An outdoor dance spectacular that’s part of Birmingham Town Hall‘s 175th birthday celebrations. They’re hoping for up to have had up to 12,000 people take part. It’s being performed on Friday 9 October at 8pm and Saturday 10 October at 3pm and 8pm – and you can learn the steps half an hour before each performance.
Tonight, at the Library Theatre, our new poet laureate, announced yesterday as Adrian Johnson (ACE West Mids Literature Officer), will be performing for the first time in his official capacity.
Nicky Getgood, on Digbeth is Good, has linked to a fair amount of interesting stuff happening:
Eastside Studio are holding an Open Studio on Saturday afternoon from midday to 5pm to ‘celebrate the completion of carving the ‘Rugby Writers’ commission’
Also on Saturday, VIVID are taking part in The Big Draw with a variety of artists getting visitors to interact with their work
UPDATE – Oops, cheers to Nicky Getgood for pointing out the next one is on Sunday 18 October:
On Sunday Nikki Pugh is doing a GPS-assisted walk around “the perimeter of the regeneration area taking great care to stop, investigate, prod, document, tell stories about and explore things along the way”
Also, see the comments for more free stuff this weekend.
Flatpack 2009 will launch at Town Hall on 11 March with ‘Curzonora’, a show featuring ‘musical whirlwind’ The Destroyers and celebrating Mr Jeffs’ legacy and that of 1900s film-shows in general. Here’s the poster:
The Mr Jeffs referred to is film showman, and patron saint of Flatpack 3, Waller Jeffs who, from 1901 to 1912:
introduced hundreds of thousands of Brummies to the delights of cinema through his annual seasons at the Curzon Hall, Suffolk Street, with light opera, military bands, live sound effects and intriguing novelty acts
The festival, taking place 11-15 March, is set to make the most of Digbeth and Eastside ‘in venues ranging from Floodgate Kino, a warehouse in Birmingham’s Eastside district which will be transformed into a picturehouse for the weekend, to art project spaces IKON Eastside, Eastside Projects, The Edge and the Electric…’ It also looks like they’ll be bringing the poor, neglected Curzon Station to life.
Birmingham Jazz and Birmingham Town Hall‘s resonance events are well worth catching when they’re on. The last one was in October and featured the Heritage Orchestra and Lizzy Parks among others. A vid’s just gone up on YouTube with a couple of interviews that captures things really rather well.
Set in no particular time this opera draws freely from past, present and future to create an upbeat cautionary tale for discerning audiences of adults and children
It’s a family affair by the looks of things, and will be taking place on Sat 6 Dec at the Town Hall between 11am and 1pm. The first 45 mins will be a workshop to prepare the kids for singing roles in the chorus for the performance, which will start at 12pm.
Pete at Spaghetti Gazetti reminded me of this. His post also has the flyer and a story about Paul Murphy from back in the day.
Cut-Out
Not quite sure what the deal is with this one. They’ve got a DIY print studio and are looking for people to submit designs for them to use on T-shirts and so on. A physical shop is apparently coming in summer 09, in the meantime they’re up online with a website (coming soon) and this blog
Birmingham Music
“The Town Hall and Symphony Hall website have launched a new online booking system for their events… Also, as an introductory offer, you can take advantage of free postage on all bookings up to November 30th”
Draft Vision for a Birmingham Photospace
The next meeting about this is on Tues 14 October at 6.30pm in the Library cafe, Birmingham city centre. Seek out the Birmingham Flickr group for how the discussion about this is going; this is a link to the draft vision they’ve prepared
Flip Blog – Grads On Walls Event
The Flip Animation folk put out a reminder for the Animation Forum WM’s Grads on Walls event on Monday (good to see people talking up other people’s events – a very smart thing to do, I’d say)
Birminghams Most Stylish – Style Birmingham
“The 500 people who have made it through this year’s Style Search will be whittled down to just ten this weekend at a special party at Gatecrasher”. Why am I linking to this? Um… just spreading the joy I guess
Script screenwriting course
“Script, in association with Outside Centre, presents an in-depth Introduction to Screenwriting Course” at Wolverhampton’s Light House
Plus+: Fazeley Studios 2008 Plus Venue
Is it me or does the text in the link make no sense. Basically, Fazeley Studios has been chosen as the venue for the 2008 Plus Design Festival. Shame on me for not spotting that they had a blog though, and thanks to Nicky at Digbeth is Good for pointing it out
Facebook group – mid*point
“mid*point is the network for independent theatre companies in the West Midlands” There doesn’t seem to have been any activity on the website for over a year but they’ve just started a Facebook group so something must be going on under the hood
Halloween might not be my bag but at least it’s an excuse to put some interesting events on.
