbye to the Factory Club, Fierce relaunched their Platinum scheme and I wrote a post that went on to be seen by HRH Charlie Windsor himself.

We announced how to get involved with the CiB shop and Film Dash 2010 happened. Birmingham made the shortlist for the 2013 City of Culture, the Ikon’s blackboard caught my eye and so did an ace homage to The Wire by a shop in Moseley.

Friction Arts presented their work in South Africa, the MAC’s return was announced, Dave Gaskarth got a nice profile in Creative Review and there was a lot of music-related chat going on.

We gave CiB a bit of TLC, with a make over and, near the end of the month and after a flurry of activity, the CiB shop opened, kicking off three months of madness.

(Photo by Katchooo)

In January this year we introduced and thanked the first few CiB Supporters.

Congratulations were given to Raphael Selbourne for winning the 2009 Costa First Novel Award and we came across The Music Quarter, a new music blog.

Hustle made the move to the Midlands, we had a giggle with Kipple and the Emerging Festivals Fund was announced, with some of the fruits of that being revealed towards the middle part of the year. Leftfoot started their 10th birthday celebrations and our most popular post of the year was published.

Ian joined the CiB team, we got the first glimpse of WeVee and plans were announced for the CiB shop

We also waved hello to Jane Anderson, Mark Wilkinson, Lucy Pryor, Phill Blake, Helen Flanagan, Sarah Lynch, Jade Sukiya, Jodi Ann Bickley, Leon Sparkes and Luke Halliley.

We also said farewell to Neil Farrington.

There’s a few interesting novelty things floating around courtesy of Birmingham’s finest creative minds, all in the festive spirit of course.

Boxer‘s Christmas video ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner‘ is definitely worthy of a mention. As well as being highly entertaining, it also comes with the challenge of a movie quiz.

383 Project have made Jumpify, which you can use with Facebook. Because of course everyone does love a cosy Christmas jumper.

Fullrange have made this amusing video for FleetMilne Residential.

Made Media have made brought the nativity to Twitter. Warning, highly distracting, if like me, you’re going to want to switch all the people around to make sure it features your favorite followers.

Supercool‘s Christmas card was a compelling read when it arrived on the CiB desk. They’ve redesigned the classic 12 days of Christmas.

Birmingham Royal Ballet have put together this bunch of Christmas wishes.

Are there anymore Christmas creations out there that we’ve missed and deserve a mention?