Created in Birmingham

After Supersonic there’s often someone from out of town who goes home and blogs about their experiences, not just of the festival, but of their journeys around the rest of the city. I think my favourite was the Portuguese a few years back. This year it seems to be Alice on her blog, Quaint Living:

During the day we continued our exploration of Birmingham where we had left off last time. This time we visited the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, the Back to Backs, Ikon gallery, the Cathedral, St Paul’s Gallery, as well as general visiting of record shops and so on.

As a bonus, there are some lovely photos too.

• Nirvana – Lithium – Birmingham 1991 – YouTube
  Footage from The Hummingbird (now Birmingham Ballroom). There are a few more here too
• Interactive/film and video artists wanted – The Public
  The Public are currently inviting interactive artists and artists working in film and video to submit work to two unique open exhibitions, taking place early 2012.
• Supersonic Festival picks | I Am Pete Ashton
  Supersonic kicks off today. It all looks good, but if you want recommendations then Pete (and some commenters) have got em. And here’s the non-musical stuff that’s happening
• Play More
  “This is the temporary page for the newly created Birmingham based arts collective Play More; a group of artists who aim to promote play one ridiculous event at a time.”
• Activating Contemporary Circus in the West Midlands « mid * point
  Birmingham Hippodrome invite you to join leading practitioners to explore
  creatively how we can develop a future for contemporary circus in the region
• All together now – AMA Commons
  I thing I wrote for the Arts Marketing Association about online collaboration and mentioning a few Birmingham-based case studies

• Mark Essen, Gene-George Earl, Sarah Farmer and Cathy Wade – CRASH
  “An experimental season of sonics, moving image, installation and construction stimulated by the vision of J.G. Ballard”
• Growing Our Own Producers « mid * point
  I can’t remember whether I’ve already linked to this or not. Either way: “During the First Bite Festival on Saturday 24th September, there will be a series of events that explore these questions, and offer opportunities for you to expand your network of Artist and Producer contacts and potentially shape a new West Midlands Producers Network”
• Wolverhampton Art Map
  There’s no info on the site about who or what this is but a bit of Google action reveals this: “Project Dandelion is the BSF Public Art programme for the City of Wolverhampton”. So there you am. Watch that space, I guess. I know you won’t.
• Indie Champion Award – The Association of Independent Music
  Lisa & Jenny of Capsule/Supersonic/Home of Metal fame have been nominated for an award. Please go give them a quick vote
• Localise West Midlands – Award winning Eastside cafe under threat
  Not happy to hear this.

From the Supersonic website:

Capsule are currently putting together a zine about all things Supersonic and we’re looking for illustrators to contribute. If you’re interested, please contact admin@capsule.org.uk by 16th August and we can send you more details.

Capsule’s previous zines are on Issuu, in case you wanted to have a look.

• Fundraising Session from the RSC « mid * point
  “the Royal Shakespeare Company would like to share its resources and expertise, and have put togethera fundraising session that will be held in Birmingham on Monday 19 September from 1.30pm -4.30pm”
• Birmingham: Why Bother? • Future Cities of the Future
  As always the rhetorical answer to the rhetorical question is “well, who asked you to bother?”. Still, it’s always a shame when someone gives up
• Supersonic ) Supersonic podcast no.1
  “It’s that time of year again when things start hotting up on the Supersonic front. The wonderful Little Chris of Brumcast fame has lovingly put together a series of podcasts together for your listening pleasure. Here is the first Supersonic special – ENJOY!” Very pleased to hear Little Chris’s voice again
• Birmingham Toolkit
  “The Birmingham Toolkit is designed to help you talk about Birmingham with pride and confidence”
• Enterprise zone ‘to make Birmingham creative hub’
  “The zone – which includes Eastside, Paradise Circus and New Street Station – will attract start-up firms by offering discounts on business rates of up to £275,000 over five years, simplifying planning laws and offering superfast broadband”. Plus other good stuff. Also, George Osborne says there are some iconic buildings here “if you look around”.
• foursquare :: Created in Birmingham
  We have a page on Foursquare now. It’s probably not going to be used much but you never know.