Aside from the Ikon Eastside closing party there are a fair number of Halloween-themed things going on. These are they (all happening on Friday 31 October, except the last two):
The National Trust are putting on events in the back to back buildings (50-54 Inge Street/55–63 Hurst Street, Birmingham). From 11.30am – 4pm they’ve got some nice events for the kiddies, then from 7pm to 9.30pm they’re “offering visitors a unique opportunity to linger for a while in our shadow-laden rooms, and silently reflect on the atmosphere of the back houses lit by candles, fires and oil lamps”
Vivid are showing a slowed-down version of Psycho that will last a full 24 hours. It starts at 9pm on Friday 31st and ends at 9pm the next day. Entry is free
At the Old Joint Stock Theatre, “Gemini present an evening of ghostly tales around the history of the Old Joint Stock followed by readings from a Medium”. The night’s called Ghostly Histories and perhaps the scariest part is that the blurb mentions “clairvoyants with solid reputations”
And on 1 November the Outer Edge’s next event at The Edge features “some obscure 3D horror and live horror sound effects from DJ FreakBeat”. Email outersight@live.com or text 07887 956297 for info.
The second resonance events soiree will happen at the Town Hall on Friday 3 October featuring a host of local talent as well as the very excellent Heritage Orchestra performing the songs of Amon Tobin. Musically, we’re talking jazz and hip hop but soul, leftfield, classical and any number of other styles will feature.
Artsfest is a big sprawling beast of a festival and a difficult one to wrangle from a listings perspective. A few people have chipped in with their take on how things could/should be presented but for me, while all of them help in some way, none of them really hit the nail on the head. Still here are they:
I’m pretty sure that the small team running Artsfest wouldn’t have the budget or reach to put something like the above together, so it’s great to see the local community take it upon themselves.
In case it’s of any use to anyone, here’s what I’m planning to do. Or at least what I think looks interesting.
Friday evening
Friday’s fun takes place against the backdrop of Light Night, of course.
Stan’s Cafe are opening the doors of AE Harris Factory (110 Northwood Street, B3 1SZ) for Of All The People In All The World (6.30-9pm)
From 7pm (not sure until when) there are two interesting things happening at the Council House. Definitely worth seeing are Willard Wigan’s astounding micro sculptures. Sonia Bhamra will be Painting With Light in another room which might be worth a look if you’re there
Gallery 10 at BM&AG has Comfortism who, I think, mixes up poetry, theatre and stand-up with the odd bit of audience participation. Could be interesting
At 8pm there’s a parade from the Pavillions to Centenary Square
The Town Hall present Late Night Light Night and they’ll be open from 8pm for perfomances by Soweto Kinch, The Sub Ensemble, Manga and Maylight (who I’m looking forward to seeing)
Saturday
Saturday’s the tricky one. There’s loads happening so the best thing might just be to go for a wander around the city centre and see what you stumble across. That said…
From 3.30pm to 4.30pm there’s Raw Magic which is “a visual installation and promenade performance built into a maze of tents, for audiences to explore and choose which direction they would like to take”. Some of the people here were involved in the very popular B1 Labyrinths from this year’s Fierce Festival
From 8pm to 10pm BRB, CBSO and Birmingham Opera Company share the Centenary Square stage for one of the weekend’s big items. Plus there’ll be fireworks.
After that it’s Project X Presents for me. It’s not Artsfest-related but it does look pretty exciting, so that’s where I’ll be.
Sunday
If I’m functioning at 12pm then I’ll want some ‘beautiful heartwarming acoustic/electronica music’. At the Custard Factory, Elliot Jack will be playingjust that.
After that I might wander into the Custard Factory Theatre for some short flicks courtesy of Shortcuts
Also on Friday there’s the free Reggae Rockz Festival 2008 from 8pm to 11pm in Centenary Square. Unfortunately on the Facebook event page the organisers spend all their time bleating about a lack of promotion from Artsfest and don’t get round to telling us much about what they’l be doing. The Beat are playing, that much is sure. The Reggae Rockz website manages to be even less informative. Ah well.
