Created in Birmingham

• Brummie of the Year 2008 – Nominations open
  BiNS are asking for your suggestions. The early frontrunner seems to be the (semi-anonymous) TWMDriver
• D’log – Flogging Brum
  “An overseas student recounts his first-time experience of visiting Birmingham”. There’s a 2nd post too. BMAG fares well, Think Tank less so.
• How to promote your night/gig/event online | Chris Unitt
  My notes from a short talk I did last week. This might be of use to someone. It’s not quite comprehensive and all suggestions for improvements would be welcome
• Quiet time
  BiNS provides an update on the previously mentioned ‘The Eye of the Storm’ project. “One hundred and fifty people from around Brum (including Clare Short) were interviewed to discover each’s individual attempts to “manage the stresses of modern living and find calm within the storm”.” The outdoor installation part will be in Birmingham next year
• Exhibition Now Open! | Heard And Not Seen
  The exhibition launched last week and the show runs daily (including Sundays) until the 28th of November. Looks like an interesting one this
• Digbeth is Good – Blank canvas once more
  Nicky spots a wall that’s ripe for a mural
• Prime Objective Blog :: Special People Screening
  Chris “shot stills for a feature film called Special People” back in March. The film is now touring and coming to the Electric Cinema on 24 Nov
• Eye blog » Type, tart cards, T-shirts and crosses
  The piece on the Plus+ International Design Festival I wrote for Eye Magazine’s blog
• CMYKern – Giveaway
  James collected some stuff from Clusta, 4Talent and BIAD at Plus+ the other day
• Art and public transport – commuter survey
  “part of Transitions – my action research commissioned by Longhouse (www.longhouse.com.uk) that concerns the possibilities for creating and disseminating art in a public transport context” Please do it if you’ve got a sec

Another big weekend with something for everybody (unless you happen to hate animation, music and design in equal measure, in which case you can just do one) with:

• Plus+ International Design Expo
• Flip Animation Festival
• Gigbeth

Plus+ kicked off today at Fazeley Studios, Digbeth.  I’m heading over in a bit and am not really sure what to expect other than the much-discussed tart cards.  I suppose I’m looking forward to catching a talk or two and just having a mooch about.

Flip is over in Wolverhampton at the Light House and consists of three days of animation goodness – screenings, portfolio dissections, talks and all sorts, with a closing party hosted by Colour.

Gigbeth kicks off with the conference tomorrow and carries on through to Saturday evening.  There’s loads of info out there for anyone wanting to look.  May I direct you to:

• The programme
• Jon Bounds’ round-up (featuring a link to his Gigbeth MySpace marathon)
• Info about 4Talent’s stage, featuring CiB’s Pete Ashton between the other acts
• Rich Batsford has blogged about playing the 4Talent stage and also at Drop Beats Not Bombs later in the evening
• Rhubarb Radio will be broadcasting live feeds from some of the stages

• Plus+ International Design Expo – schedule
  Listings of all the events are up online. Read what’s going on, become intruiged, buy a ticket. Or don’t – maybe design’s not your thing
• The Big Picture film
  “the story of a record breaking project…”
• Lots Of Things To See And Do In The West Midlands: November 2008
  It’s a good month for music by Russ L’s reckoning. Other notables include the Flip Animation Festival and the Supreme Cat Show
• Gavin Strange at the Apple Store
  Gavin Strange, founder of JamFactory and designer of graphics for skateboard decks and toys, will be showcasing his work at the Apple Store. November 4, 5pm
• Gigbeth Conference – Delegate tickets
  They’re available now and will set you back £100 plus VAT. Sessions include Fyfe Dangerfield interviewed by Janice Long and talks from Marc Jaffrey (Music Manifesto), Maggie Crowe (BPI and Governor of the BRIT School), Rich Castillo (A&R for Shalit Global) and Alexis Grower (International music lawyer)

• 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!

