Created in Birmingham

CiB celebrated it’s fourth Birthday, a stir was caused when a leaked document of recommended cuts to local art organisations sparked concern over their future, and legendary Birmingham promoters, Leftfoot, celebrated their 1oth anniversary.

Birmingham Royal Ballet and mac managed to raise a decent amount of money through The Big Arts Give, while Moseley Folk and OxjamBrum ended the year with a Christmas Ceilidh and Flatpack released a few highlights set for their 2011 festival.

We also featured a few independently made Christmas cards by local designers, took a look at what can be expected from the new Library of Birmingham interior and the much anticipated budget for Birmingham art organisations was announced by Birmingham City Council.

As the year drew to a close, Rhubarb Radio made a plea for help, the 2010 Twitpanto production of Jack and the Beanstalk took place and we took a look at what Birmingham’s creative minds had come up with for the festive season.

Christmas Day television treated us to Birmingham Royal Ballet, with a prime Christmas dinner slot on BBC1, while Birmingham Opera Company also made it onto BBC4 for post dinner relaxation.

I’ve not been paying a great deal to Rhubarb Radio over the past little while, other than my usual subscription to Brumcast which drops into my iTunes on a weekly basis.

I hadn’t realised they were in any sort of trouble until I read Robin Valk’s post:

Last month, there was more bad news. Like many community stations, the eccentric but occasionally quite wonderful Rhubarb Radio is feeling the cold winds of recession. The current managerial team is bailing out; an intensive effort is being mounted to build a new and solid structure for the continued existence of the station.

The campaign to shore up Rhubarb Radio is being coordinated, from what I can tell, by some of the current DJs and contributors via a ‘Save Rhubarb Radio’ Facebook page. There have been a few meetings to work out what’s going to happen and things seen to be picking up pace, which is good.

However, from flicking through the FB page, there seems to be a short-term financial hurdle to be overcome. It looks like (put some clear info up somewhere you guys!) they’re need £600 sharpish and are after a few people to chip in £20. There’s a donate button on the Rhubarb Radio website.

There’s also a meeting at the Custard Factory tonight if you want to help out in any way, that’s at 7pm in the Orwell Room.

Is Stansfield from Léon the promoter for this or something?

Confirmed so far – We Are One, Rhubarb Radio, Join The Dots formerly Scratch Club, Reverb Club, Breakfest, The Beat Suite, Custom Made, Organic, Funkbox, Discomendments, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Open Minded People, Faux Real, Friendly Fire, Loafers Lounge, Planet Breaks, Mama Feel Good, Bunka, Heducation, Soul Share Radio, Habit and Balkanic Eruption.

Ticket linky.

Via Mama Feel Good.

• Guest Blog: The Pharaoh of Film – Khaled El Hagar – profiled by Professor Roger Shannon
  “Acknowledged in his home country Egypt as the most controversial movie maker of his generation, Khaled lives quietly for half of the year in Kings Heath, in Birmingham, where he has established himself as the city’s leading auteur”
• Rhubarb and Apple — two new ways to listen « Rhubarb Radio in progress
  Rhubarb Radio is now listed in Apple’s Internet Radio directory
• 4am Project at the Bodies Revealed Exhibition | Karen Strunks Photographer
  I’m a bit late on this, but Karen’s organising another 4am Project – this one will be this weekend and the focus of the Birmingham activity will be at the Bodies Revealed exhibition. As I type this there are just 22 free tickets left
• Digbeth is Good » The funeral of The Site
  I had an invite to this but couldn’t make it (and, in a fortunate sense now that I think of it, lacked the mourning attire). Nice little write-up by Nicky and there’s still time to go see this before it closes on 13 Dec
• The Endless Descent « More Canals than Venice
  “The Endless Descent brings together artists from Birmingham, Bristol and London to exhibit in the distinctive 1930’s Modernist stairwell, lobby, lift and entrance area of Rea Studios”. Ah, this launched last night – I walked past and wondered what was going on
• Birmingham-based female performers wanted for site-specific show
  “Mem Morrison Company and The REP are looking for up to thirty female volunteers to perform in their current production, Ringside”
• D’log :: blogging since 2000 » Arts attendance has not increased since 2005
  Not only that but… “It now looks as though the same trend is continuing into 2008/9.”
• 100 years of The Electric Cinema – Birmingham: It’s Not Shit
  From the other night – “A cosy evening at The Electric with a ‘This Is Your Life’ of Britain’s oldest working picture house in the company of owner Tom Lawes to celebrate its 100th birthday” Happy birthday Electric Cinema!
• Middlemash
  “This blog, in conjunction with the Mashed Library wiki & Mashed Library Ning, will be used to provide information on the 3rd mashed library event, Middlemash at Birmingham City University on Monday 30th November”. Missed this, but there’s plenty to go rooting through
• Smash Bro’z In San Francisco! Part1 :) « Dancegeek’s Blog
  “we are proud to announce that we have just returned back from the prestigious San Francisco HipHop Dancefest event in San Francisco and successful in repping the UNITED KINGDOM and BIRMINGHAM with honours!!!!”

It’s actually a little tricky to find out about local music around the city, I find. This is the stuff I know about, feel free to add other stuff in the comments.

News

Brum Notes is the website for the free, monthly music and lifestyle magazine (Nov issue out now, Oct one online here).

The Birmingham Post have news and reviews here and the Birmingham Mail do rock/pop news.

Fused Magazine‘s site does the odd bit of music news, as does the website for sister magazine Area.

Surge Music takes a wider, Midlands-wide view of things, with articles and lists of gigs, bands and venues.

Cul-de-Sac turned out to be a false dawn for this sort of thing, but may come back one day.

@birminghamlive and @brumpunks are good sources for concert info too.

