Created in Birmingham

• Fused Magazine – final call for delegates
  If you are a manager of a band, promoter, record label owner, music journalist, A&R, Label, DJ – anything related to music in the region and are interested in attending the SXSW festival at a subsidised rate contact Kerry Thomas on 0121 246 1946 / kerry@fusedmagazine.com.
• Burn fm’s Battle of the Bands
  Burn fm is holding a BOTB with a few other societies (Rock Society, Band Society) and Vale Fest, a charity festival entirely run by students. Any profits from the £5 ticket price will go towards the Vale Festival charities.
• Punch Records are looking for an intern
  The successful applicant will be working with the Bass Festival’s marketing team. Interested? Call Sophie in the Punch office on 0121 224 7444 or email sophie@punch-records.co.uk
• Joanna Geary on Social Media
  Insightful presentation from Development Editor Jo Geary on some of the lessons she’s learned while building the Birmingham Post’s presence in social media.
• Art Connect
  Created in Birmingham has been profiled and reviewed on the website Art Connect. The site looks at the importance of arts blogs, and said some very nice things about this one!

Punch Records are running a series of seminars that will be held at the Symphony Hall once a month from 28 January to 28 April. The topics and speakers are:

• Women In The Arts – speakers include Sarah Love (MTV and BBC 1XTRA), Sacha Brookes (Galaxy), Reena Combo (Editor, Lifestyle) and Justice Williams
• Live Performance – speakers include Skinnyman, Baby J and Witness
• Digital Dialogues – speakers include Karen Pearson and Simon from Doubleshot
• Music Moguls – speakers include Nigel Wells (CEO RWD magazone), Jordon Kesington (Urban Music Awards CEO), Disorda from Suspect Packages and Don from RGS Entertainment

Places are free but limited. Click here for more info.

(Reminder – vote for Created in Birmingham, we’re back in 2nd place now!)

• BCMG
  December newsletter for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
• ACE Dance Mapping Survey – West Midlands Dance
  The Arts Council are planning to pull together as much info as possible about all aspects of dance in the country. There’s a lot going on in the West Mids so if you’re involved in dance then I guess it might be worth chipping in
• Punch Update – December 2008
  Punch’s monthly update of what they’re up to
• Film Forum West Midlands – Linking up filmmakers in the Midlands…
  The Film Forum WM now has one of those roll-your-own social networks that are all the rage
• CMYKern – D8
  “Birmingham based D8 has some nice print work in their portfolio”

• Wrote Under
  Wrote Under, the open mic night for music, poetry, comedy, stories and such has a blog here. The next event is Sat 22 Nov at The Spotted Dog from 8.30pm
• Crescent Theatre Blog
  The Crescent Theatre has a blog. Hoorah!
• Punch – BASS 09 Commissions
  “The aim of this year’s theme is celebrate and explore Africa’s influence on the arts scene” They’ve got plenty of info about how to put an application in
• Special People, special film
  News that “the Screen WM co-financed feature film Special People had won Best Film at the Moscow Disabilty Film Festival”. The film is on at the Electric from Monday 24th

8Sixteen32 is on at The Rep from 5-8 November.  You’re invited “to follow the intertwining paths of five MCs as they go head-to-head in a fierce lyrical battle”.

The Decypher Collective presented a work in progress back in 2007 but this here is the finished article.  The collective:

originally formed after taking part in huge grime workshops put on by Punch Records and the Rep theatre. Hailing from various crews and production houses from all over Birmingham these intervals came together to develop the UKs first ever example of Grime Theatre

It’s the list of people involved that made my ears prick up though – Punch, Polarbear, Charlie Dark and Mark de Clive Lowe.

Here’s the trailer:

And here’s the flyer:

• shameless self promotion (for a good cause) « graphiquillan
  Please go and vote for Shona’s beautiful design. It’s so quick to do and you’ll be supporting Birmingham’s creativeness. Please. Go on
• 4Talent Central Film Weekender
  As part of the Hello Digital festival the local 4Talent folk have put together some film events at the Electric Cinema. On Friday there are 5 films from the annual Horrorfest competition. Saturday sees Pixar’s Michal Makarewicz introducing WALL-E (in high def). Sunday returns to horror with 28 Days Later, followed by a debate on the future of digital film
• YouTube – ArtsFest2008′s Channel
  ArtsFest has a YouTube channel for the 2008 events
• Punch – News – MOBO 2008 nomination for Punch!!!
  Ammo from Punch was nominated for a BeMOBO award which honours an individual or organisation making a difference in the community. He was pipped to the post by Ricky McCalla in the end but a round of applause is due nonetheless
• Twitter / punchrecords
  Punch have joined Twitter, by the way
• Big Cat Group on Hello Digital
  Big Cat give an overview of the events happening next weekend (Thurs – Sun) at Hello Digital
• Digbeth is Good- Sunday Xpress this Sunday at the Adam & Eve
  Promising not only “singers, poets, comedians, strange music-makers and rattlesnakes” but “free roast potatoes and good cheer” too. Sounds splendid
• Animation Forum WM – Eight Eyed Sea Bass in Profile
  Interesting interview with Paul and Dom from Eight Eyed Sea Bass. Covering topics like the London/regions divide, funding/support for animators and current/future projects. Having seen it, I can also confirm that they have a “bloody nice studio”
• D’log – 10th Birmingham Tolkien Fest
  Pencil in 16-17 May 09 if the thought of a Tolkein Fest makes you go weak at the knees. If not, don’t