• First Light Movies: Win Hammer film posters here!
  First Light’s blog has got off to a good start and now they’ve got a competition going. Have a look at one of the films they’ve funded and, by commenting on it, you can win yourself a poster
• stereographic » Plus+ 2008 – call for help…
  Can anyone help Stereographic out? They need:
  (1) a mannequin – full sized / male or female. (If by any chance anyone has a reflective mannequin that would be a mega bonus!)
  (2) any ‘discarded design’ fellow designers / artists / companies have that they want to get rid of – things like demo prints / failed pitch designs / overruns on brochures etc
• WOW: Hello, my name is Sarah :)
  Sarah Carter is “a design student that loves branding and typography”. She’s been working on Baskerville: The Animated Movie and did some live drawing at Re-Sketch at The Rainbow. This is her blog
• Miss Halliwell make their back catalogue available for free download!
  Little Chris spots that Miss Halliwell (not Geri) have put their two EPs up online for free
• Modulate says “Hello” with digital technology
  “some of our members have been working away in the background on one of the interactive installations, “Field of Light ”, a project dreamed up by the PLUS team, who also devised ’Illuminate‘”
• Plus+: Booking Tickets NOW OPEN
  £40 (25 conc) for four days, £15 (10 conc) for one. Get em while they’re hot.
• Anthony J Hughes on arts funding
  Interesting piece – “Funding as a concept and the funding and economic redevelopment projects aimed at supporting ‘creative industries’ has actually become a system supporting government ‘intervention’ and policy”
• stitches and hos October
  The 8th meeting of the “monthly knitting hootenanny” at the Hare & Hounds is on Tues 28 October

• Cut-Out
  Not quite sure what the deal is with this one. They’ve got a DIY print studio and are looking for people to submit designs for them to use on T-shirts and so on. A physical shop is apparently coming in summer 09, in the meantime they’re up online with a website (coming soon) and this blog
• Birmingham Music
  “The Town Hall and Symphony Hall website have launched a new online booking system for their events… Also, as an introductory offer, you can take advantage of free postage on all bookings up to November 30th”
• Draft Vision for a Birmingham Photospace
  The next meeting about this is on Tues 14 October at 6.30pm in the Library cafe, Birmingham city centre. Seek out the Birmingham Flickr group for how the discussion about this is going; this is a link to the draft vision they’ve prepared
• Flip Blog – Grads On Walls Event
  The Flip Animation folk put out a reminder for the Animation Forum WM’s Grads on Walls event on Monday (good to see people talking up other people’s events – a very smart thing to do, I’d say)
• Birminghams Most Stylish – Style Birmingham
  “The 500 people who have made it through this year’s Style Search will be whittled down to just ten this weekend at a special party at Gatecrasher”. Why am I linking to this? Um… just spreading the joy I guess
• Script screenwriting course
  “Script, in association with Outside Centre, presents an in-depth Introduction to Screenwriting Course” at Wolverhampton’s Light House
• Plus+: Fazeley Studios 2008 Plus Venue
  Is it me or does the text in the link make no sense. Basically, Fazeley Studios has been chosen as the venue for the 2008 Plus Design Festival. Shame on me for not spotting that they had a blog though, and thanks to Nicky at Digbeth is Good for pointing it out
• Facebook group – mid*point
  “mid*point is the network for independent theatre companies in the West Midlands” There doesn’t seem to have been any activity on the website for over a year but they’ve just started a Facebook group so something must be going on under the hood

The theme of this year’s Plus International Design Festival is ‘Hybrid’.  It takes place on 5 to 8 November 2008 and, as the folks at Fused have picked up on, a call has been put out for submissions:

The Festival is now seeking exhibitors, speakers and demonstrators to work to the theme of Hybrid, which has been chosen as the focus of this year’s event as it not only aptly describes Britain – which is a unique country that has developed in an exceptional way – but it also expresses the current state of graphic communications.

I didn’t go to this last year and for no good reason.  I looked at it, thought it seemed really interesting and then felt daft for not bothering.  There’s a lesson there.  Anyway, enough mutterings, if you’re a designer then you probably want a link for some more info on those submissions.