Created in Birmingham

Photo: Hotdogs by Matt Cattell

A few festive bits and bobs happening around Birmingham…

The Frankfurt Christmas Market closes on Friday 23 December, as does the Festive Pop Up Bazaar on New Street.

It’s the BrumNotes/This Is Tmrw Christmas Party at The Victoria tonight. Click the link or ogle the poster below (sidenote: are Lewes Herriot‘s gig posters the best around town at the moment? Answers on a postcard).

Birmingham Hippodrome have Cinderella on until the end of January and has already picked up some really good reviews from the Birmingham Mail and The Stage. I went along to the press night last night (disclosure: that means they gave me free tickets) and liked the lovely horsey best.

In other theatre-based offerings:

• The Rep have The Snowman at the ICC and Sleeping Beauty at the Crescent Theatre.
• Blue Orange Theatre in the Jewellery Quarter are doing A Christmas Carol
• The MAC have The Lost Happy Endings

In fact, Area Guide’s December issue has a Christmas theatre round-up from page 26 onwards. Ah, and Visit Birmingham have a Christmas round-up too.

Film-wise, Kino 10 are showing The Nightmare Before Christmas plus some short films at St Columba Church on Friday 23 Dec and The Electric have a smattering of festive films too.

Town Hall & Symphony Hall have a bundle of events going on:

• Polar (this afternoon)
• The CBSO’s Great Big Choral Christmas
• Christmas Eve Classics
• Boxing Day Gala

Meanwhile, down in that London, Birmingham Royal Ballet are seeing out the year performing The Nutcracker at the O2, which sounds like a pretty big deal to me.

There’s loads of other stuff too, obviously. If you’ve got any other good suggestions then bung them in the comments.

The Birmingham Post has a pretty grim report on the latest Birmingham City Council arts funding decisions. You may remember that a significant chunk was taken away this time last year. Well, the current level of funding will be frozen for a couple of years, with plans to take away a further £1.4m in 2014.

In response to that, mac have said they might have to close for 6 weeks from January 2013, reduce their operating hours and feature less adventurous work.

The Music Hub organisations (Symphony Hall, the Town Hall, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Ex Cathedra) are apparently being accused of not getting their act together sufficiently and have been told they can just have one year of funding for the time being.

So, yes. Grim. The Post goes so far as to use the phrase ‘plunged into crisis’.

I’d like to quote something I wrote a year ago:

The leaked figures suggested a rather bleak scenario of 2012/13 and 2013/14 – one that’s been described as ‘politically unacceptable’. The idea, as I understand it, is for the figures announced yesterday to hold for the next three years. Funding is to be kept at this level by income generated by (for example) sponsorship secured by the likes of Performances Birmingham (Town Hall/Symphony Hall to you and I)

Is the scenario any less bleak or, for that matter, politically acceptable? The attempts to sell naming rights for the Town Hall and Symphony Hall have apparently fallen through too, by the way – corporate cash being a bit more tricky to come by these days.

One last thing – it’s worth noting that the Birmingham Post article was written by Paul Dale who left the paper yesterday. Over the years he’s done more than his fair share of bothering people in power and I’ve enjoyed reading his work. I was gutted to see him go (I bet there are a few who feel relieved) and wish him all the best in whatever he does next.

• Urban Buildings • Redevelopment, Redesign, Rediscovery
  A site covering the construction works going on in Birmingham (and further) also looking at old/derilict buildings
• Galleries Night – On the Art Bus
  Art, bus, art, bus, art, bus, etc. With bonus wine and mince pies. This is tonight and features the Barber Institute, Mac, Ikon, Eastside Projects and RBSA galleries
• P110HD’s Channel – YouTube
  “Specialising in urban media. Based in Birmingham”
• Birmingham Loves Photographers
  BLP have a shiny new website
• Connecting Innovation
  A report by Steve Harding which addresses these themes of cross innovation and that kind of thing in the context of Birmingham. One for the policy heads.