Saturday
It looks like Dholfest 2008 is the biggie here – an attempt to break the world record for the most dhol players in one place (currently 314 players in Sandwell in 1999). They’re aiming for 500 this time. This one will be held in Victoria and Centenary Squares.
Meanwhile, the Custard Factory will be hosting a day of hip hop with Mylz from Heducation and Madman the Greatest down to perform.
Sunday
Sunday is Kerrangfest day with This Beautiful Thief and The Levellers the only bands I’ve spotted so far.
This year the ShortCuts film programme will be extended slightly, with “a more relaxed, experimental programme of films made by local and international film makers” on the Sunday and a set of fims programmed in conjunction with Deaffest across the weekend. There’s more about those in this post from the Artsfest blog.
There’s much more to come and I’ll let you know when I see a full programme lying around the internet somewhere.
It’s competition time again! Well, if a first-come-first-served grab can count as a competition.
Camille O’Sullivan is currently at the Edinburgh Festival and her show, La Fille Du Cirque, is collecting 5 star reviews like they’re going out of fashion. She sings songs by Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Jacques Brel and Kirsty MacColl and generally looks to be a very interesting proposition.
There’s no particular Birmingham link here, in case you’re looking, other than the fact she’s performing at the Town Hall on 5 September and I’ve got 2 tickets to give away.
So, the rules are the same as last time:
Two tickets will go to the first (non-CiB-related) person to shout up in the comments
Use a proper email address so I can confirm everything
If the person claiming the tickets doesn’t’ respond to an email then I’ll go to the next commenter
My decision on any/everything is final
Go for it…
Oh, and here she is doing Tom Waits’ ‘A Good Man (is Hard to Find)’:
**Update** Competition closed – congrats to Alex Hughes!
Soweto Kinch‘s slightly-delayed third album ‘B19: Part 2 Basement Fables’ is due out shortly and, in readiness, the award-winning saxophonist/MC/producer is off on a short tour to showcase the new material. The tour starts at the Town Hall on Friday 25 July.
The twist is that
Young people aged under 21 from the northwest Birmingham postcode areas of B8, B18, B19, B20 and B21 can collect 2 free tickets per person by quoting ‘Soweto Ticket Offer’ at the Town Hall Box Office. The offer is subject to availability, to secure tickets reserve in advance on 0121 780 3333.
Sunday 25th – Resonance Events presents The Herbaliser and Chris Read while Mad Flow, DJ Maxwell and Chromatouch provide the local talent.
Monday 26th – Capsule & Fierce present a Julian Cope lecture plus a screening of Haxan with live soundtrack.
The Saturday night is particularly interesting. It’s a joint Town Hall/Birmingham Jazz production and is billed as a relaxed club night following in the steps of the Town Hall’s all-night jazz sessions of the 50s. The Herbaliser have a new album out on Ninja Tunes and this is the first night of their tour.
Chris Read promoted Substance at the Medicine Bar with Roc 1 and, especially back when it was on every Thursday, there was no better place in town to be. He’s returning to Birmingham after picking up rave reviews for his The Diary mixtape which condenses a 801-track history of hip hop into 70 minutes. It has to be heard to be believed and can be downloaded free from his website.
It’s really good to see the Town Hall being used in this way. Sure, there are plenty of safe, bland acts booked – I expected that – but this weekend they’re putting on one of the most varied leftfield programmes of any venue in the city, and that I didn’t expect. In fact I could quite happily spend my whole weekend down there.
A perfect storm of Birmingham creative scene interestingness is happening on Monday 26 May with Capsule producing an event for the Fierce Festival at the really-rather-good Town Hall (who seem to be widening the scope of the events they’re putting on).
Julian Cope will be presenting his lecture entitled ‘Ancient Worship Of The Gods Beyond Rome’, followed by a screening of ‘Haxan; Witchcraft through the Ages’ with a live soundtrack provided by Bronnt Industries Kapital.
Julian Cope will be returning with Capsule for the Supersonic Festival, 11 to 13 July. Weekend tickets are available for a bargainous £65 and (limited) day tickets are now on sale too. Check their website for details but don’t dally if you want a ticket.
