Created in Birmingham

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.

• The Music Network want your music listings info
  Email your Tour Dates, Record release information, flyers, posters, and the rest to info(at)birminghammusicnetwork.com (take particular note of HOW they want your info – help them to help you)
• Substrakt
  They’ve redesigned their website and it looks lovely
• New Zealand / Birmingham Artist Residency
  Birmingham and U.K creative culture as experienced by Modulate’s resident artist Damian Frey from New Zealand
• The headstone of John Baskerville
  Pretty fascinating stuff
• What I was alive for
  Pete Green says “I used to be in a band called The Regulars. We made an album called Effortless. You can’t buy it any more because there were only 100 copies. But you can download it from this blog, one track at a time, and read the lyrics and notes and stuff”
• Creative media networking event – Thurs 13th November
  It’s at Kings Heath Cricket club from 10am to 12.30pm. I think it’s being organised by Creative Launchpad but can’t find any info on their own website (or anywhere else) about it

• Musicians Wanted
  Any musicians out there want to help with a 3-day project at the Shard End youth centre? It’s with Headliners who do journalism projects for young uns and they’re offering some free publicity
• Buy Art from the Underground – Fused Magazine
  Nice to have Fused back and blogging. They’ve spotted that Simon & Tom Bloor and Juneau Projects were commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the roundel
• Second City Gallery looking for resident artists
  Mark Wilkinson and Sophie Handy weren’t impressed with a lack of collectively rentable, large studio/exhibition spaces so they’ve found their own. Give them a call if you’re interested in getting involved
• FREE training – Creative Launchpad
  Want to attend a course called “Business Planning for a Successful Creative Business”? You’re in luck…
• Job listing for Web Editor Internship, Flatpack Festival
  The Flatpack folk are looking for, essentially, a blogger with benefits. It’s unpaid but doing this sort of thing for Fierce is what started me on my journey to where I am now, and I’ve done ok
• Plus+ Touring the city with the Walking Tours
  I seem to remember the walking tours of Birmingham, with historian Ben Waddington as the guide, went down very well last year. Here are the plans for this year
• Clubbed nominated for the Raindance Award at the British Independent Film Awards
  Based in Cov, filmed in location in Birmingham and co-financed by Screen WM. Hurrah all round!