Created in Birmingham

For those that are into these kind of things, you can now add Created in Birmingham to your Circles on Google+.

If you’ve no idea what Google+ is then I really wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.

Incidentally, now’s probably a good time to remind you that if you want to follow the entirety of Created in Birmingham then:

• createdinbirmingham.com is still the main place to get everything
• You can Like the Facebook Page
• You can follow the Twitter account
• There’s a Delicious account where all the links for the Friday link round-ups are collected together
• There’s a Created in Birmingham Tumblr too, where I tend to quickly post or reblog flyers, posters, videos and photos – it’s a more visual thing

There’s loads of stuff happening at Artsfest this weekend. I pulled out a few suggestions here (with more in the comments below that post) but to get an idea of what people are up to, here’s a live Twitter search to have a look at:

Meanwhile, I’m covering what’s going on in the Dance Marquee today. You can follow all of that on the Dancing for the Games website.

Today, every so often, I’m going to grab a smattering of tweets and pull them into the timeline below. If you refresh this page every so often you’ll see what’s been added. Or you can see it on the Storify site.

There’s a bigger point to be made behind this. It’s kinda obvious but I might write it up sooner or later.

And it’s not just that I couldn’t think what to write about today (although that too).

I went to see Stan’s Cafe’s The Cleansing of Constance Brown at AE Harris on Saturday. It was superb and I’d thoroughly recommend grabbing some tickets before it closes on Saturday. Unless it’s already sold out. By rights it should’ve done that long ago.

It’s probably better to go with no expectations/preconceptions of about what you’re about to see but, in case you’d rather take someone else’s word for how it good it is:

• Terry Grimley in the Birmingham Post (5 stars)
• Exeunt Magazine (5 stars)
• Lyn Gardner in the Guardian (4 stars)
• Pete Ashton (with video trailer, but if you’re going I’d recommend not watching it)
• Lots of people on Twitter

Book tickets here.

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*Alternative titles for this blog post:

• Knees up Constance Brown (didn’t make sense)
• Constance-ly good reviews (just rubbish)

Last night was Birmingham Twestival, a gathering of Birmingham Twitter users. The evening was a delightful mix of games, prizes and squinting at name tags, all in the name of charity. Birmingham joined over 175 countries in hosting a event to raise money and awareness for charity: water.

Photo by Lee Allen

I had a lovely time, mostly trying to spot my twitter friends from either their name tags or avatars, I even won a raffle prize – $200 of hosting vouchers!  I asked the Birmingham tweeple to tweet a review:

If you need to remember the names of your new friends you made last night, a list of the attendees was posted on the blog today. Photographer Lee Allen (@photosbylee) took some great photos, you can see them on Flickr.

When I get word of how much was raised I will post it. Thanks to all the organisers for doing such a brilliant job.

This week Wendy Cope, one of the favourites to become the new poet laureate said that you can’t write poetry to order. Channel 4 set a challenge to prove her wrong: Write a poem ‘to lift the spirits of the nation’ in the format of a 140 character Twitter tweet.

Katie Parry aka @supercoolkp, a designer with supercool, did just that and managed to get her tweet read on air on the evening news.

Katie said:

I can’t begin to tell you how chuffed I was – I watch Channel 4 News every weeknight so to see my (Twitter) name on the screen was brilliant.

And it’s another small yet powerful example of the amazing connective potential of Twitter. How else would a graphic designer in Brum get their poem recited on the national news?

The segment is available to watch on YouTube and the best of the rest are on Channel 4 online.

• shameless self promotion (for a good cause) « graphiquillan
  Please go and vote for Shona’s beautiful design. It’s so quick to do and you’ll be supporting Birmingham’s creativeness. Please. Go on
• 4Talent Central Film Weekender
  As part of the Hello Digital festival the local 4Talent folk have put together some film events at the Electric Cinema. On Friday there are 5 films from the annual Horrorfest competition. Saturday sees Pixar’s Michal Makarewicz introducing WALL-E (in high def). Sunday returns to horror with 28 Days Later, followed by a debate on the future of digital film
• YouTube – ArtsFest2008′s Channel
  ArtsFest has a YouTube channel for the 2008 events
• Punch – News – MOBO 2008 nomination for Punch!!!
  Ammo from Punch was nominated for a BeMOBO award which honours an individual or organisation making a difference in the community. He was pipped to the post by Ricky McCalla in the end but a round of applause is due nonetheless
• Twitter / punchrecords
  Punch have joined Twitter, by the way
• Big Cat Group on Hello Digital
  Big Cat give an overview of the events happening next weekend (Thurs – Sun) at Hello Digital
• Digbeth is Good- Sunday Xpress this Sunday at the Adam & Eve
  Promising not only “singers, poets, comedians, strange music-makers and rattlesnakes” but “free roast potatoes and good cheer” too. Sounds splendid
• Animation Forum WM – Eight Eyed Sea Bass in Profile
  Interesting interview with Paul and Dom from Eight Eyed Sea Bass. Covering topics like the London/regions divide, funding/support for animators and current/future projects. Having seen it, I can also confirm that they have a “bloody nice studio”
• D’log – 10th Birmingham Tolkien Fest
  Pencil in 16-17 May 09 if the thought of a Tolkein Fest makes you go weak at the knees. If not, don’t

Back in April Pete did a round-up of Birmingham creatives on Twitter.  There have been many additions since then, including accounts registered in the names of various local companies, festivals, etc who are using the (free!) service in all sorts of ways.

