Created in Birmingham

• Yam Big Richard
  Richard’s DJing, hacks, collages and write-ups from events
• Warwick Bar
  A website for Minerva Works, the small industrial estate in Digbeth currently home to Grand Union Studios, Fazeley Park, Street Print and Clifton Steel
• Fast Forward – 6.8 million items in our collections! Phew « Museum Network Warwickshire
  Fast Forward 2010, the 6th bi-annual survey of West Midlands museums. In all, 170 of you participated, 79% of all our museums! Covering organisational health, collections, and users, it is a wide-ranging and detailed picture of museum provision throughout the West Midlands in 2010
• The Event, Various venues, Birmingham – Reviews
  A review of The Event in the Independent
• BASS FESTIVAL 2012- Commissions NOW OPEN!
  To mark the 50th anniversary of Jamaican Independence and to welcome the Jamaican Olympic team to Birmingham BASS will have JAMAICA as its theme in 2012
• Dancing for the Games | Blog | Moving Earth open workshops
  sampad‘s Dancing for the Games project Moving Earth is holding open workshops in Birmingham on Saturday 26 November.
• Michael’s Animation blog
  Michael Price is studying animation at BCU
• BBC Performing Arts Funds announce fellowships
  The BBC Performing Arts Fund announced recently that 13 dance organisations across the UK had been awarded a grant as part of its Dance Fellowships scheme, including ACE Dance and Music and Warwick Arts Centre’s Boys Dancing
• “Long-Eared Furry Things” – blog – frilly
  Bunnies, generally
• Eastside Projects Public Evaluation Event
  “From 27 to 29 October, Eastside Projects in Birmingham, UK held a three day symposium to analyse and evaluate three years of an artist run space as public gallery”. The videos are online, I just wish they had titles
• Open File
  Open File is a curatorial conversation between artist Jack Brindley and curator Tim Dixon. The project began as a blog in February 2011. Launching at Grand Union this November 18th, the project will exist as an on-going series of live events, an open and expanding cumulative publication, and a new web-based archive and resource

• An Announcement from Audiences Central – Audiences Central
  “It is with great sadness that the Board of Audiences Central announces that Audiences Central will cease trading on 31 March 2012.” A victim of the cuts
• Anna Mairi; writing for writing.
  Anna is an English Lit student UoB English Lit student, among other things. This is her blog.
• Online survey for bands/musicians/DJs
  “This is a survey to support the conceptualisation of a local music platform. It is a student project of mine within the Music Industries course at BCU”
• Lots Of Things To See And Do In The West Midlands – November 2011
  From Rihanna to the Supreme Show of the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy and everything in between
• The Cult of Quatermass | Sponsume
  AAS are doing the crowdfunding thing
• Jaskirt Dhaliwal’s Blog | photographer and visual artist – still thinking of a good title…
  This is Jaskirt’s blog with, amongst other things, a load of photos from The Event, including Curate Me Out, which may have been recorded. If the video goes up anywhere, please let me know
• Birmingham Printmakers: New work by Jo Ruth and Sue Halstead
  At Number 8 Community Arts Centre from 17 November
• News: Birmingham Opera Company
  “You’re invited to join us and find out more about the company and how to get involved in our next production Life is a Dream which will premiere in Birmingham in 2012.”
• Autumn Glory reviews « Birmingham Royal Ballet’s tour blog
  This is good – an even-looking spread of reviews from BRB’s recent tour (from both big newspapers and individual tweets) with links through to the source
• Open Studio at Birmingham Printmakers
  “At Birmingham Printmakers we are holding an Open Studio on Saturday 26th November from 10am to 4pm”

At 7pm on BBC2:

Michael Smith looks for the positive in what some consider Europe’s most boring city – Birmingham

Putting the ‘n’ into ‘BBC cuts’.

