Created in Birmingham

The Birmingham Bloggers Group will be hosting their third free social media surgery for voluntary and community groups next Wednesday, January 28th at BVSC 138 Digbeth, B5 6DR, (map). You can drop in anytime between 5.30pm to 7.00pm. Volunteers will be on hand to offer free advice to anyone who is curious to how tools like blogs, podcasts, video and social networks could help to their organisation, community group or charity. The surgery will be: No boring speeches or jargon just hot drink and some friendly advice.

I have a particular interest in how small organisations can use all this ‘internet stuff” to promote themselves so I will be going along for the first time to offer up my bit of knowledge and heaps of enthusiasm to anyone who needs it.

Apparently this video will be used on the new Jewellery Quarter Regeneration Partnership website which will be launched soon.

Found via a tweet from Gecal.

Any thoughts?

Ulfah Arts is based at the Highgate Craft Centre and, as the about page says, it’s:

a pioneering arts organisation, which acts as an umbrella to a number of initiatives specialising in faith and the arts. This includes projects around Muslim women in the arts and interfaith work using arts to name just a couple. Over the years we have developed a specific expertise in working with Islam and Muslim communities.

They put on events at The Dum and have worked with BM&AG, Thinktank, Birmingham Uni and Birmingham Eid Mela among many others.  There’s more info on the Ulfah Arts website.

This quote from Graphiquillan stuck with me and has given D’log food for though too:

I’m often frustrated by the stamp of the council’s logo on everything creative that is sanctioned. Whenever I see that logo, there’s a switch that flips in my mind, and (probably unfairly) signals to me: “Hmmm, probably a bit dull. Move along.”

Would this logo:

turn you off from an arts event?  Do the council need to tag everything they touch?  Aren’t they entitled to let us know when they get behind something cultural?

I’ve had a nice email from Sam about Bloco Louco, which I’ll let him tell you about:

Bloco Louco is a samba band/community making some awesome music – arguably some of the best unamplified beats in the city. We were started with Lottery funding, and since that happened a year and a half ago we have gone from strength to strength. Now we are in a position to more than double our numbers, from about 10 currently to a veritable army of 30 drummers.

We rehearse every week at the Ladywood Arts Centre, B16 8TR
7:15pm – 9:45pm every Tuesday
Check out http://www.blocolouco.com/ for more info.

Also to launch this new growth phase, we will be playing 4 SETS at the Birmingham ArtsFest. This will be an amazing extravaganza of talent – among other things there will be a world record attempt during DholFest, so be there!

Thanks, Sam.

This is always good to see – following a discussion on the Film Birmingham forum, Rill Marchant and Rebecca Sloan are organising a pub meet-up on Saturday:

If you’re interested/involved in any aspect of filmmaking or media come along and join us on Saturday 30th August 2008 from 5:30 pm at Lloyds Bar on Broad Street.

We’ll bring a home made sign or something to put on the table so you can find us when you arrive and I expect we’ll be there for at least a few hours before (maybe) moving on to another venue.

Nothing heavy – just a chance for people who are into the same thing to meet up and have a chat.

There’s a Facebook group for interested peeps to join too.

In the video for Amnesty International’s Unsubscribe campaign, Birmingham-based artist Jiva Parthipan ‘played’ the part of a detainee subjected to waterboarding. That is, for a short while he was actually subjected to it with the treatment (judged by the Bush administration not to be torture) filmed in slow motion at 1000 frames per second.

The video has generated a great deal of coverage and no small amount of controversy. You can see it for yourself here:

Jiva is giving a talk at BIAD on 14 May and will be performing a piece called ‘The Terror Of Living‘ at Warwick Arts Centre on 21 May, both as part of the Fierce Festival.

His own website is at www.jivajiva.com.

Creative Republic (who fund this blog) are organising a series of events over the next few months, the first of which focuses on the West Midlands Cultural Olympiad which is

a four year celebration of culture and creativity that will be launched over the weekend of 26 September as part of the plans for the London 2012 Games

Details on the background to all this can be found at www.london2012.com/beinspired.

Here’s the invitation to this particular event. Attendance is free but you’re asked to register here and also encouraged to sign up to the Creative Republic Charter (if you agree with the principles, of course).

Update – there’s also a Facebook event for this.