I’ve been forwarded the following which has been written by Anita Bhalla, chair of mac’s board of trustees. As it’s an open letter I figure there’s no problem with me reproducing it in full. Excuse me for dispensing with the usual blockquote rigmarole.

———————————————————-

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Supporters,

As you may be aware, Birmingham City Council has recently launched a public consultation process on its budget plans from April 2012 onwards, and we thought it would be of interest to you as a customer and supporter of mac birmingham to hear how the city’s plans are affecting our work.

mac reopened in May 2010 after a £15.2m redevelopment and refurbishment. Birmingham City Council played a major role in the development providing £6.7m of investment and delivering the project under their Partnering Framework with Thomas Vale Construction, one of the region’s award winning construction companies. The rest of the funding came from Arts Council England (£6.2m) and from a highly successful fund-raising appeal with donations from companies, individuals and grant-making trusts (£2.3m). Over 850,000 visits were made to “new” mac in its first year after reopening.

mac’s finances are finely balanced in a mixed economy; in our second year since reopening 26% of our turnover is investment from the City Council. Since our much lauded reopening year our business confidence is established and a growing percentage of our income is earned from box-office, sponsorship and other commercial activities.

As part of its response to the government’s public spending cuts, the City Council has already substantially reduced the amount of funding it gives to all the arts organisations in the city and in April this year mac birmingham’s grant was cut by 14%, a cash reduction of £107,000 per annum.

To cope with this significant reduction in income we have driven further the plans which were developed prior to reopening, maximising efficiency, amending our programming plans and increasing our efforts to maximise all other income streams. Throughout the planning and delivery of the mac/sampad Building Project we sought to maximise future efficiency through, for example, creating a flexible staffing structure, delivering a cost-efficient building with an effective building management system, reducing our carbon footprint and our running costs, increasing recycling, using digital technology to manage our building and our communications. Our shared office space has also allowed us provide improved facilities for our partners sampad and for other artists, arts companies and community agencies who share the mac creative hub.

Whilst we fully recognise that we cannot be exempt from the public spending cuts being imposed at the moment, there are few options available for further reducing costs without severely damaging our services. Whilst we continue to look for greater efficiencies and sharing of services we do fear that any further cuts in BCC funding will lead to a serious “downward spiral” in which the inevitable reductions in artistic activity will lead to lower earned income and funding. Further investment secured from additional sources may well then be withdrawn due to our diminished capacity to deliver our agreed programme.

How you can help

Birmingham’s arts infrastructure and activities have, for so long, been a vital tool in the city’s aim to improve the quality of life for its citizens, its inward investment performance and its status as a true global city. Evidence of the hugely beneficial impact of the creative industries can be found at www.birminghamartspartnership.co.uk

City based cultural organisations contribute £271m to the region’s economy per year. This is generated from almost 2 million attendances, with arts attenders generating £40m in Additional Visitor Spend (AVS). This represents a return on investment of £29 for every £1 that Birmingham City Council spends on funding the arts.

All of the city’s arts organisations believe that we are now at the tipping point where incremental reductions in costs are no longer achievable.

If you share our concerns and would not want to see the City Council reduce its funding to the independent arts organisations any further, I would urge you to make your views known to the City Council before the end of November.

• By filling out an online survey at  www.birmingham.gov.uk/budgetviews
• By emailing to budget_views@birmingham.gov.uk
• By text message to: 07786 200 403
• By writing to Budget Views, Room B119, The Council House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, B1 1BB

You may have received a similar plea from other arts organisations and we would urge you to respond to any one of us. Representation needs to be made before the end of November in order to be effective.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for your continuing support of mac birmingham.

Anita Bhalla
Chair of mac Board of Trustees

Harun Morrison (half of Fierce Festival) is also half of They Are Here and Their Wonderlands (which is at the MAC from 26 November) is

an international group exhibition, curated by multi-disciplinary collective They Are Here. Contemporary artists have been drawn together to explore the space given to make-believe and folklore in post-industrial 21st century European society.