UPDATE

You can see this episode on iPlayer until 7pm on 4 November. It featured The Event (in particular, Creative Machines, Minimalist Sculpture at Curzon Street Station), Eastside Projects and Project Pigeon and was actually quite complimentary about the fringes of the city (although not the centre, which is probably fair enough).

BAZ are busy at The Event. They’re hosting Love in the Snug (an alternative festival hub) where you can also buy the in-joke stuffed Mills and Koons, which is:

A Brief Introduction to the Saucy Secrets of the Birmingham Art World

I did and can confirm it’s simultaneously amusing and baffling (I’m pretty sure some of it’s flying way over my head). They’re also hosting Curate Me Out on Saturday, 7pm at the Lamp Tavern:

Shamelessly pilfering the format’s of ITV’s Take Me Out and Blind Date, Curate Me Out will see BAZ setting up three curator-artist ‘dates’. This live performance event complete with a professional compere, bright lights and music jingles acts as a post-performance party for all who have attended The Event

The Birmingham Post have a an interview with Chris Poolman (one half of BAZ) about all of this.

In no particular order…

Getting to wander around Curzon Street Station (although there’s some good stuff in there, I have to admit I was excited enough about the building itself), finally making it over to The Lombard Method, Simon Faithfull’s window piece at Grand Union, meeting the guys behind BAZ (and Athletico Tortured Artists), Crowd 6‘s exhibition and all sorts of other bits and pieces.

Not that it was all my cup of tea, necessarily, but then that’s all part of the fun too. Charlie Levine’s written a post of her own about what’s going on – she’s got pictures.

The Event is on until 30 October. If you don’t know your way round (and even if you do) it’s worth joining one of the guided tours.

The last one was good. Lots to see and lots to do, so go discover on The Event website. Or read on for some blurb:

Birmingham Contemporary Art Forum is delighted to announce it will be hosting The Event’s third bi-annual visual art festival from 21 – 30 October 2011 from their galleries, studio spaces and empty buildings in various locations in and around Eastside, Birmingham’s creative quarter in Digbeth.

Groups presenting works in The Event 2011 are: AAS, An Endless Supply, Companis, Crowd 6, Eastside Projects, Grand Union, The Lombard Method, SLICE and TROVE.

Birmingham Contemporary Art Forum will be hosting a silent auction of over thirty artworks from the 6 – 24 June 2011 for The Event’s third bi-annual visual art festival due to be held in Birmingham this Autumn. The bidding will close on the 24 June 2011 in Digbeth’s Bond Company, where the works will be available for viewing and final bids may be placed between 7 – 9pm.

Here’s a random smattering of what’s up for auction but you can see the whole lot here:

Victoria Jenkins

Sally Payen from a ‘series of case studies’

Juneau Projects – Emotional Modernism

Viv Sole – Barchan

• Job listing for Birmingham Contemporary Art Forum: Call for Proposals (The Event)
  Good to hear this is happening again, I liked the last one. “Birmingham Contemporary Art Forum is pleased to announce it is currently seeking projects from artists and curators in the UK for inclusion in The Event 2011, to take place 21 – 30 October”
• Happy Birthday to Frilly! – blog – frilly
  A big happy birthday indeed to Frilly
• Experiencing Burningham’s Live Graffiti Battle: Tagged@EXYZT
  “We hope Tagged@EXYZT opened new minds to street art and showed the soul and joy a community the city would rather not exist can create. For all of us involved it was an evening where Birmingham sparkled”
• Presenting the world’s biggest art prize: the £175,000 Gulbenkian
  “Graham Vick and his Birmingham Opera want to turn Brecht and Weill’s political satire Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny into a multi-participant online production examining the survival of the soul in a virtual world”
• Birmingham Hippodrome: Chief exec’s 10-year journey
  Interview with Stuart Griffiths
• Desert Island Life « More Canals than Venice
  Jeans Retailer Promotion in Decent Line-up of Events Shock. Featuring Project Pigeon, Flatpack Festival, LOAF, Chicks Dig Jerks, Them Lot and Mr Hudson (NB – some, perhaps all, of this has happened already)
• AE Harris
  The venue now has its own website
• Pickled
  Based in The Oasis: “Here at Pickled, we aim to provide a hireable exhibition space for anyone in the arts. From the amateur to the professional, we want anyone with an interesting art idea or project to come along and exhibit their work”
• The Style Kaleidoscope
  “A vibrant street style documentary of Birmingham, UK”

