I’ve never witnessed a Twitpanto before, so I’m quite intrigued/ excited to see what goes down. This year’s production is ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.
The star studded cast features plenty of familiar Brum tweeters, including a cameo from CiB’s Chris Unitt, who’ll be appearing as a member of ‘The Riot Police’.
The fun starts at 2pm this afternoon, and you can watch the whole thing online from the comfort of your home/ bed/ office. Perfect.
Ikon Eastside will be closing their doors for winter and bidding a ‘blonde farewell’ on 3 December.
Starting at 8pm, they’re inviting you to party with them into the evening, taking inspiration from their final exhibition of 2010, AVPD’s Hitchcock Hallway, with the optional dress code of a blonde or white wig.
Alfred Hitchcock is renowned for films featuring blonde leading women such as Grace Kelly, Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren. Music, light and atmosphere all play with notions of mistaken identity and voyeurism.
‘Changing Places, Changing Faces’ opens at Sauce Gallery‘s new residency in the Art Bar, on 5 November until 2 December, with a preview night on 4 November from 6pm – 9pm.
The exhibition will showcase a collection of large scale installations by Juice 126, Mac 1, Remi/ Rough, Sola and Zoot.
The artist will be transforming the Sauce Gallery from floor to ceiling, expect to see large scale installation work, in a range of disciplines from abstract to Dada, projection to animation, photorealism to light art.
There will also be a small selection of original works, limited edition prints and books by these artists available to buy along with an interactive area showing short films, pod casts and graphic animations.
Sauce Gallery is open Monday – Saturday from 10am – 6pm.
Rizla re-crafted is coming to Birmingham on 12 November, as part of their national competition to find the best remix of the Mystery Jets‘ next release, ‘Show Me The Light’.
UK garage scene legend, MJ Cole, will be dishing out inspiration by hosting a free interactive workshop on the art of the remix at the Hare & Hounds from 4 – 6pm.
Along with that, the Mystery Jets, plus Simian Mobile Disco, Friendly Fires, MJ Cole and Le Corps Mince de Francoise, will be performing and DJing live at the Rainbow Warehouse from 9.30pm – 5am. Tickets can be bought online or at Swordfish Records, Polar Bear Records and Zen.
The closing date for Rizla Re-crafted is 20 December, and will be judged by a panel including the Mystery Jets, and will win a Hercules RMX professional MP3 DJ mixer.
Registration for the workshop is supposedly at www.rizlarecrafted.co.uk – which doesn’t actually seem to exist, so if anyone can give an update on that, that would be much appreciated!
The Slavic Soul Feast is taking place on 23 October, organised by Polish Expats Association as a part of Black History Month.
This offers an opportunity to promote knowledge on the contribution made to society by Black people along with the distinctive dances and costumes and original melodies from over 70 regions in Poland.
Lively Hops, picturesque twirls, energetic, joyful movements, coral necklaces, flowers, ribbons, head scarfs, and embroided, gaudy fabrics!
…This is also a pretext to learn more about diverse histories, heritage and culture traditions of other ethnic minorities living in the UK. Along classics of Polish alternative music you will hear the whole range of contemporary Slavic folk beats!
With contemporary art videos examining multicultural society and ethnic identity by Andrzej Karmasz, followed by delicious vegetarian pierogi and meaty bigos.
The event takes place from 7pm at Stan’s Café @ A.E. Harris. Tickets are £3 on the door, for more information contact roma@polishexpats.org.uk
The Birmingham Cycling Campaign, Push Bikes, present ‘Consider Cycling‘. These free presentations will be dedicated to people who would like to get into cycling, but don’t know where to start.
The presentations will offer advice on choosing your bike, the difference between frame sizes, tyres and gears and how to carry out basic checks and adjustments. They will also discuss safe road cycling, ‘Bikeability’ and using road features such as bike lanes and advanced stop lines.
Presentations will take place at Friends of the Earth, 54-57 Allison Street, Digbeth on the following dates;
Thursday 14 October at 1 – 4pm and 7 – 9pm
Thursday 18 November at 1 – 4pm and 7 – 9pm
Thursday 9 December at 1 – 4pm and 7 – 9pm
All visitors will be given a free cycling and walking map of Birmingham. To book your place, contact Graham Hankins at g8emx@tiscali.co.uk or call 0121 707 0420
We mentioned Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s new 2010/11 season the other day, and have since picked up this paper which they’ve produced for the new season. Adds a nice touch, we thought.
As part of this year’s Supersonic festival, Capsule have decided to get the kids involved in exploring experimental music. The Kids Gigs take place on Saturday 23 October at 11am and 2.30pm at mac in Cannon Hill Park.
Aimed at 2 – 7 year olds and their families, these 1 hour workshops will involve performances, offering ‘Big Sounds for Little People’.
Ever since Schoenberg and Kandinsky became pen pals back in 1907, avant-garde art and experimental music has been attempting to find some common ground. But, it’s not been easy. While modern art is a mass phenomenon, experimental music is often derided and ignored by the masses.
With a view to introduce children to experimental music at an early age, the events will feature one-man band from the USA, Dosh, and local circuit-bending fiend Glatze.
Glatze uses customised instruments (including: circuit-bent Furby dolls and kids’ toys) that have been specially rewired to create all sorts of musical wizardry. Dosh a multi-instrumentalist; combines a host of instruments into an exciting and unique live experience. See firsthand how these unlikely instruments are used to make noise / sound / music, and to have a go yourselves.
