Created in Birmingham

The British Science Festival has been taking place in Birmingham this week. Based around Aston University, the festival has brought a whole host of seminars, workshops and activities to make our brains ache, along with a chance to show that scientists can play just as hard as they work. Starting with this flash mob of dancing lab coats…

Already there has been plenty of interesting topics at the festival, including why exercise won’t cure obesity, how lasers are being used to explore the dark side of space, why finding love means loosing two of your best friends, and the preparation for an imminent British earthquake. The New Optimists also had a few events to coincide with the festival, including their book launch, and a panel event at Aston University.

But if you’ve been stuck at work all week, you can still catch plenty of things to do at the weekend, take a look at the online programme in full, where you can also filter out which events are suitable for your level of science knowledge and interests.

The eagle-eyed shoppers among you may have noticed ballet shoes and tutus, like the one pictured above found in the Created in Birmingham shop, popping up all over Bullring recently.

Add this to questions like “What is Urban Ballet?” on the shopping centre’s Life Feels Better twitter stream, and this Urban Ballet website, and it looks like there will be a surprise in store for Bullring visitors tomorrow. Perhaps a little something like this:

If you want to find out what Urban Ballet is, it looks like it will be kicking off between 11am and 2pm, so get practising those pirouettes and get down to Bullring.

I was agonising about how much I can say about this without giving too much away (given police intervention with recent Birmingham flash mobs) but I’ve just noticed all the info’s now up on the B-VAC blog anyway, so…

Tomorrow, Saturday 16 August, members of the Birmingham Visual Arts Coalition will be exhibiting pieces of their art to an unsuspecting public:

These ‘exhibitions’ will last for a very short period of time (ie. a matter of minutes) and if the public choose to view or ignore it they do so at their own discretion.  They will appear to be completely random and the members of B-VAC will not make themselves known to the audience until the point at which the exhibition begins.

This will happen between 1-2pm and the list of venues (in no particular order) is:

• Oozells Square – along the diagonal drain
• outside Bullring – by the Bull
• Centenary Square – by the fountain
• somewhere in the St. Phillip’s grounds
• Victoria Square – around the Andrew Gormley

Have a look at the B-VAC website for more info.