Created in Birmingham

Let me introduce myself, I’m Kate Spragg and I am taking the reins of Created in Birmingham from Chris. I’m sure you’ll agree that Chris has done a fantastic job since taking over in May 2008. The blog has brought together the Birmingham creative community which I look forward to becoming a part of, and finding out what makes it so vibrant, tenacious and proud of the city it belongs to.

I should point out that I don’t live in Birmingham – I live in Wolverhampton, but hopefully my passion for Brum’s creativity should make up for that. I have a Fine Art degree, but have moved into more digital creative pursuits since graduating in 2004. In the last couple of years I have worked in marketing and creative business development at Light House in Wolverhampton, co-organised the Flip Animation Festival, including running the event’s blog. I also co-run Colour with my fiancé Matthew. We put on live music events and write a blog.

As well as listings and regular news updates, I want to investigate how your creative endeavours impact on the city as a whole, and to find out how creative types can get ahead. I would like to continue the good work of Chris and Pete before him, and encourage others to utilise online media and tools to create, promote and reach out.

Please say hello if you see me out and about and you can follow me on Twitter, if you like.

Deaffest 2008, the tenth annual deaf-led film and TV festival will be held in Wolverhampton at the Light House 28-30 November.

The weekend of festivities will include screenings of films produced by UK and International Deaf filmmakers; Young Deaffest, which showcases work produced by young Deaf filmmakers; and a conference on Opportunities for Deaf Filmmakers, with panel discussions on how to pitch for funding for a short or feature film, a new Deaf TV channel and content for new online and mobile platforms

The programme looks quite impressively stuffed.  Tickets are free, save for the Saturday night’s gala event (£12.50 and available from www.theticketsellers.co.uk).

The Flip Animation Festival (6-8 November at Light House, Wolverhampton) has been assembling a rather tasty line-up over the past little while, as documented on their nicely informative blog.

Highlights include:

A retrospective of work from Osbert Parker, best know for his cut out animation style mixed with live action; BAFTA & Screen WM Presents: Ninja Theory, the game developers behind the stunning Heavenly Sword and Kung Fu Chaos; Sita Sings the Blues, a screening of this modern classic and Indian epic; a day of Doctor Who animation treats and a real Dalek fleet will invade Light House!

The line-up is up on the Flip Festival website and tickets are available at very reasonable prices.

It’s competition time!

However, if you’d rather swipe a ticket for free then here’s your chance.  There are two available, to be given separately (ie not as a pair) so there’ll be two winners.

All you have to do is leave a comment claiming your ticket, first two claimants will win.  Rules are as before (except for the first one) and please use a proper email address so I can get in touch.

Halloween might not be my bag but at least it’s an excuse to put some interesting events on.

Aside from the Ikon Eastside closing party there are a fair number of Halloween-themed things going on.  These are they (all happening on Friday 31 October, except the last two):

• The National Trust are putting on events in the back to back buildings (50-54 Inge Street/55–63 Hurst Street, Birmingham).  From 11.30am – 4pm they’ve got some nice events for the kiddies, then from 7pm to 9.30pm they’re “offering visitors a unique opportunity to linger for a while in our shadow-laden rooms, and silently reflect on the atmosphere of the back houses lit by candles, fires and oil lamps”
• The Town Hall are showing Nosferatu with an organ accompaniment by Nigel Ogden
• The Light House are showing Dracula, the Hammer version with Christopher Lee
• The Local Shorts Film Club are running a Halloween special at the Library Theatre
• Vivid are showing a slowed-down version of Psycho that will last a full 24 hours.  It starts at 9pm on Friday 31st and ends at 9pm the next day.  Entry is free
• At the Old Joint Stock Theatre, “Gemini present an evening of ghostly tales around the history of the Old Joint Stock followed by readings from a Medium”.  The night’s called Ghostly Histories and perhaps the scariest part is that the blurb mentions “clairvoyants with solid reputations”
• And on 1 November the Outer Edge’s next event at The Edge features “some obscure 3D horror and live horror sound effects from DJ FreakBeat”. Email outersight@live.com or text 07887 956297 for info.
• Also on 1 November, Capsule/ATP are putting on a Halloween show.

Thanks to the West Mids Life blog for a leg up compiling this.  Is there anything good I’ve missed?

The Light House in Wolverhampton are offering creative start-ups the chance to advertise themselves on the Light House LCD Screen Network.

This is a great opportunity for any creative business, from production companies and graphic designers to photographers and more. The screen network covers the main Chubb Buildings reception and Lock Works bar which currently sees a weekly footfall of 1000 people. The building contains over 10 companies and the bar area is a popular venue for business meetings, wifi users and networking events.

