Created in Birmingham

The Moseley Folk Festival was its usual mix of good music and great atmosphere. There are already bundles of photos from the weekend up on Flickr. Stanthefan and katchooo have been impressively prolific but this one’s from Adrian and Sarah:

And this one’s by Leodensian:

That’ll be Hannah from Boat To Row playing her last show with the band. A good gig to go out on.

While looking for something completely different the other day, I stumbled across a set of photos on BMAG’s Flickr account called ‘Behind the Scenes at BMAG‘.

Very interesting it was too – fashion shoots, roof works (with views across the city) and the conservation studio. Here’s the slideshow:

• We Are Birmingham team up with Bullring for a very exciting public art project | We Are Birmingham
  Tom Tebby, Carl Booth, Matt Murtagh and James Thompson are doing something to cover the hoardings while the Spiceal Street development goes on
• ‘type-writing’ Symposium – good, long, comprehensive write-up of the event from Rachel Marsden, who was also one of the speakers
• Porter, E. and Barber, A. (2007) Planning the cultural quarter in Birmingham’s Eastside
  From 2007 (deposited June 2010) “ In Birmingham UK, the aim to create a new cultural quarter in the industrial inner city area of Eastside represents a unique opportunity for the city to examine and learn from past lessons of the “cultural turn” in urban policy. The article examines these lessons and whether the Eastside scheme is set to repeat the mistakes of the past”
• Turning Point West Midlands | Event, 26 May
  An afternoon to find out about professional development opportunities for artists, makers and curators in the West Mids
• BBC U-turn over Asian Network closure
  “The BBC has reversed its decision to close the Asian Network digital radio station – but will look to cut its budget in half”
• Licence to shoot | The Sunday Times
  Nice bit of profile for First Light Movies in The Sunday Times. “Wanting to give today’s youth a voice, James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli is backing young movie-makers in an inspiring project”
• Jurn crowd-funding call « D’log
  “My JURN search-engine is expanding, with your help! I’d like to build on the two years of hard work I’ve already put into building JURN. I want to make a world-class dedicated search-engine for open-access content in the arts, humanities, and (if funded) the social sciences”
• April Bloomfield: the English chef taking Manhattan by storm
  Similar to the article we linked to a few months back. Fascinating lady
• Orbital – Live At The Dance Factory
  Live recording of Orbital at The Dance Factory, Birmingham, UK, June 5th, 1993
• Social Media Tips for Musicians
  Bobbie Gardner did a talk for someone (I think it was Sound It Out) and has written up her notes
• A Birmingham Flickr Directory
  A nice, healthy list of Birmingham-related Flickr groups. Started in 2006 and still being updated

Jade Sukiya is a photographer with an eye for a striking image or two. Here’s her intro:

I was born in the mid-eighties to two admirably creative people. Years later that inevitable reality struck as having both my brother and I forced them to get ‘real’ jobs and lead a fairly restricted existence. My story begins at this point, although I can’t recall a thing up until the age of about four and even that’s a little hazy, sometimes I think I made my memories up…

More of Jade’s images like the one below, and many other completely different ones, can be found on her Myspace page and her Flickr account. She’s also got a tumblr with bits and pieces of her favourite stuff in it to check out too.

Today’s snow has ensured the UK has come to a standstill once again, but it does makes any landscape look incredibly beautiful. Here are some of the eighty odd photographs added to Flickr since the snow started floating down onto Birmingham last night.

Black horse on a white platform by abrinsky

B29 snow by pindec

by zosia swidlicka

#365 – Morning snow at Sherborne Wharf by Star-one

View them all on this slideshow.

Birmingham Flickrers met for a photo-taking wander around the Jewellery Quarter yesterday and the photos are starting to go up online. Here’s the slideshow:

New people are always welcome so if you’re interested in going along then join the Birmingham Flickrmeet group. The next Flickrmeet will be on Sunday 8 Feb (location tbc).

Tom from Substrakt tried a simple little exercise the other day:

Inspired by the My Day Yesterday group on Flickr, I decided to have a go at condensing my Friday into a single 90 seconds movie

My Day (Friday) from deplorableword on Vimeo.

There’s been a discussion bubbling away in the past few weeks about establishing a dedicated space for photography in Birmingham.  Much of this has been taking place among members of the Birmingham Flickr group.

Now there’s to be a get-together to try and take things further:

A small group of us are getting together on Wednesday 17th September 2008 at 6.30pm in Rooty’s (the Custard Factory) to discuss some of the ideas that have arisen from our Flickr discussion on setting up a group to push for the establishment of a Photospace for Birmingham.

For background info you can see the PhotoBirmingham blog and the original (and still ongoing) discussion on Flickr.

John Garghan is a photographer who, to be mundane about it, takes beautiful photos of the details of burnt out cars.  He puts it much better:

My aim is to capture the disturbance to surfaces created by acts of joy riding and arson by zooming into disfigured vehicle parts that are occupied in the lifecycle of metals, fabrics, and glass. Their corrosion is a natural process that tries to reclaim human made objects to an elemental state more in line with the energy of the molecules these objects are made of, torching accelerates this journey of returning to the earth and I look to capture, investigate and at times distort results of the advancement of its lifecycle

John also has a blog called ‘You will never think of them in the same way again‘ which gives an interesting insight into what he’s been up to and what he thinks about.

John has a Flickr account too.  Happily, Flickr has just made it easier to embed photos and slideshows on other sites (like blogs) so here’s a slideshow of John’s work (not all are of burnt cars):

Thanks to Jon Bounds for spotting John Garghan’s blog and Joanna Geary for the Flickr embed info.