Not all of them are being used all year round or even updated all that regularly, but you never know when someone’s going to pick up an account and start using it again.

Here are the ones I’m aware of, in no particular order:

• Film Dash
  
• PLUS Design
• Stan’s Cafe – Of All The People In All The World
• Nikki Pugh’s Ludogeography
• Aquaplane (a local band)
  
• Hello Digital
• Project X Presents
• Birmingham Eastside
• Type
• Robot v Dinosaur
• Light House Media Centre
• Created in Birmingham
• Sutton Art Festival
• 4Talent
• Ash10
  
• MyTurf (online volunteering network)
  
• Custard Factory
• BCU Media
• Things Guide
• Ironman Records
• Smile
• Birmingham Jazz Festival
• Fierce Festival
• Likemind
• Gigbeth
• Creative Networks
• Network Musician

I also have my suspicions that the person behind The Day Today (occasionally coughing out lines from the show) is a prominent fellow in the city’s media.  There’s only circumstantial evidence so far, but I’m on their case.

If you’ve come across any others to add to the list then please shout em up in the comments.

This is a lovely example of how to use that free online stuff (call it blogging, Twittering, social media if you like) to drum up interest in your work.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service.  Smile is a creative consultancy.  Smile don’t have a blog as such but they have a Twitter account and a Smile website.  They’re working on the Baskerville Project (as is Alex Hughes, whose well-timed post has just dropped into my RSS reader) and they’ve put some beautiful photos on their site and Twitterered to tell interested folk like me that they’re there.

I don’t quite know what they’re doing but I’m really interested in seeing the finished product now.

More photos on the Smile website.

I’ve added a couple of things to Created in Birmingham that you might not have noticed, especially if you don’t tend to visit the site itself because of the genius that is RSS.

Calendar/Listings

On the listings page (there’s a link below the title of the blog too) I’ve embedded a calendar from my own GCal account.

I use that calendar to keep track of the various events covered on CiB, plus a few added extras.  If you use Google Calendar (and possibly several others, like iCal and maybe Outlook) then you can subscribe to the CiB calendar too.

The listings page also pulls in a feed from Live Brum showing the day’s events.

CiB on Twitter

There’s a Created in Birmingham Twitter account too at http://twitter.com/createdinbrum.  I tend to use this to flag up events that are happening nearer the time, kinda like a reminder service.

Before the non-Twitterers among you switch off, these work as free SMS updates too.  Just send:

follow + createdinbrum

to 07624 801423 and you’ll get those CiB updates as free text messages.  Pretty groovy, no?

Staging ArtsFest is a huge undertaking as a few of the photos on the ArtsFest365 blog hint at.  They seem to have taken on a few volunteers recently but they’re looking for more.  If you fancy getting involved (and I imagine they’ll have all kinds of work) then email artsfest[@]birmingham.gov.uk.

Also, there’s an ArtsFest Twitter for you to follow if you’d like updates in the run-up to 12-14 September.

I’m very much liking the website for the 24th Birmingham International Jazz Festival. I’ll come back to that though. Meanwhile…

The dates/programme/etc for the jazz festival have been released. It’ll take place across a whole host of venues from 4 – 13 July.

Musicians and bands from USA, Spain, France, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, Holland, Czech Republic and Venezuela line up alongside the best from the UK and from the region to present a feast of some 180 concerts in ten days, almost every one free to the public.

Having browsed through the programme there are no acts there that jumped out at me. Now, I’m not the most studious jazzhead in the world so it’s entirely possible I’ve missed someone big so please let me know any top picks in the comments.

Back to the website though, and it’s a joy. It’s nice and clearly laid out, the listings are easy to navigate and it works. So they’ve got the basics right. Beyond that though, what I like that they’ve got a blog (which they’re using) and that they’ve listed the events on Upcoming (so you can slot the ones you want into your (non-physical) calendar easily. They’ve done the same with Last.fm too, which is good to see – I use the event listings there to track which gigs I’ve been to and get recommendations for others.

Also, they’ve got a Flickr account and are accepting reviews on the site itself which you can send via the contact form, by email or by Twitter. Oy yeah, they’re on Twitter too. This is all good, useful stuff and the best local example of this kind of thing that I’ve seen. Hopefully their audience will engage with all of this.

Just to balance out the praise, most of the gigs are free but for the paying ones links to the ticket sellers would be good. Actually, an artists section and links to the artists’ websites would be useful – especially for someone like me who’s interested but clueless as to who these people are.