Tickets are only £5, and can be booked at www.macarts.co.uk or by calling 0121 446 323
Birmingham City Council’s Arts and Young People Team have commissioned Hybrid to deliver a series of events and training sessions providing pathways towards your career in the arts. There are four ways that you can take part:
1. Action learning sets to share challenges and find solutions, facilitated by coaches and those with mentoring experience.
2. Visits to arts organisations, to learn more about who, what and how. Visits with confirmed dates are;
3. Panels/ Talks on varying themes, with speakers, discussion and networking opportunities. Held at Apache’s Bar, the following events are coming up;
4. Café style conversations on project development, delivery and evaluation, which will be facilitated by practitioners and arts professionals including Bright Space, Multistory and Birmingham City Council. Also held at Apache’s Bar, the following events are coming up;
The programme takes place until March 2011. To register for an event and find out more, please email karen@hybridconsulting.org.uk, or leave a message on 0121 270 6389
Radio IPS, will be taking over the airwaves on 87.8FM, broadcasting live from 20 – 25 September, at 12 to 5pm each day. Daily contributions will feature the following independent art organisations;
Monday: Capsule
Tuesday: Pro Choice
Wednesday: The Island
Thursday: Caribic Residency
Friday: Formcontent
Saturday: Longmeg (live)
Inernational Project Space’s next project is ‘MORROR’, at the School of Art Bournville.
This Michael Krebber and Michaela Eichwald exhibition opens Wednesday 7 October, 5 – 7pm, and will run until 6 November, opening Wednesdays at 12 – 7pm and Thursday to Saturday at 12 – 5pm.
Admission is free, contact 0121 331 5763 or visit www.internationalprojectspace.org for more information.
So the programme for this year’s Artsfest is now up online, complete with a nice little selection of search options so you can filter through the events that you’re interested in.
The festival runs this weekend, from Fri – Sun, and is the biggest free arts and culture festival in the UK, with around 600 performing, visual and digital artists at events taking place all across the city.
I would give you a run down of everything happening, but there are heaps of events, performances, screenings, workshops and all sorts of goings-on, so I’m not even going to attempt it. Chris did, however, mention a few things to look out for the other week.
Here’s a pretty great opportunity for some free incubation space at the prestigious address of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce.
BXL are offering free desk space in a fully networked office, along with access to a vast database of schools and businesses in Birmingham and Solihull.
What’s that? Nothing comes for free? Okay, in return for your free space you also have to commit to giving up a bit of your time, by sharing your expertise to support BXL’s work in schools, which to be fair, is still a good deal.
If this sounds intriguing, they’re open to suggestions and ideas of how their work can work together with others, so get in touch with Chris Bishop at chris.bishop@bxlworks.org.uk or call on 07919887212
After their 40th anniversary last year, Ex Cathedra are continuing their success into 2010/11. Their dairy for the next few months looks pretty packed, have a browse through this season’s brochure to see if anything suits you.
Here’s a couple of things they’ve got going coming up;
3 September: Tallis’s Spem in alium and Alec Roth’s life-affirming 40 part Earthrise commissioned for last seasons anniversary, will be premiered at the Royal Opera House, London as part of the Deloitte Ignite Festival curated by Joanna MacGregor.
16 & 17 October: Ex Cathedra makes its debut at London’s Cadogan Hall on the 16th with a performance of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers by its Consort of ten outstanding young singers accompanied by His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts and the Ex Cathedra Baroque Ensemble. The concert will then move back up to Birmingham for a repeat on 17th at Birmingham Town Hall.
The Tayor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2009 has just gone on show at the New Art Gallery Walsall and will be there until 12 September 2010:
The exhibition consists of 60 photographs which were selected from an open submission of 6,312 prints by 2,451 international phtoographers. The judging panel included The New Art Gallery’s Director Stephen Snoddy in addition to Sian Bonnell, Michael Frawley, Fergus Greer, Diane Smythe, Terence Pepper and Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Sandy Nairne.
(Image: Mirjana Vrbaski, Girl, 2009)
This is an exciting one. I was hanging around the National Theatre on Sunday and picked up a brochure for the outdoors stuff they’re doing over the summer. There was some really good stuff lined up.
Now, in a pleasingly similar vein, an email about the Hippodrome’s Six Summer Saturdays programme (website coming soon) has dropped into my inbox. There’s a brochure you can read too.
Blurb:
Over six consecutive Saturdays, free scheduled shows will take place at venues across the city including the piazza in front of the theatre on Hurst Street, Arcadian Centre, High Street and Cathedral Gardens.
The programme starts on Saturday 24 July with Vogue Ball, a day and evening of showing off and celebrating the performer in everyone. Audiences will be challenged to step up and step out onto the catwalk, release their inner diva and perform to their heart’s content.
The following weeks will welcome raving grannies on souped-up shopping trolleys, giant kangaroos bouncing around the city, classic puppetry, contemporary mime and international acrobats.
I’m dead excited about this so well done to Sarah Allen, the Hippodrome’s Creative Programme Manager, who I believe was brought in to put this together.
Congratulations are also due to the designers of the marketing materials who’ve had to cope with so many logos.
Also, giant kangaroos FTW.
While we’re on Hippodrome stuff – Liz Leck, their Education and Audience Development Manager, has put up a blog post about a typical week for her. Fascinating stuff and the sort of thing most people wouldn’t know goes on in that building.