I’m not about to do a full on ‘best of’ thing, but there was plenty of goodness about in 2009:

• Birmingham Opera Company’s ‘Othello’
• Birmingham Royal Ballet’s ‘Quantum Leaps’
• ‘Birmingham Seen’ at BMAG
• Zena Edwards’ ‘Security’ at The Rep
• Tom Dale Company’s ‘Roam’ at DanceXchange
• The Event
• Kindle Theatre’s ‘All You Can Eat’

And plenty more besides, although nine months away from CiB (and a fair amount of time out of the country) meant that I was slightly more out of touch with some of the smaller-ticket stuff.

What did you enjoy?

• Graft « More Canals than Venice
  “Graft are a curatorial collective based in the Midlands who are looking to find a space for up and coming and newly established artists. On 9th December they launch ARC, a new night at The Vaults… For the launch they are seeking proposals from newly estabished artists working in experimental performance, sound and video in response to The Vaults”
• D’log :: blogging since 2000 » Rea Garden
  An opportunity to take up a residency lasting up to 10 weeks at the Rea Garden from Jan 2010. Applications need to be in by 17 Dec
• Art Deco Buildings in Birmingham | Birmingham Conservation Trust
  The BCT goes in search of the city’s Art Deco buildings
• Digbeth is Good – YouTube – The Event Talks: Digbeth
  “Caroline Beavon of Hashbrum talks to Gavin Wade of Eastside Projects about The Event and Digbeth creative stuff in general”
• Art at Studio Five
  Bryn Tranter has a studio and gallery at the Custard Factory – “At StudioFive, we make art accessible to everyone. Whether you want to buy original pieces, you’re looking to learn or you need art to enliven your office or workplace, StudioFive is the place to start”
• Facebook | Birmingham Irish Film Festival
  Plans for “A film festival devoted to film from or about Ireland or with an identifiable Irish interest/connection” to possibly be expanded into a week-long celebration of Irish culture
• An Early Christmas Present for 14 to 26 Year Olds
  The Rep have just extended their A Night Less Ordinary ticket availability for A Christmas Carol to all evening performances from 19 December to 2 January, which is nice of em
• Brummie of the Year 2009 – Nominations Open
  Early nominees are Chris the handyman at the Barber Institute, Paul Hadley, Justice Williams, the Capsule grannies, the Jibbering crew, Alison Smith, Mr Ralph,Gurcharan Mall and Glyn Purnell

This is for the Birmingham Art Zine (BAZ) launch night, 5 November at The White Swan in Digbeth, 6-9pm:

BAZ are well aware that a room full of people reading a small pink text heavy magazine – looking to see if their names are mentioned – is not really a recipe for a great night out so we’ve gone for a short opening so you can all get on down to Mark Essen’s gig at The Anchor afterwards

They’ll also be taking part in Grand Union’s artists’ publishing fair as part of The Event on 6 November 12-9pm.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff to explore on BAZ’s website, PDF’s unfortunately, so I only made it through a few. Titles like ‘Ikon sculpture tried to eat my missus‘ are pretty compelling though. The intro to ‘The Editorial‘ gives you a good flavour of the sort of thing:

It’s been another hectic year in the Birmingham ART World: the emergence of a hard-line rap and gangster culture amongst feuding art institutions; the ensuing war and bloodshed, punctuated only by games of Institutional Cricket; the rise of Northfield as the cities ‘real’ creative quarter; Berlin trying to steal our ART scene; the building of the worlds first ART themed adventure park in Ladywood; The Public being converted into the world’s largest public toilets; and the rapid spread of wild animals in Birmingham ARTISTS studios.