If you are interested and require further information then please contact Fung Ye Tsang, fungye@light-house.co.uk

Whilst browsing about the site I noticed they’ve got a few short animations you can watch on their media page.  I particularly recommend ‘Onions’ by Natalie Hinchley.

• Gigbeth – What’s On
  The schedule for Gigbeth is coming together. Young Knives, Guillemots, The Destroyers, Sugarhill Gang and Einstellung are down so far with more to come
• Light House October Highlights
  Featuring independent film releases and new photography exhibition ‘Imagined Lines’cib by Matthew Hammond
• Curates Egg Autumn Programme
  Here’s the Curates Eggs’ latest mailout. All sorts of things going on including some stuff for the Birmingham Comedy Festival. There’s also some recommendations for other peoples events, which is always good to see
• The Bad One review
  Whatsonstage Midlands reviews Women & Theatre’s latest play… and they like it
• Clusta Brand Cool Brands
  “CoolBrands, the annual survey of the UK’s coolest brands, appointed Clusta to overhaul the brand identity for its 2008/09 programme”
• Another Byte Of Banality: Turn It up Sonny…
  Looking for used Soundsystems, PAs, Speakers, Amps, Microphones and other audio miscellany? Mark 19 October in your diary as the date of ‘Urban Village’ Dave’s Used Pro Audio Fair at the Custard Factory
• Homer Creative
  “a creative communications agency” who seem to do any number of related things including graphic design, web design, writing, editing, art direction, photography, etc and so on. They designed the cover for Gaynor Arnold’s Booker longlisted ‘Girl In A Blue Dress’ too

I’ve been feeling a bit off-colour the past couple of days, so apols for the lack of decent posting.  If anything’s going to raise my spirits it’s the prospect of a sodding great whale and a huge robot both turning up in the city.  It’s like Power Rangers or something.

The former comes courtesy of Claudia Losi’s Balena Project as presented by Ikon Gallery (and previously alluded to).  A 25ft cashmere whale will be deposited by the escalators in The Mailbox from 24 Sept to 26 Oct.  This is what it looks like:

Hmm, so it doesn’t look like a fearsome, city-levelling villain, more like me flopped on my sofa feeling sorry for myself.

Meanwhile, flyers for Hello Digital (a mere 6 weeks away and still no-one knows quite what it is) will apparently be distributed around the Bullring tomorrow by a giant robot.  Brilliant!

I’ll write something about Hello Digital when I know what’s going on but details have been trickling out:

• It’ll be happening predominently at Millennium Point and will be free to attend
• SCAMP will kick things off on the first night with an “electro-acoustic and live visual performance”
• An international digital conference called ‘Hello World’ will take place on 23-24 October
• There’ll be an interactive ‘Field of Light‘ from the Plus Expo people, controllable via a microsite (this sounds dead cool)
• Capsule’s ‘Home of Metal‘ project will launch at Wolverhampton Art Gallery on Saturday 25 Oct
• Baskerville: The Animated Movie will get it’s premiere
• Killriculum seems to involve getting kids to watch scary short films while lying in coffins
• Digital Storytelling is “a touching vision of the world we live in”. Hmm, sounds very worthy
• The Light House in Wolverhampton, in association with 4Talent, will be screening “contemporary and classic film from the Film4 back catalogue”

So far the Hello Digital blog and Twitter are up and running and the main site is due to go live any minute now.  Meanwhile here’s the flyer:

• KateGoes and Writes a BBC Theme Tune
  “KateGoes are doing a theme tune for a new BBC sitcom called Coming of Age” as spotted by Dunc from the Autumn Store
• Crisp dust and car boot sales- is it art?
  BBC preview of the forthcoming Margaret Street MA show
• Light House September/October Events
  Spaghetti Gazetti have the list of what’s on over at the Light House in Wolverhampton
• Juneau Projects Live Album Launch
  Fused also report that “Juneau Projects will be launching their live album ‘I Went to the Woods’ at New Art Gallery Walsall on Thursday 28 August 2008, 6pm-8pm and admission is free”
• Help break a World Record this week
  If you have any free time this week everyone working on the Big Picture would love to see you at Thinktank to help build this huge artwork. You can turn up at any time between 10am – 4pm each day until Thursday this week (if you’d like more details see the Big Picture site)
• Sarah Ray exhibition
  Fused report that “The very talented Sarah Ray will be exhibiting her work at The Marcus Galleries from the end of this month”

The Flip Animation Festival is on from 6-8 November (Thurs to Sat) at the Light House in Wolverhampton.

This year the festival will feature the C-Games Conference, a Drawing in the Digital Age symposium, an afternoon of animated Doctor Who and various screenings, talks and so on.

The website’s just coming together but the peeps at the Light House are running The Flip Blog and have put up a few quite charming items already.

For the animators out there, the last date for submissions is 8 August, so get your skates on if you’re planning to send something in.  Here’s how to submit to Flip 08.

