I don’t usually regurgitate press releases wholesale but I’ll make an exception here:
Due to new challenges over the last 2 years, Rhubarb-Rhubarb has found it necessary to enter a period of transition. The core ethos of the company will remain at the centre of what we do. We will continue to offer support to established photographers whilst also nurturing both regional and world wide talent.
Rhonda Wilson is taking a sabbatical. In her absence a temporary board has been set up to steer the company whilst the management of Rhubarb-Rhubarb has been put in the very capable and safe hands of Lorna-Mary Webb.
The focus of the company for the next twelve months will be with Rhubarb East which will be launching a new web site. This will not just provide our usual information but will develop, as a priority, an online photographic community that networks the photographic client base with image makers.
As this priority demands much of the team’s time in research and development and will use new technologies to offer photographers links with the wider world of image buyers, it is more financially viable to procure this than run this years Rhubarb – Rhubarb festival. We look forward to reigniting the festival in the future when it can run parallel to the online platform.
Rhonda Wilson extends her thanks and gratitude, firstly to her team and temporary board. She also sends out thanks to Arts Council England and of course to the many supporters and friends that have helped Rhubarb-Rhubarb over the course of its inspiring journey.
All the best to Rhonda, Lorna and the rest of the Rhubarb-Rhubarb team.
Rhubarb Rhubarb‘s one day artist development event, The Crossing, is being brought to Birmingham, after the success of it’s London event back in October.
The Crossing: WM will be taking place in The Theatre at The Custard Factory on 26 March, and asks photographers one question – “Are you going to stay where you are, live in the past, or cross over into the new world offered to you through technology, tenacity and a mind shift around money, dependency, what is possible and how it can be achieved?”
With speakers including London based agent David Birkitt, mobile media maker Christian Payne, photographers Ed Clark and Michael Donald, and Benjamin Chesterton & David White of DuckRabbit, the event will cover sessions on ‘Cashing In…Not Selling Out’, ‘Shifting Terrain’ and ‘Photography Still Moving’.
Tickets can be booked online, and are £10 for West Midlands attendees, with transport provided if you’re traveling from Wolverhampton, Walsall, Coventry, Stoke and Hereford. For outside attendees it’s £20.
Tomorrow, I’ll be at The Public for the showcase event of the DCD Programme. In case you’d not heard of it:
Arts Council England West Midlands’ Digital Content Development (DCD) Programme is a three year programme of investment which aims to catalyse the creation and creative use of digital content platforms for arts organisations across the West Midlands region
The website went up recently and the map on the homepage shows some of the projects, along with how much money they received. Further information is due on the website at some point, but if you look at the page source then you can glean a little more. On the basis that you probably don’t want to ruin your eyes, here’s what I found:
Rosie Kay Dance Company – To create an online version of the touring production, 5 Soldiers (£12,500)
Indigo Ltd – The development of a pilot online platform exploring new forms of crowd-source fundraising in the arts (launching soon and called Angel Shares) (£11,750)
Capsule – To support digitally enhanced new marketing and distribution opportunities (£4,880)
Welsh National Opera – research and development of phase one of iMaestro. To allow Welsh National Opera to research digital copyright law and the possibility of exploiting full-length opera samples under the Creative Commons license (info about that here) (£4,600)
Ikon Gallery – Towards the development of a social media project (£3,500)
The Other Way Works – Professional development around Augmented Reality and Transmedia (£2,575)
Ex Cathedra – Market development, engaging an online music aggregator (£1,323)
Dance Consortium – Exploring social media in relation to contemporary dance marketing (£1,000)
MADE – To explore the use of digital platforms in placing making (£1,000)
As well as these projects, the programme supported a range of other activities including workshops, innovation labs and other events.
I’ve heard of one or two of these projects, but the vast majority are new to me so it’ll be interesting to hear a little more. I should probably also add that I’m involved in the Rosie Kay Dance Company project – that’ll launch next week so I’ll blab a bit more about it then.
If Birmingham City Council meetings were televised…
Not strictly arts/culture related, but if you only click one of these links, click this one. Includes chicken dancing, physical abuse of the Respect Party and what gold dealers in the city can be like
A Sneak Peek Inside New Library of Birmingham
References to ‘sneak peeks’ in my RSS reader went into overdrive the other day with lots of people posting a CG fly-through of the new library. Nice big escalators.
Nigel Singh to step down as CEO – Audiences Central
“Audiences Central today announces that Nigel Singh is leaving the organisation after three years as Chief Executive Officer”. Due to a serious family illness – best wishes to Ni
Behind Gamer Camp: Nano on Vimeo
“This short promotional documentary about the Gamer Camp: Nano course ran at NTI Birmingham in November to December 2010, to help prepare graduates for working in the games industry.”
