Nearly five years ago, a group of friends and I decided to take some initiative and create for ourselves the kind of organisation and event that we would most want to be a part of. The result is Project X Presents – a Birmingham based creative network producing events once or twice a year which aim to fuse many different strands of creative endeavour into one cohesive whole.
So what is a network anyway? In our case, a free association of individuals bonded by two essential qualities – an interest in creativity and a friendly, open minded attitude. We realised that between ourselves and our immediate friends we have between us a tremendous variety of interests and an urge to be together and be creative. Weekly meetings began and continue still, the network steadily grew. Our fifth event – Xhibition, comes up this Saturday in Moseley.
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I have two reasons for posting this:
- It amused me that the site talks up ‘free entry to the splendid Birmingham Artsfest’ when entry is free anyway
- It’s good to see Birmingham being talked about as a destination for an arty getaway
There’s a few other items bundled into the package that might make it worth throwing your name into the hat. Link to the competition.
Elsewhere on the site there’s a good profile of Studio 4 and mentions given to the Outcrowd Collective, Them Lot, Capsule, Beat13 and Fluid’s Lee Basford. ‘Log’ Roper from Studio4 ‘paints a rosy picture of a thriving, supportive scene, where musicians and artists intermingle’
On Birmingham Counterculture, a blog started just before the weekend, Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms B promises to:
raise issues, concerns and/or promote countercultural events and activities
in and around Birmingham.
Why this has to be done as “a slap in the face to mainstream cultural developments” (which are to be demoted) isn’t yet clear but then I’m a live-and-let-live kinda guy.
There’s been little promotion so far, but targets have included Eastside Projects, Creative Republic and the council (via Artsfest). I’m looking forward to what the people behind this want to champion so will stick with it for a bit and hope the scent of crazy (excessive capitals/question marks and hiding behind a pseudonym) subsides a little.
I don’t want to come across like an advert for football on Sky, but there are three things happening in Birmingham this weekend and they’re all (to coin a phrase) kind of a big deal:
- Project X Presents (Sat 13th, 8pm to 3am) – this promises to be very cool indeed. Comedy, music, visuals, weird buzzing boxes… A new city centre venue to explore, sensible drink prices and only a tenner. Check out the website for pics of how it’s all been coming together over the past week.
- Of All The People In All The World (today, 6.30pm until 5 Oct) – Stan’s Cafe bring their big, crazy and thought-provoking show to Birmingham. “112 tonnes of rice – 6.7 billion grains – one for everyone on the planet”.
- Artsfest (all weekend) – the UK’s biggest arts festival. If you can’t find anything to enjoy then… well, I don’t know. It’s not as if people haven’t been trying to help you find the good stuff.
There’ll probably be some collective memory shenanigans coming up so if you go to any of these things and take photos/video/blog about them then chuck a link here and it’ll go into the pot.
Oh, and tag anything Stan’s Cafe-related with ‘thericeshow’ for it to feed into the clever little website for The Rice Show.
Artsfest is a big sprawling beast of a festival and a difficult one to wrangle from a listings perspective. A few people have chipped in with their take on how things could/should be presented but for me, while all of them help in some way, none of them really hit the nail on the head. Still here are they:
I’m pretty sure that the small team running Artsfest wouldn’t have the budget or reach to put something like the above together, so it’s great to see the local community take it upon themselves.
In case it’s of any use to anyone, here’s what I’m planning to do. Or at least what I think looks interesting.
Friday evening
Friday’s fun takes place against the backdrop of Light Night, of course.
- Stan’s Cafe are opening the doors of AE Harris Factory (110 Northwood Street, B3 1SZ) for Of All The People In All The World (6.30-9pm)
- From 7pm (not sure until when) there are two interesting things happening at the Council House. Definitely worth seeing are Willard Wigan’s astounding micro sculptures. Sonia Bhamra will be Painting With Light in another room which might be worth a look if you’re there
- Gallery 10 at BM&AG has Comfortism who, I think, mixes up poetry, theatre and stand-up with the odd bit of audience participation. Could be interesting
- At 8pm there’s a parade from the Pavillions to Centenary Square
- The Town Hall present Late Night Light Night and they’ll be open from 8pm for perfomances by Soweto Kinch, The Sub Ensemble, Manga and Maylight (who I’m looking forward to seeing)
Saturday
Saturday’s the tricky one. There’s loads happening so the best thing might just be to go for a wander around the city centre and see what you stumble across. That said…
- Nic Gaunt’s exhibition ‘The Rotunda: 21 Stories‘ will be at The Pavillions all day
- From 3.30pm to 4.30pm there’s Raw Magic which is “a visual installation and promenade performance built into a maze of tents, for audiences to explore and choose which direction they would like to take”. Some of the people here were involved in the very popular B1 Labyrinths from this year’s Fierce Festival
- From 8pm to 10pm BRB, CBSO and Birmingham Opera Company share the Centenary Square stage for one of the weekend’s big items. Plus there’ll be fireworks.