Special guests Zu93, Electric Wizard and Secret Chiefs 3 will be joined by a whole bunch of others (with more to announce) plus art, film, panel discussions and, predictably enough, cake. Full list here.

I’m pleased to say I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone on the bill. Last year I recognised a couple of names and that was a bit disconcerting.

It’s not until 21-23 October but I can’t think of anything else happening in Birmingham that weekend so you might as well grab a ticket now. Ticket info, hotel deals and sundry other items are here.

From an interview with Earth (who’ve played Supersonic) on Pitchfork. Talking about Black Sabbath:

Pitchfork: Have you ever had any kind of personal interaction with any of the Sabbath people?

Dylan Carlson, Earth: No. Sabbath is from Birmingham, England and Tony Iommi supposedly came to a festival we played there once, but I didn’t actually see him. The two women who put on that festival are always trying to get the Birmingham City Council to recognize that it’s the city of heavy metal and put up a plaque or a statue to acknowledge it.

Pitchfork: That’s not a bad idea.

Just past the halfway point…

Pete kicked off discussions about how to follow on from the CiB Shop, The Little Chill looked like fun and involved pretty much every promoter in town and Supersonic’s line-up started coming together.

There was a lot of kerfuffle around the filming of Turbulence, with lots of people getting involved in that too, and people seemed to be printing big flyers for things. I didn’t make it to Taste of Birmingham but people tell me it was pretty good. We also flagged up the work of Sweaty Eskimo.

BARG announced some fun and games at the Mac, Haji Noor Deen visited The Hubb, the Cut Out Shop folks made The DIY Times and I did a bit of a write-up from the BE Festival. New Art Gallery Walsall hosted the Taylor Wessing Photography Prize for a while and the entirely excellent-looking Six Summer Saturdays started.

There was news of cuts from the new government and I tried to wrap my head around the mess that was being made of sorting out a LEP for Birmingham/West Midlands. The flyering/postering issue got another run out too.

Birmingham didn’t get the nod for City of Culture 2013. Ah well.

• Area 15 December/January
  Hot off the presses
• Culture Vulture West Midlands’s Blog | Pecking at the culture carrion of the West Midlands
  Arts/culture blog for the West Mids
• Home of the Autumn Store Blog » Blog Archive » Autumn Store 5th Birthday All Dayer!
  “in January 2011 we’ll be FIVE YEARS OLD! And we’re planning an action packed all-dayer with BANDS, ZINES, DANCING, SUGARY FOOD STUFF, DINOSAURS, and hopefully COMMUNITY”. And check the comments for a Spotify playlist featuring (most of) the songs played at the very first night
• Call for Performing Artists Working in South Asian Arts at Sampad
  “Would you like to participate in a research project with sampad?” Well, would you?
• YouTube – Supersonic 2010 in 90seconds
  Contains less beards than you might expect. Plenty of black T-shirts though
• ***no awkward barz on the walk of stars*** | The Streets
  Warning: features Mike Skinner in the bath
• We Are Fierce» Blog Archive » Platinum 2
  “We are pleased to announce that we are looking for a new set of Platinum Artists for 2010 – 2011″
• Birmingham Printmakers
  “Set up in 1982, Birmingham Printmakers has a large well-lit workshop in Digbeth. It is available to all artists, specialist and non-specialist printmakers. We have 34 members and a voluntary committee of twelve, which runs the general day to day business.” They have a blog too – hadn’t spotted that before

We’ve acquired a nice little pile of booklets and mini publications on the CiB desk which we’ve been meaning to mention, so thought we’d just post them all up together.

First is Ammo Magazine. This cute and colourful little thing is packed with illustration and designer/ artist interviews.

Ammo also accepts submissions, so if you think your work would fit in on the pages of this small but perfectly formed publication, take a look at their submissions page.

This book from Creative Birmingham profiles the 30 shortlisted nominations and 6 winners from the Invisible City Awards. Categories included ‘Things that made me think’, ‘Things that made me smile’, ‘Things that taught me something’, ‘Things that make me proud’, ‘Business things’, and ‘Cultural things’.

Created in Birmingham was up for ‘Things that make me proud’, which is nice, but unfortunately we lost out to Tomorrow People.

