Birmingham: It’s Not Shit

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Mere seconds after making a snide remark about there being no info about the Birmingham Digital Festival, the blog goes live (in fact it was transitioning from some test server as I wrote, but I couldn’t be bothered to change it). So yay for information, boo for my laziness!

Hello Digital is, they say, “an unbelievable adventure to be experienced by people of all ages.” It’s at Millennium Point from the 23rd to the 26th of October.

There does look to be some cool stuff going on, although it’s buried at the moment by the lack of a programme on the site, or a list of posts, or navigation (coming soon I hope).

There is also a bit of a weird writing style pitched oddly betwixt chatty and arts funding speak - and some hilariously positive “recent comments” (for a site only just live especially - “This sounds great! Whereabouts will this be? Wherever it is I’m sure I’ll be there.” “Sounds awesome like the Antiques Roadshow for metallers!”).

SCAMP “Sonic Computer Aided Music Performance” is looking for sound artists to contribute and sounds like it could be fun.

Metal Mania is mentioned (and something to do with this festival? I’m confused, I admit) and is an event at Wolverhampton Art Gallery to help stock up a digital archive of memories for Capsule’s metal museum (which I am very excited by):

“This is a call out to everyone – hard core fans, enthusiasts, local historians from the Midlands. On Saturday, October 25, rock on down to Wolverhampton Art Gallery and bring in memorabilia, photographs and great stories recounting your experiences of metal music to help Capsule create a ‘people’s archive’ of stories, images and pictures to tell the story of this unique moment of the region’s musical heritage.”

More to come, I’m sure, and they also has a twitter.

Be Birmingham is what used to be called Birmingham Strategic Partnership — that’s a sort of talking shop between things like the police and the council, which everyone is invited to contribute to.

They’ve revamped their website to include a forum, as well as blogs from their “community champions” - who take “various views from the community to be considered when strategies and activities are being developed”.

Apart from the sin of calling blog posts “blogs”, most other things seem to be three (comments, RSS and the like). It’s one to stick in your feed reader and watch with interest anyway.

A day after we found out the line-up for the Book Festival, and as we continue to find out very little about Artsfest and nothing at all about the “digital festival“, the bill for the Birmingham Comedy Festival is live.

Personal highlights include Mark Steel, Richard Herring (although I’m pretty sure their tours would be coming round about now anyway) and Ted Chippington. “Meh”’s include Jimmy Carr and Lee Evans.

Bizarre bookings include Chubby Spencer (a tribute to Chubby Brown), and Steve Lilly’s Comedy Classics - “large group portraits depicting famous comedy casts, including Dad’s Army, Only Fools And Horses, Carry On and Fawlty Towers. Limited edition prints and greetings cards are also available.”

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

And Ken Dodd.

Anyways, full details and a downloadable programme on the Comedy Festival site.

The charming Russ L, points us to the line-up of this years Birmingham Book festival via a post on the BiNS talk boards.

There’s the usual opening quiz, David Lodge, Mark Thomas and the godlike Will Self amongst others.

Full programme is now on the site.

I meant to mention this ages ago, but I forgot and I’ve only just remembered now it’s nearly finished:

“From 12 - 30 August, Ikon is running a tailor shop in the old Salvation Army charity shop, 3 New Street, Erdington.  Led by creative facilitator Jess Worley and local members of the Erdington Arts Forum, the shop will be making small fabric whales designed by pupils from Erdington Hall Primary School.  Over the course of the three weeks, eighty-five small whales will be produced to tie-in with the installation of a stunning twenty-five metre long cashmere whale in the centre of Birmingham by Italian artist Claudia Losi from 24 September to 16 November. Everyone is welcome to come along and participate in making the whales over the summer.  The shop is open from 11am – 3pm, Tuesday – Saturdays.”

Let’s run that past ourselves again:

“stunning twenty-five metre long cashmere whale in the centre of Birmingham by Italian artist Claudia Losi from 24 September to 16 November.”

Wow.

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have just come into some money, £300,000, and they’re going to use it to create a gallery showing Birmingham’s history from medieval times to the present day. I’m sure we used to have something a bit like this (a local history room anyway).

But anyway — apart from getting some of the industrial history stuff back from Thinktank, digging out the system that did push-button playback of “I can’t find old Brummagem” and providing some of the Library’s Baskerville collection — with a decent home what should it have?

Here’s some suggestions:

• Dennis Mortimer’s beard from when villa won the European cup.
• Every plan and architects model for a regenerated Brum, all google-earthed up and you can rum simulations of how the city would have looked if they’d come to pass.
• An interactive exhibit that  allows you to do the voice over for Telly Savalas looks at Birmingham - a bit like Singstar where you have to match the pitch, speed and not laugh when you claim to have “dallied in Dale End”.
• Dana International - well she’s not doing anything at the moment.
• A “how we used to stuff our faces” section, including replica RTP crisps (thanks @regengirl), the first balti pies (from Walsall’s ground), whatever retro sweets Cadbury are knocking out that week, Frosty Jack’s Cider, Highgate Mild - plenty of merchandising opportunities.
• A diorama depicting how Brum was at the time of the Doomesday book (a small holding worth a pound apparently) - for bonus points the medieval man should stand near a goat and look suspiciously like Benny from Crossroads.
• An anamatronic Carl Chinn, that eventually goes crazy Westworld style, lecturing all and sundry about local history.
• A “how the museum used to be” section - with a papier-mâché T-Rex (meta I know).

Your turn…

TV quack Dr Alice Jones is to be dropped 100ft from the ceiling of the concert hall to demonstrate how white blood cells react to sudden changes in the body induced by shock and fear - they could have just subjected her to some of the acts at Supersonic and saved the winching equpiment. See the most accousticly perfect concert hall around abused for TV on Don’t Die Young, Thursday 21 August at 8.30pm on BBC2. [link]

Heritage Open Days are a set of tours or special openings of buildings around the country for four days every September. This year’s itinerary is now out and there are six pages of search results local to Birmingham (can’t create a permalink you’ll have to go to the search page and use “Birmingham” as a keyword).

Highlights that I’ve seen so far:

Birmingham Bonanza Walk - architectural walk around the city centre that pays attention to the modern as well as the past.

Guided Walk - Moseley Art, Architecture & History

J W Evans - historic factory in the Jewellery Quarter.

Handsworth Old Town Hall - no excuse, it’s on the 11 route.

There’s also a walk entitled “Birmigham More Canals Than Venice”, which I can’t find online at the officlal site but is here.

That's it, The Big Picture has officially got the World Record for the largest photo mosaic! You can explore it here online and it looks fantastic. [link]

Steve Dyson (Mail Editor)'s blog post on the Post & Mail re-invention has so far collected 63 comments, which to his credit he's responding to. It's a very interesting debate, although a unusual place to have it, as many of the commentors are staff. Proof that you can't hide anything these days, and a very useful read if you're interested in what goes on behind the scenes at your local papers. [link]