• stereographic – Scribble Diary
  Stereographic have posted up some new examples of their work on their blog (including their work for Birmingham Opera Company and New Art Gallery Walsall) but it’s things like Sam’s scribble diary here which I like seeing and gives more of an insight into what’s going on behind the scenes (monsters and beer, by the looks of it)
• Platform 01
  “PLATFORM 01 was a multi-media collection of work by predominantly local artists, and featured contributions from painters, photographers, sculptors, printmakers and digital media artists”. It was filmed in the Custard Factory Gallery
• Punch Winter 2008
  Punch Record’s winter schedule is out
• Athletico Tortured Artists FC
  This is brilliant (although apparently my hair is to tidy for me to ever get a call-up – fairy nuff)
• The Type Drawer
  “We are working on a scene whereby a magical Type drawer explains some of Baskerville’s and Birmingham’s industrial achievements” ‘We’ being Sarah Carter, Howie Barker, Tommy Morrison and Alex Bermingham – the people behind this blog and a creative team working on Baskerville The Movie

• Digbeth Is Good – Digbeth Flickrmeet This Sunday
  “‘There’s no restrictions, just bring a camera… new people are always welcome!’ You don’t need any more invitation than that. People are meeting in The Coffee Lounge, Navigation Street at 2pm this Sunday.”
• YouTube – Art Vinyl Bhangra Desi DNA
  Ammo Talwar of Punch Records discusses vinyl cover art and bhangra with Bobby Friction (3 mins in)
• Get the hottest news from The REP direct to your desktop
  The REP explains RSS feeds. Like they say, they’re very straightforward. If you use the internet but you don’t use RSS yet then you’re probably wasting a whole heap of time and effort

We’ve reached the halfway point of the Midlands’ street sounds/art festival but there’s plenty left to come in Birmingham:

• Scratch Club, hosted by Sonny Jim, is at The Yardbird on 17 June (free)
• My Love For Hip Hop is a hip hop poetry event at The Drum on 19 June (£5)
• Jazzanova and Eska Mtungwazi are at Concrete on Saturday 21st (£10)
• My Bum Is Genetic – Deal With It is a theatre/spoken word event at The Drum on 26 June (£7)
• Also on the Thrurs 26th there’s a BASS Film Night at The Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath (free)
• On 30 June Artistic Souls presents The Journey at The Yardbird with poetry and live jazz (£3)

There are a few more workshops running too, and events over in Derby, Nottingham and Leicester to boot.  See the what’s on page on the BASS Festival website for more.

As I was leaving the Electric yesterday having seen the excellent Planet B-Boy I was handed a brochure for this year’s BASS Festival, happening across the East Midlands over June.

BASS stands for British Art and Street Sounds and the festival is a Punch Records production in partnership with 2Funky Arts, Hella Music and Baby J Studios. This year the festival revolves around the theme of ‘The Elements of Hip Hop’, usually broken down into MCing, DJing, graffiti, breakdancing and beat-boxing.

Go to BASS Festival for the full line-up, but here’s a few of the events in Birmingham:

• Hedz Interative Aerosol Mural, 31 May to 1 June – creating a 50ft bespoke aerosol mural in the city centre
• Urban Disturbance v MyBass ft Mary Anne Hobbs, 31 May at The Rainbow – drum n bass and dubstep heaviness
• Faith 47 – The Restless Debt of Third World Beauty, 3 to 10 June at Womb Gallery – this looks very good
• BASS West Mids Launch – 3 June
• The New Mastersounds, 14 June at The Yardbird – a band at the forefront of the retro-funk sound
• My Love for Hip Hop, 19 June at The Drum – powerful spoken word with 3 poets, 3 hip hop artists and a turntablist

Actually, this is daft, there’s loads of good stuff so please go and have a look at the listings and maybe flag up anything you think looks really interesting in the comments.

Don’t forget that Jessica is currently doing a work placement at Punch and blogging about her experiences.

Punch’s director, Ammo Talwar, was at Buckingham Palace the other week to pick up his MBE for “outstanding achievement and service right across the industry”. He’s emailed to say that his dad was annoyed at not having tea with the Queen! Ammo’s sent over a pic of his dad with some beefeaters though – nice shoes.