Created in Birmingham

We’ve acquired a nice little pile of booklets and mini publications on the CiB desk which we’ve been meaning to mention, so thought we’d just post them all up together.

First is Ammo Magazine. This cute and colourful little thing is packed with illustration and designer/ artist interviews.

Ammo also accepts submissions, so if you think your work would fit in on the pages of this small but perfectly formed publication, take a look at their submissions page.

This book from Creative Birmingham profiles the 30 shortlisted nominations and 6 winners from the Invisible City Awards. Categories included ‘Things that made me think’, ‘Things that made me smile’, ‘Things that taught me something’, ‘Things that make me proud’, ‘Business things’, and ‘Cultural things’.

Created in Birmingham was up for ‘Things that make me proud’, which is nice, but unfortunately we lost out to Tomorrow People.

This publication for Hello Digital retells ‘stories from a digital city’, with plenty of glossy photos of Birmingham – current and future – along with articles from a range of industry specialists and experts.

This tasteful and nicely designed programme is from the 2010 Supersonic Festival, featuring all the events, activities and artists who performed across the weekend.

While we’re on the topic of festivals, The Independent Festivals Group launched a publication earlier this month, celebrating the cultural value of Birmingham’s independent festivals.

Included in the group are Bass Festival, Birmingham Book Festival, Birmingham International Jazz and Blues Festival, Fierce Festival, Flatpack Festival, Rhubarb Rhubarb and Supersonic Festival.

This publication can be downloaded for free here, and makes for quite an interesting read – Redefining Culture – Birmingham’s Independent Festivals

• Birmingham Post – Creative industries’ major role in Birmingham economy
  Anna Blackaby runs through the provisional findings of a new report commissioned by the Creative Birmingham Partnership Board. It’ll apparently conclude that “small firms operating in digital media, music and computer software and those in the design and architecture areas should be the focus of support”
• Take it away from Arts Council England
  “Take it away is an Arts Council initiative designed to help more people get involved in learning and playing music. The scheme allows individuals to apply for a loan of up to £2,000 for the purchase of any kind of musical instrument, and pay it back in nine monthly instalments, completely interest free”
• Better Never Than Late – The Gas Lamp Killer
  bntl feature some pics from the gig at the Hare & Hounds last week
• Best Believe – Vintage Style
  “a round up of all the places in Birmingham that you can get yourself fully hooked up on a purely vintage tip”
• Built On Sand: A Birmingham Sampler ’78-’86
  “The mix concerns itself with Birmingham’s vibrant but infamously fragmented and undervalued punk and post-punk scene of the late 70s and early 80s” Not sure who spotted this first, so apologies, but I’m seeing this everywhere at the moment
• FaceBoot Bar-Boot Sale, 5 Dec 2009 | Hare and Hounds
  A car boot sale with a difference. Free stalls. Click the link for contact details

At the kratesitwards (as some are calling them) on Saturday, Coun Neville Summerfield bigged up some of the support initiatives for creative types in Birmingham:

• Creative Birmingham – pulling together key public agencies investing in the creative industries
• Design Space – accommodates and finances new design agencies in the Jewellery Quarter
• SRB6 Creative Industries – offers a range of business support to new businesses in the north-west of the city
• Enterprise City – provides coaching and mentoring services to new and expanding businesses
• Business Support for Creative Industries Programme – £9m flagship initiative.  Created 800 jobs, safeguarded 400 jobs, helped start 250 businesses and supported 1,200 businesses in total.  Generated over £15m in new sales

As far as I can tell, SRB6 has ended, enrolment in Enterprise City is closed (the scheme ends in March 09) and I can’t find any info about Creative Birmingham at all.

D’log tried looking into the schemes mentioned when Coun Summerfield responded to the issue of support for the creative sector last month. He had problems finding any useful information too.

The thing is, maybe there are lots of helpful support schemes out there but how many eligible people/companies know about them and where’s the information being made available? I guess the place to go would be Creative Launchpad (currently residing online here) or Business Link but it’s a shame the info doesn’t seem to be collected together somewhere useful.

Actually, I’ve just found West Midlands Finance, which describes itself as “comprehensive, continually updated finance information for West Midlands SMEs”. Feel free to register and have a root about but the need to register has put me right off – what’s the need exactly? Humph.