This publication for Hello Digital retells ‘stories from a digital city’, with plenty of glossy photos of Birmingham – current and future – along with articles from a range of industry specialists and experts.

This tasteful and nicely designed programme is from the 2010 Supersonic Festival, featuring all the events, activities and artists who performed across the weekend.

While we’re on the topic of festivals, The Independent Festivals Group launched a publication earlier this month, celebrating the cultural value of Birmingham’s independent festivals.

Included in the group are Bass Festival, Birmingham Book Festival, Birmingham International Jazz and Blues Festival, Fierce Festival, Flatpack Festival, Rhubarb Rhubarb and Supersonic Festival.

This publication can be downloaded for free here, and makes for quite an interesting read – Redefining Culture – Birmingham’s Independent Festivals

I’m a sucker for nicely artistic gig posters. You don’t get enough of them around these days. Malleus, an artists collective from Tortona in Italy, have done a poster for Supersonic.

As part of this year’s Supersonic festival, Capsule have decided to get the kids involved in exploring experimental music. The Kids Gigs take place on Saturday 23 October at 11am and 2.30pm at mac in Cannon Hill Park.

Aimed at 2 – 7 year olds and their families, these 1 hour workshops will involve performances, offering ‘Big Sounds for Little People’. 

Ever since Schoenberg and Kandinsky became pen pals back in 1907, avant-garde art and experimental music has been attempting to find some common ground.  But, it’s not been easy.  While modern art is a mass phenomenon, experimental music is often derided and ignored by the masses.

With a view to introduce children to experimental music at an early age, the events will feature one-man band from the USA, Dosh, and local circuit-bending fiend Glatze.

Glatze uses customised instruments (including: circuit-bent Furby dolls and kids’ toys) that have been specially rewired to create all sorts of musical wizardry. Dosh a multi-instrumentalist; combines a host of instruments into an exciting and unique live experience.  See firsthand how these unlikely instruments are used to make noise / sound / music, and to have a go yourselves.

Tickets are only £5, and can be booked at www.macarts.co.uk or by calling 0121 446 323

I got this in the post the other day:

• Poster and press release for Hiker Meat by Jamie Shovlin at Grand Union
• Supersonic flyer

Two organisations mailing their stuff out together – you’d think that sort of thing would happen more often. Looks like Grand Union will be staying open later during Supersonic too.

The line-ups for the individual days are up. Brumcast’s Little Chris is doing a three-part podcasty preview with episode 1 online here and there’s a Supersonic Spotify playlist too.

Volunteers are needed too – 12 hours work will get you a weekend wristband (over 18′s only). They’re also after any professional standard photographers who’d like to help with documenting the festival to get in touch. Info about both opportunities here.

• Black International Film Festival Call for Entries – 2010
  “The Birmingham Black International Film Festival (BIF FESTIVAL) is calling for all film submissions for this year’s festival, due to take place in Birmingham, UK, 25th Oct – 31st Oct 2010″
• Life in Flashback: TBB #2 is Here!
  “The latest issue of Birmingham’s premier collage-based magazine is here! TBB#2 – This Bourgeois Battalion is done, and this one’s got big questions”
• Supersonic Festival – Job Opportunity : Capsule Blog
  Heck of a job this – Ops Manager for Supersonic. Deadline was the end of last week but it was advertised all over so, um, yeah. Good luck if you applied
• Brum Notes Magazine – June issue
  It’s the June Brum Notes
• Capsule zine no 4 : Capsule Blog
  “This time put together by Mark Murphy”. Includes an impassioned plea for someone to find a way to help newly arrived university students to find where all the good stuff happens in this city
• Facebook | Save The Birmingham School of Media Against the £230,000 Cut
  There’s going to be a lot of this kind of thing, isn’t there?
• Film Forum West Midlands ? Seeking Film & Cinema Experts
  mac are “seeking a leader for mac’s Film Club”. Not a bad job, as they go…
• The Stirrer – See you down the forum then
  “the equation of loadsa time in/no money out has ultimately defeated us, and for the site to continue as it has in the past we need to find a more sustainable business model”