This looks ace:

The Event is a contemporary arts festival in Eastside, Birmingham to showcase the best in artist-led activity. Bringing together artists, curators and artist-led projects, visitors are encouraged to immerse themselves in challenging artworks indoors and out.

The Event will be delivered by some of the city’s key artist-led groups to explore a range of contemporary arts activity including visual arts, performance, live art, film, video, web-based, installation, intervention and sound, all demonstrating the diversity of the thriving arts community in the city.

The roll call of artists involved is fantastic; drawn largely from the committee behind the Birmingham Contemporary Art Forum (giving things a nice, artist-driven feel) with another five commissioned projects on top.

The Event runs from 4-8 November, with exhibitions open 12-5pm and events taking place daily. For more info, here’s the timetable.

(Pic – Marina de Stacpoole, ‘Child’s Play’. From The Space Between, Surrounds Our Desire, an exhibition curated by Mona Casey)

The Event - 2007

The first two weeks of April 2007 saw the culmination of a series of artist-led activities within Birmingham, and this was ‘The Event‘.  At that point in time, the number of artists choosing to stay and work within the city had increased, and an intensification of artistic production had taken place.  It felt very much like Birmingham projected a unique sense of identity, and it was easy to believe that the city held great potential.

Consisting of exhibitions and performances devised by ten of the brightest young visual art organisations in Birmingham at that point in time, the sixteen-day celebration focused on a myriad of event-based practices and exhibitions in such a way as to implicate the whole city into its logic.  Participating organisations included: a.a.s., Capital Art Projects, Colony, [insertspace], International Project Space, Modulate, Periscope, 7inch Cinema, Spectacle, and Springhill Institute.

A lot of interesting work took place, and indeed some of these organisations have developed and flourished (surely most notably 7inch Cinema) – but those without links to their work above, and even some who do have links, are either no longer working as artists / arts organisations, or have begun working under different names without leaving on online breadcrumb trail for me to follow.

In 2007, whilst not all that long ago, there was a definite sense of optimism and indulgence in the arts and arts practice – much moreso than we now have in 2009.  The recession will inevitably have played a large part in this shift, with organisations cutting back or closing down – but what other changes has Birmingham faced that has brought us to this point, so different to that of 2007?  Is there still intense artistic production?  Do people still believe that Birmingham has this great potential?  Have artists changed their practice in response to the current financial climate and retreated back into their stereotypical draughty garrets?

In a timely fashion, The Event has returned once more to open up and explore contemporary art making.  Through an open submission process, artists are invited to send proposals to be included in the November festival.  The deadline for proposals is quite soon – July 13th – but submissions can also be emailed.  I’ve included the details taken from the website below, but please send any specific queries to kaye@the-event.org I will be keen to see which artists are selected, and how their practice reflects the current mood of the city – and also how different the artforms will be, if at all.  Will The Event be inundated with digital submissions, and will there be any entirely virtual submissions running concurrently?

Open Submission

Deadline Midday 13 July 2009

The Event is a contemporary arts festival in Birmingham, showcasing the best in artist-led activity.

We are currently seeking proposals and submissions from artist projects and artist/curators in the Midlands for inclusion in The Event, November 2009.

Proposals with a budget of up to £2000 can be considered. Deadline for submissions is midday on Monday 13 July, proposals received after the deadline cannot be considered.

Proposals must include the following information:
Project proposal (maximum 200 words)
Brief biog/CV
Indication of project costs
Supporting material

Postal applications should be clearly marked:
BCAF Steering Group
The Event
Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane Birmingham
B9 4AR

NB. Please enclose a SAE for return of material.

e-mailed application should be compiled into one document and emailed to:
kaye@the-event.org

Please contact Kaye Winwood 07834 244 609 or email kaye@the-event.org with any queries.