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Okay then, nominations are now open for the 2007 Brummie of the Year award. Last year Jason Furnell narrowly beat Danny Reddington to the top spot, and the year before Babu wiped the floor with all comers.
Just add your suggestions here in the comments to this post and we’ll consider all suggestions. Nominations are open for a month and the vote will start from 1st November.
You can nominate anyone, anyone at all, but the idea is that they’d be someone, from Brum, that has done something worthy in the past year. You’re welcome to discuss each others nominations, but keep it civil.
And so, in the words of the late Ron Pickering, away you go!
We mentioned that Big Screen Birmingham were to set up a YouTube Group for easy submitting. Well they have:
From November 2007, Big Screen Birmingham will be situated in Victoria Square. Over the last three years it’s home has been next door in Chamberlain Square, and it has played host to over 800 short films. This is your opportunity to get your film seen in the centre of Birmingham. Your film can be about anything….drama, documentary, animation, experimental, anything….as long as it is suitable for a public space (i.e. no sex, no full frontal nudity, no swearing, no brutal violence). Upload your film here and the curator for the screen will be in contact if we have a slot for your film. nb. all copyright stays with the filmmaker, we just need your permission to screen the film. The filmmaker must also have full permission for any copyrighted material i.e music, used within the film.
If you wanted your film on screen, but didn’t want to put it on YouTube I’m sure you can still contact the team directly.
Famous for having its own ‘who’s what’ on the weekends Moseley isn’t having one, Martin Mullaney reveals plans for Kings Heath’s market square - on his blog and on youTube:
I have to say it’s another Mullaney YouTube classic, they’re definately getting more confident - I loved the walk up intro, and tittered along with Martin when he mistakes the phone boxes for toilets (in speech only, but I don’t think he’s the first one to do it). Joking aside, let’s see more polititians get up to this sort of thing.
It’s that time of next year again, when in a flagrant attempt to pay for all the incidental costs of B:iNS we unleash the Birmingham:It’s Not Shit Calendar on the suspecting public. It is, we’ve seen calendars in the shops.
As always it features 13 shots of real Brum, with no spin and only a tiny few adjustments in Photoshop to try and make it look warm in the summer months (well did you try getting pictures of the sun this year?). While it isn’t all pretty, it at least isn’t 12 shots of canalside living.
It includes, the beach under Spaghetti Junction, Mr Egg, The Pantomime Horse Grand National and you can see tiny versions of the inside pictures here.
Both include all your Bank Holidays, as well as a few special B:iNS chosen dates and anniversaries. (There’s also one in our Cafepress shop might be cheaper with the dollar exchange rate being over 2-1, have a look see what you think. This one doesn’t have special dates, just normal holidays.)
It’s a perfect gift for granny, as long as granny doesn’t mind the word “shit” in tiny type a couple of times on the cover. Best to buy it her for christmas and hide her bifocals till it’s January and you’ve put it up.
As part of the Plus International Design Festival, Central Library font geek extraordinare and local history expert Ben Waddington will be running a series of design walks around the city centre focusing on different aspects of type and fontage.
One is his tour of places related to John Baskerville, which I went on in March, and is fascinating for those interested in either local history or font design. Unfortunately much of Baskerville’s Brum exists only in the past, but that doesn’t stop Ben painting a vivid picture. Another is a Type Tour of Digbeth, highlighting the varied letter forms in the side streets, Birmingham’s industrial heritage and to demonstrate that a walk through the humblest back street can yield fascinating examples of type forms.
The third tour is a city centre type tour and will continue to run after the festival and we’re promised Ben will use letterforms to pull out stories of the buildings and the history of Birmingham.
Should be brilliant, and apparently Ben also has a tour called “The Hidden Pubs of Digbeth” so he might even take you for a pint afterwards.
Dates announced:
Type Tour of Digbeth - 17, 18, 19 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
Baskerville’s Birmingham - 20 October 12.30 – 14.30pm
City Centre Type Tour - 21 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
All priced at £10 More Info
*This is a fantastic type pun, and anyone who doesn’t enjoy it is a right bastard type (there we go again).
Just stumbled across this on the interweb, someone is putting chapters of their Grandfather’s life story (as written by him) online. It looks as if it was written for publication, but never made it - such a joy of the net, never mind the “long tail” in years gone by you’d never of been able to read this. It’s relevant to us here as they lived in Brum, specifically Selly Oak:
My two elder brothers started their working life at Cadbury’s chocolate factory and were there up until we emigrated. Both these brothers learned to swim at the factory swimming pool, and both won certificates for distance swimming, diving and life saving.
I’ve got to about part five, where they emigrate - headed for Quebec, sorry for spoiling the end (well the end of Brum anyways).
You know how some football mad dads give their kids the name of an entire football team? Well Lynam Athletic of the Birmingham Coronation League Alliance Division 3 have done something similar - if Quirky News are to be believed - but instead of angry mum to placate there’s 17.
Each of the squad members has changed their name to that of a top footballer leaving a backline of Paulo Maldini, Cafu, John Terry and Fabio Cannavaro with Ruud van Nistelrooy up front.
Captain John Terry, 29, said: “We’re not in the best shape anyway as both Thierry and Ruud smoke about twenty a day and Gerrard is always half cut on a Sunday - nothing like their namesakes.”
Not sure if this has the ring of truth, as any fella who has to go into work on Monday and tell people he’s now to be know as Kaka surely wants more than a couple of spots in the tabloids and blogs. Even if he does work in IT.