• PLOT – Supporting Creative People
  Got a start-up creative business in the West Mids and want business/marketing/mentoring advice? Drop into the Light House on Sat 21 June between 12-4pm for their Creative Sessions
• Robot Vs Dinosaur have a blog
  Which alerted me to the fact that Datassette has relaunched his site. RvD’s next night of laptoptronica is at Island Bar on Fri 20 June. They’ve got themselves a YouTube channel too.
• The Public opening weekend
  Fused Magazine have been going through the details – “the building is finally due to open its doors for the first time at the end of this month with a free festival programme on the 28th and 29th June”.
• FLUX-FEST – flyer
  Feast your eyes on the flyer and stick an event or two in your calendar.

Some great news from the peeps at 7 Inch Cinema landed on the virtual doormat today.  The Flatpack Festival is the worthy recipient of funding for the next three years, securing it’s future and allowing the organisers to maybe think a little bigger.

Peter Buckingham from the UK Film Council (who are providing the funding) said of Flatpack:

Their innovative approach to screening films in churches, warehouses and shopping centres as well as cinemas and gallery spaces is a brilliant idea because it helps to attract new audiences to some great short films, animation and live film events

Flatpack 3 will take place in Feb 2009 and will launch “with a tribute to Birmingham’s pioneering film showman Waller Jeffs“.

DeafFest at Wolverhampton Light House have also received funding so well done to them too.

Last word goes to the understandably chuffed Flatpack producers:

without going all Oscar-night about it, it wouldn’t have been possible without all the filmmakers, volunteers, artists, promoters, technicians, funders, venues and enthusiastic punters who have chipped in to help us get this far. So thanks a lot, and here’s to Flatpack III in February 2009 and beyond…

An exhibition currently running at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery showcases the photography of Pogus Caesar, one of Birmingham’s most important visual artists.

The exhibition, That Beautiful Thing, features 43 photographs selected from a portfolio that runs into several thousands taken over a 20 year period both in the UK and abroad.

Putting the breadth and importance of Pogus Caesar’s work in perspective is a tricky thing – he’s well known for his photos of 1985′s Handsworth riots (the pic above being an example) but his experience, travels and areas of work are all incredibly wide. Roger Shannon does a good job of pulling it all together in this Birmingham Post article.

The exhbition runs until 12 July.  In addition, on 3 July from 6-8pm at the Light House, Caesar will celebrate

20 years working in Television and Film with a screening of selected highlights from his award winning career, including work produced and directed for Central TV, BBC, Channel 4 and Carlton Television.

Throughout the screening he’ll be in conversation with Prof Shannon.  Entrance is free.

June’s Out Of Hours, the creative sector socialising shindig at the Light House in Wolverhampton, features a look at the work of Sarah Ray, a Birmingham-based illustrator who’ll be introducing her exhibition Good Day.

Among many other things she’s been featured by 4Talent magazine (as per the pic) who will also be there to talk “about how illustration helps shape their visual identity”.

A backdrop will be provided by VJs Cinecull. That’s on Monday 16 June, 7-9pm and entry is free.

I went along to the Animation Forum West Midlands event, Shorts On Walls, on Monday which was most enjoyable. The organisers were certainly pleased with how things went and have said so on their pleasingly blog-ish news page.

Also on that page is the evening’s screening schedule with links to the animators’ profiles. I understand they were trying their best to accept last minute submissions meaning giving out a running order on the night wasn’t possible, so it’s good to see it here.

It also helps me to pick out the films that I particularly enjoyed and give them an extra plug here.

First up, ‘Don’t Touch’ by Louis Hudson from Dice Productions.

The Nickolodeon-style anarchy of Pedro & Frankensheep from the Brothers McLeod was great and has apparently been picked up by CBBC.

A name that cropped up again and again was Natalie Ann Hinchley. She has a credit on Pedro & Frankensheep, her Second Home Productions outfit produced the jaw-dropping ‘The Animal Book’ (only the trailer here but it’s still a treat)

and, although I can’t find a video to embed, go and check out the Light House commissioned ‘Onions’ on Natalie’s website – animated bunnies are always a winner.

I’m at risk of just listing everyone here so I’ll finish with a few quick mentions:

• Although less polished, the video for Nyoto Ndogo’s track Dunia (remix) has a good energy about it and I like the song (presented by Andrew Burchell).
• ‘What If’ by Mat Parker’s Short Animations 4 Education was uncomfortable viewing for the right reasons (trailer only on the site).
• Steven Spencer describes ‘My Brown Friend‘ as a “dark exploration of addiction” which it is.
• Finally, the YouTube embedding has been disabled but I’ll forgive that (just about) to mention ex-BCU MA student Guillaume Weiss’s ‘4:51‘ which I thought was just incredible.