- After that it’s Project X Presents for me. It’s not Artsfest-related but it does look pretty exciting, so that’s where I’ll be.
Sunday
- If I’m functioning at 12pm then I’ll want some ‘beautiful heartwarming acoustic/electronica music’. At the Custard Factory, Elliot Jack will be playingjust that.
- After that I might wander into the Custard Factory Theatre for some short flicks courtesy of Shortcuts
- From 7pm Needle & Thread Theatre are doing the rather charming-looking ‘Between The Lines’ – walking theatre around the Central Library. This is on on Saturday too (call 07530 939 380 to book a free place)
- It’s Kerrangfest in Centenary Square from 12pm with The Mexicolas, The Metros, Envy & Other Sins and The Levellers later in the evening.
Of course, whether I actually get round a fraction of all of that is another question.
With just (only just) over a week to go before Artsfest the programme of events has just been released on the website.
With 500 or so events scheduled, picking through the programme isn’t easy but there is at least a ‘recommended’ section on the homepage. When I get a chance I’ll have a flick through and pick out the bits that I think look most interesting.
Volunteers are still needed, by the way.
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.
I found this summary of Artsfest 2008 over at CLUB:
- Friday is funny light show and parade day
- Saturday is fireworks day
- Sunday is Kerrangfest day with the Levellers
Which is pretty good but, although the official programme’s not out yet, I’ve been having a bit of a rummage about to see what’s on.
Friday
I’ve already mentioned Light Night. One of the buildings to be illuminated is the Town Hall which will be hosting a free event from 8pm on the Friday featuring Manga, Soweto Kinch, The Sub Ensemble and Maylight.
Also on Friday there’s the free Reggae Rockz Festival 2008 from 8pm to 11pm in Centenary Square. Unfortunately on the Facebook event page the organisers spend all their time bleating about a lack of promotion from Artsfest and don’t get round to telling us much about what they’l be doing. The Beat are playing, that much is sure. The Reggae Rockz website manages to be even less informative. Ah well.
Saturday
It looks like Dholfest 2008 is the biggie here – an attempt to break the world record for the most dhol players in one place (currently 314 players in Sandwell in 1999). They’re aiming for 500 this time. This one will be held in Victoria and Centenary Squares.
Meanwhile, the Custard Factory will be hosting a day of hip hop with Mylz from Heducation and Madman the Greatest down to perform.
Sunday
Sunday is Kerrangfest day with This Beautiful Thief and The Levellers the only bands I’ve spotted so far.
Across the weekend
Spaghetti Gazetti has info about the weekend’s poetry performances.
This year the ShortCuts film programme will be extended slightly, with “a more relaxed, experimental programme of films made by local and international film makers” on the Sunday and a set of fims programmed in conjunction with Deaffest across the weekend. There’s more about those in this post from the Artsfest blog.
There’s much more to come and I’ll let you know when I see a full programme lying around the internet somewhere.
Light Night is a series of events taking place in six cities around the UK, the first of which will be in Birmingham on 12 September to coincide with the launch of Artsfest 2008. To quote lazily from the website:
Light Night in Birmingham will feature architectural lighting of iconic city centre buildings and iconic landmarks such as:
- The newly refurbished £35M Town Hall
- The Council House
- Museum and Art Gallery
- Selfridges building at the Bullring
- The Rotunda
- Birmingham Cathedral
- plus a few surprises!
These landmarks will be beautifully lit to create a visually stunning trail of features around Birmingham City Centre.
The idea of all-night festivals is fairly established on the continent – from the original ‘Nuit Blanche‘ in Paris in 2002. As well as the illuminated buildings there will be street performances, music and the shops will stay open later. It’s meant to be a family affair so the fit with Artsfest makes sense.
What’s more, the people at 383Project have designed the brochure for the event and blogged about it to boot.
You can see more on the Light Night website (which wasn’t made 383Project).
Staging ArtsFest is a huge undertaking as a few of the photos on the ArtsFest365 blog hint at. They seem to have taken on a few volunteers recently but they’re looking for more. If you fancy getting involved (and I imagine they’ll have all kinds of work) then email artsfest[@]birmingham.gov.uk.
Also, there’s an ArtsFest Twitter for you to follow if you’d like updates in the run-up to 12-14 September.