The pic above is The Wind Can Always Turn by Susanne Ludwig.

I thought I’d post my response to an email I received from someone the other day. The emailer said (and these are a couple of extracts):

I am currently looking for creative projects to get involved with in the Birmingham area, specifically film or media based projects. I have lots of transferable skills through studying film on my course and I am looking for possible work experience (unpaid) in TV, film or any kind of production, as a runner, film grip and/or any position where the skills I have may come in useful.

My biggest focus is finding opportunities, getting out there and getting involved in anything I can, from possible collaborations to arts events, workshops, anything to keep me busy and anything that allows me to be creative and continues the type of work I was doing on my course.

I couldn’t think of anything specific but gave a few starting places. I operate on the assumption that CiB readers know much more than I do, so if anyone can add anything then please do in the comments. My reply:

Hey

I can’t think of any specific opportunities at the moment. It’s a bit of a funny time for that kind of thing at the moment, what with Screen WM (who used to put on events and so on) closing down a few months back and Creative England (the body taking their place) only just getting up and running. In the meantime it might be worth looking at http://www.bsin.co.uk/ and seeing what they’re up to.

Also, have a look at these events, get yourself along and see who you meet:

• http://www.producersforum.org.uk/
• http://www.creativenetworksonline.com/
• http://www.birminghamsmc.com/
• http://www.helloculture.net/ (this is on tomorrow)

Maybe see what courses are happening at http://www.macarts.co.uk/ or http://light-house.co.uk/

Cheers

Chris

I just came across this and don’t think I’ve linked to it from here before:

Funded by Arts Council England and jointly conceived by The New Art Gallery Walsall and mac Birmingham, British Summertime 2 is a career development programme for emerging and mid-career visual artists who come from diverse communities. More broadly, the programme aims to increasing knowledge, access, networks, artistic standards, and leadership in order to strengthen and enrich the visual arts scene.

The artists involved were Dan Auluk, Dilwara Begum, José Forrest-Tennant, Karen McLean, Mark Carroll, Pauline Bailey, Saranjit Birdi and Shaheen Ahmed.

There’s information here via New Art Gallery Walsall and there was a British Summertime 2 blog too.

Birmingham Conservatoire are offering ‘tricks and treats for everyone’ at their Composer’s Platform Halloween Special. If dinner and theatre’s your thing The Kitchen Garden Cafe is offering Fright Bites with Don’t Go into The Cellar Theatre Company.

On the filmic side, The Electric are showing Ghostbusters and at the MAC you can see Nosferatu with a live score by the Midlands Fretted Orchestra.

Jumping the gun by a good eight days (if they turned up at my door that early I’d tell them to do one) are KINO 10 with a Halloween Special promising short films with a ghoulish twist.

Also brought to my attention:

• FIRST FRIGHT: a half-term Halloween horror workshop at MAC from First Light
• There’s a screening of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with live organ accompaniment at the Town Hall
• Outer Sight Hallowe’en Super Shock Show at The Edge on Sat 29 Oct

Have I missed anything good?

I could never draw much more than a stick man on an Etch-a-Sketch but as part of The Big Draw, mac have been inviting people to show off their knob-twizzling skills and produce Etch-a-Sketch artwork for Re:sketch.

And the creativity hasn’t been restricted to the classic etch-a-sketch picture, as artists have been actively encouraged to paint and take apart their red framed tablets to create something new.

All of the artworks will be displayed in a public exhibition between 1-16 October and the deadline for submissions is 5pm, 27 September 2011, so there’s still time to get etching. For details on how to get involved, contact learning@macarts.co.uk.