Reviews

Birmingham Live is the obvious choice here – someone from their ranks of volunteer reviewers and photographers will be at a gig in Birmingham pretty much every evening. Steve Gerrard organises this one (Lee Allen and I have also chipped in occasionally).

The Hearing Aid is a blog by someone called The Baron who goes to an impressive number of local gigs.

The Birmingham Mail do gig reviews too.

Get-togethers

The Birmingham Music Network meets monthly at the Department of Technology, Engineering and the Environment (T.E.E.) at Millennium Point. Their website has a good range of resources too.

Audio

I’m on shakier ground here – which radio shows promote local talent There’s Brumcast on Rhubarb Radio and Introducing on BBC WM. I don’t know enough about the shows on New Style Radio, Aston FM or any others.

Are there any Birmingham-based mp3 blogs worth talking about?

Anything else?

Let me know in the comments. Just to be clear, we’re not looking for bands/venues/promoters to plug themselves but if that’s you, where do you look to get featured?

Oh, and see also Birmingham listings.

(pic – The Editors by Steve Gerrard from the opening night of the new Academy)

• Rhubarb Radio: Want Airplay?
  Send your material to: Rhubarb Radio, c/o Reception, The Custard Factory, Gibb St, Birmingham, B9 4AA
• The WGGB blog – News from the West Midlands
  The first 9 months of the Writers Guild, West Mids branch
• Let It Go … – Birmingham Post – Lifestyle Blog
  Fiona Ferguson waxes lyrical about the opening of Heard and Not Seen and implores you to at least check out the website
• Light. #1 | A Distorted Reality.
  Alexander Young is serialising a short story called ‘Light.’ on his blog. This is part 1
• Birmingham Jazz News
  Birmingham Jazz have a blog
• Opportunity for performances in Paradise Forum – Audiences Central
  Argent, who run Brindleyplace and Paradise Forum, are interested in theatres and other performing arts organisations who would like to perform in Paradise Forum in the run up to Christmas

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

Pop on over to Rhubarb Radio to check out the live stream for Birmingham’s newest radio station.

For the time being you can’t listen through your web browser, but will need to use your media player of choice (iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, whatevs).

There are plenty more bits and pieces to come on the site; this is a very early version with the music being provided automagically – at the moment I’m listening to a dubby-breaksy kinda mix.

There’s still plenty of time to get involved with Rhubarb Radio and you can check the development on the Rhubarb Radio blog which is providing a really interesting insight into how a collaborative project can come together.

Congrats to Mark Steadman who’s put the site and live stream together.

Exciting news on the Rhubarb Radio front is best summed up by this photo:

This is in the Custard Factory unit just opposite reception.  From taking the keys on Monday to getting a makeshift studio installed yesterday, things are moving quickly.  The Rhubarb Radio blog has more details but reports that:

we’re waiting the IT & Telephone sockets to be fitted and made live, so very soon after that, we’ll be able to point the master outgoing feed to a beta website, and run some test transmissions

There’s still more than enough time for people to get involved and help shape the development of the station.  There might be a meeting at The Kitchen tomorrow (31 July) at 6pm to discuss programme schedules, availability, training and so on.  It’s perhaps worth checking the blog or contacting Paul Hadley at Dynamics Arts (who are managing the station) for confirmation on that.

Also reported on the Custard Factory blog and by a slightly apprehensive Steve Gerrard on Twitter.

I went along to the meeting for the previously mentioned Rhubarb Radio on Thursday last week.

Things are still tripping along quickly, with equipment due to move on-site shortly and small teams of volunteers being allocated to look after certain other matters.  As much as possible, discussion about the direction and development of the station will be conducted out in the open. For starters there’s a Rhubarb Radio blog for ideas to be kicked around on.

Paul Hadley (Dynamics Arts) has posted his minutes of Thursday’s meeting on the blog but you can also download or stream the audio from this post.

Most encouragingly, the people involved at this stage have a wide range of expertise to lend to the project and there’s a lot of enthusiasm.  If you want to get involved then either email paul[at]dynamicsarts.com or perhaps leave a comment on the Rhubarb Radio blog – I’m sure it’d be picked up on.

Here’s an interesting one.  The Digbeth-based Dynamics Arts look to be overseeing the launch of a new community radio station that will be based in the Custard Factory.

It’s early days but things are moving apace.  There’s a bit of discussion over on The Stirrer’s forum which will give you an idea of what’s going on but I met Paul Hadley from Dynamics Art and here are some bulletpoints I came away with (note, everything’s liable to change):

• Rhubarb Radio will pick up the keys to the unit in the Custard Factory (the one that’s currently a bridal shop) on 1 August
• The station will start broadcasting using a makeshift studio in the unit at the front of the Custard Factory (on the left, opposite the reception area) as soon as Capsule have stopped using it for Supersonic (so mid-July)
• The daytime audience will be creatives/students/etc
• In the evening there will be specialist music shows, possibly patching in to events at the nearby Barfly, Factory and Rainbow
• Advertising will be used to recoup overheads (including all licences needed) before being reinvested in the station
• The area behind the studio will have a workshop for training sessions on digital film, music, video, etc using Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut Pro and so on.  Training will be accredited
• A reference part for this project might be London’s Resonance FM
• The station will broadcast via the internet and probably via a Restricted Service Licence for a while
• There’s no website yet – anyone who wants to help with that (again on a volunteer basis) is very welcome

People who want to get involved (all on a voluntary basis) are welcome and there’s going to be a meeting at The Kitchen at the Custard Factory on Thurs 3 July at 6pm.  As Paul said on The Stirrer:

We’re looking for many supporters to perform all sorts of roles……. it’s not just about presenting, there’s the need for researchers, producers, trainers, admin support, management committee members, fundraisers, marketeers, pr, runners, technicians……. the list goes on.