Team Gozooheck Presents ‘Kung-Fu Night’
An (early) evening of workshops, networking, screenings of 3D animations and shorts from around Birmingham as well as classic kung fu films and free Marvel comics. There’s also something about a Film Society and Festival but I can’t quite tell how that fits in
Rhubarb Seminars
Rhubarb Rhubarb are doing a one-day artist development event in March. It’s a similar format to one they ran in London last year that seemed to go down very well (click the link and scroll down the page to ‘The Crossing’)
Bursary opportunity for West Midlands museum staff
“OpenCulture is the annual international event for Collections Managers, Curators, Registrars, Archivists, Librarians. Renaissance West Midlands are offering 10 free bursary places to museum staff or volunteers who work at a West Midlands Museum”
Soldier On
“I’ve seen some of the best bands in Birmingham play to a handful of people. It’s actually quite sickening. A terrible waste of talent”.
Ronan is in a band called Nerve Centre and blogs about that and unsigned music in general
Call For Submissions – Crowd6 Online Gallery
“Crowd6 will soon be launching an online gallery, showing artwork made specifically for the web. This might be time based, code based, illustrative or performative”
February at VIVID – We Are Eastside | Birmingham
“VIVID kicks off its 2011 programme with the launch of ‘The Garage presents…’ a brand new strand of one off events embracing music, live arts, installation, performance, and films”
AIRTIME is an event taking place on Wednesday 20 October, hosted by a-n The Artists Information Company on behalf of Air in partnership New Art Gallery Walsall and DACS.
Held at New Art Gallery Walsall, AIRTIME is open to practicing visual and applied artists in the West Midlands who are looking for advice on professional matters such as insurance, promotion and funding, along with developing networks and collaborations with like-minded people.
The events are busy and fast-paced, so make sure you have in mind the kind of information you want to get out of this unique opportunity. Places are limited and will be allocated on a first-come-first-served-basis, with some reserved especially for final year and graduating design students, so pre-booking is essential.
RSVP your name and address to airevents@a-n.co.ukwith AIRTIME Walsall in subject box.
The Photography Collective and Birmingham Photospace have teamed up in association with Rhubarb Rhubarb, to bring us Contact. From 3-18 September the Rhubarb East Gallery will play host to a collection of seven emerging photographers working in the West Midlands.
The variety of styles and formats challenges the viewer to consider how contact is made between objects both animate and inanimate, between the past and present, between analogue and digital and between photographer and subject.
The exhibition will be open Thursday – Sunday, 11.00am – 5.30pm, and there will also be an Artists’ Talk on Thursday 9 September, at 6.30pm, allowing members of the public to meet the photographers and discuss the stories behind these powerful images.
Here are some pics of a couple of posters/fold-out leaflet things.
I was sent this one which publicises Grand Union‘s thing with Justin Carter:
And I picked up this one which is stuffed with the mind-bogglingly long list of events Rhubarb Rhubarb are doing/associated with over the next few weeks:
Btw, if you want half-price tickets to the Photographic Seminar on Thurs 29 July – Where Social Media Meets Fine Art… Or Not – then there’s an offer over on the Birmingham Social Media Cafe website.
Rhubarb Rhubarb are having a busy time of it at the moment with one exhibition closing and another soon to open, a seminar and an International Review.
The seminar, Photography Still Moving, is on today down in that London and will look at multimedia storytelling.
The International Review, titled Collision: Where Image Worlds Meet, is on from 30 July to 1 August at Aston Business School. Tickets are still available, as is the chance to have your portfolio picked over by experts:
This year the intention is to see where documentary and commercial practices cross over into the world of fine art, giving participants the opportunity to show their work to specialists from different sectors and reviewers the chance to look at folios that may not usually come their way
Thematically tied to the International Review is the upcoming exhibition for their Hungry Bursary 2010 award winners. That’s at Rhubarb East from 22 June to 21 August.
Meanwhile, their exhibition at the new Rhubarb East Gallery on Heath Mill Lane, The Uses of Enchantment featuring Vee Speers and The Jackson Twins, ended last week but seemed to go well – there’s a round-up of that here.
We are delighted to announce that finally, after 17 years of supporting photographic artists, both in the West Midlands, London, UK and in the USA, Europe and Asia, we are opening our own gallery. The space is dedicated to showcasing the successes of our year round programme of mentoring and support for artists at all stages of their development, and the international names who attend the annual portfolio review in Birmingham
Appropriately enough it’ll be in the Rhubarb building on Heath Mill Lane. The launch is at the end of next week.
Last weekend Rhubarb Rhubarb presented the ninth Rhubarb Review:
A very exhausted yet happy Rhubarb team would like to say a very big “Thank You” to everyone who took part this year. You all helped to make it one of the most successful Rhubarb events ever. We’re back in the office and planning the tenth Rhubarb already. Watch this space and check your e-mails for updates. Later this year we’re holding another Cultivate event – dates and venue to be announced soon.