I’ve not really had a very good look at this yet but there are some good people involved and there’s an interesting open aspect to it. I’ll do a quote-y thing here and leave you to investigate the rest:

anticurate is imagined as mac birmingham’s version of an open exhibition. In association with mac birmingham, artist Trevor Pitt has devised the anticurate project as a platform to explore democratic and collective approaches to exhibition curating

Submitted artworks will be exhibited in the main gallery using a flexible exhibition structure and space that has been designed by Juneau Projects.

Each exhibition will be individually organised by invited groups that we are calling ‘anticurators’, including:

•  young people from Project Platform and Ikon Youth programme
• a group of older people from Young at Heart
• members of the Extra Special People professional development  programme at Eastside Projects
• a selection of mac birmingham staff
• Carli Frances and Rosie Carmichael of No Aloha arts collective

I hadn’t realised this was online and picked up on it while skimming the latest from this / inexplicably / styled website from the Arts Council. I’ll let plan b (not that one) explain:

We are making a living portrait of 24 hours in Birmingham with the people who move through its streets, parks, waste grounds and tow paths on foot for the Fierce Festival and the Midlands Art Centre (MAC) See planbperformance.net/?dayinlife.htm for details

A Day in the Life – The Walkers of Birmingham is much more than just a living map, it is a portrait of a city as experienced at ground level. The animation emphasises walking by filtering faster journeys and making these lines more feint

Aaron Wright is something of a CiB alumnus having worked in the CiB Shop a year ago. He’s currently at the Live Art Development Agency in London and having a whale of a time from what I can gather.

Anyway, he emailed me to say there’s a couple of shows of particular note that are on in Birmingham in the next week or so.

SHAMS: Reykjavik

This is at the MAC from today until Saturday. Aaron saw it in London the other week and says:

It was really great – innovative immersive theatre done with real style which was unusually matched with great content – one man starting a new life in Iceland. It’s only for 25 audience members at a time and you get to wear a nice boiler suit

nOSTalgie: a cabaret

This is on Saturday at the CBSO Centre. The blurb says:

BCMG presents an evening of political songs and new vocal settings, under the brilliant direction of Dominic Muldowney, former Head of Music at the National Theatre

Buy a drink, take a seat and be transported by our cabaret singers, Mary Carewe and Richard Morris, between 1930s Germany and contemporary Britain, during an evening of entertaining delights from both eras

This is on tomorrow night at the MAC. Fatima Al Matar, Jodi Ann Bickley and Matt Windle all presenting new work.

More info via Apples and Snakes.

I only managed to turn up for a few hours of last year’s BE Festival but, for the atmosphere as much as the work presented, I thought it was great (my write up’s here).  so it’s good to see that it’ll be back this year from Tuesday 5 to Sunday 10 July.

This time, as well as the main programme at AE Harris, the MAC will be used for a launch party, some shows for children and some work-in-progress.

The press release I received included this plea:

Anyone interested in getting involved in any way with BE FESTIVAL should visit the website www.befestival.org or e-mail info@befestival.org. The deadline for artists’ applications is 29 April.

Tickets will be £10 per night, or £35 for a four day festival pass but I don’t think they’re on sale quite yet. Or, if you volunteer to host a visiting artist, you get a freebie. Can’t say fairer than that.

Today’s the last day for picking up discounted early bird tickets for Biting Back, taking place on 21 March:

a one day event from Birmingham City Council, mac and Sampad that will address how arts sector professionals and individual artists can learn from examples of successful partnerships in austere cultural landscapes.

Tickets will still be available, they’ll just be more expensive and saving money is the name of the game here. With less cash around to make things happen over the coming years, the idea is to hear from people (some from Birmingham, some from much further away) with practical experience of interesting partnerships and different ways of working.

The schedule for the day is here. I’ll be there talking about what we did with the Created in Birmingham Shop last year. Friction Arts, Stan’s Cafe, the Flyover Show, La Tabacalera, MIR Festival and more will feature too.

Biting Back is also on Twitter, Facebook and Lanyrd.