Birmingham City Council

After the Lord Mayor’s Show

“This year’s Lord Mayor’s Family Show takes place on Monday the 31st of May from 11am to 5pm, in and around Victoria Square and Chamberlain Square in, Birmingham City Centre.“ Anyone fancy doing something underwhelming afterwards?

Birmingham City Council (one third of seats, remember, very unlikely to see any change of control) count starts at 3pm today. There’s an ‘information pack’ here with some the previous data, results will appear here and there’s meant to be a live broadcast too… will link that up as soon as it surfaces. Local bloggers are being invited to the count (at the NIA) — contact head of comms Debra Davis for details. Bounville‘s Dave Harte is going to be there, follow his Twitter stream for the quick updates. He was very good at the General stuff overnight:

What ‘culture’ do you do?

Brum is, as you’ll no doubt be aware, is bidding to be UK City of Culture 2013. The final bid has to be in in May and getting a full picture of what culture is for Birmingham is and important part of it. We’ve already had Cliff Richard and heavy metal ballet suggested — but what do people actually get up to? One idea to capture that is to let everyone contribute to a one day celebration of all Birmingham’s cultural activity. For 24 hours from midday on Friday 23rd April to midday on Saturday 24th anyone can blog anything cultural they’re doing on the bid website (it’ll be at http://birminghamculture.org/blog) — you contribute via email. Anything sent to blog@birminghamculture.org will make the site — pictures video or audio included. I think this is the opportunity to show all that stuff that’s going on that doesn’t usually get publicity — culture is a pretty wide thing; are you watching football and singing? In a book club, out doing some parkour? All three at the same time? From the grottiest punk gig to the, er, soppiest punk gig, it’d be good if someone was there and recording it in some...

After years of calls for Birmingham to appoint a ‘Creative Director’ — similar to Manchester’s Peter Saville, it seems the City Council have finally got the message. A source close the the cabinet revealed that they’ve even identified their man — Hollywood maverick Tim Burton. It may be that a replacement for regeneration chief Clive Dutton has been so hard to come by as officials have been shooting for the top and trawling the film world for someone with real vision, and big curly goth hair. With Dutton now working in that London it would be a coup for Birmingham to get such a creative talent to come in the opposite direction — it’s hoped that Burton would move to Brum from his current home in Notting Hill. Burton could be in place to oversea Birmingham’s year as UK City of Culture, and it would be expected to be coloured by his very particular view of the World. Plans to sell sponsorship on Council workers’ uniforms could be shelved and current hi-vis tabbards replaced with slightly down-at-heel Victorian formal dress, while the Birmingham Anchor and similar underground sites would be opened to the public. A creative director would also...

Part of the build up to Brum’s City of Culture bid is the Canvas Birmingham site, where people can either say what culture they enjoy in the city or suggest odd ideas that they’d like to see. No idea is odder than the concept of a week long play version of a Cliff Richards film, but that’s what I wanted. Fierce have produced a ‘fantasy’ festival programme — which features some of the best ideas, including a giant sculpture of Spaghetti made out of spaghetti and art on the buses (go see it all here). And the Cliff Richards play: By the way, if you still haven’t seen the film it’s online here. It did amuse me a lot to see how the Mail couldn’t really cope with the idea of a ‘fantasy’ brochure and think that the ideas are going to happen.

Guesswork?

I’m quite “for” the idea of Brum being 2013 City of Culture. I’m not convinced that the council have the skills to make it great, and I’m still cynical about the idea that “the possibility” of hosting the “Brit Music Award, MTV music Awards, the BAFTAs, the Stirling Prize, the Turner prize” (all private organisations who can make their own decisions) will result in any of that actually happening — but in any event it’s better to have culture than not. I am interested in the means used to justify it all (when huge cuts are being foisted on the council workforce). Minister for Fun Cllr Mullaney says : “The benefits of winning this award will be enormous and can be summed-up as follows: 1. An estimated boost to the regional economy of £200 million. 2. The creation of thousands of jobs in our growing creative sector.” and so on to where the more esoteric, but obvious, points about raised profile are made. I’ve genuinely no idea how this is calculated, what I do know is that this sort of thing gets printed in the press and is then accepted as fact. I’ve wondered aloud before about how much benefit...

Danny Smith: Tag nuts

So I spoke to the Editor* about what to write about this week and he gave me this, probably to wind me up, which suggests that ten people are responsible for most of the graffiti in Brum. I knew my feelings on graff have been documented ad nauseum in other places. Also I find the weary ‘is it art?’ argument nonsensical and unhelpful and am at loathe to drag it out one more time. So, for once, I thought it would be good to give someone active in that world a chance to reply. The guy I spoke to didn’t want to be named so I haven’t. What do you think of the thought that there only ten people responsible for the graffiti in Birmingham? I doubt the council see it like this to be honest, I can imagine they have a wanted list a lot longer. But who knows. They will have probably whittled it down to their top ten targets who they have literally charted as the top ten. However what they don’t realise is that if your a “tagger” part of that concept is to get up. As many times as possible. More than anyone else....

Keep your bins in out of the cold

The council’s bin men have obviously got an even harder job in these conditions, but whoever is supplying information to the Weather disruption page on the website is living in a fantasy land. “If your collection was missed today please remove the bags or boxes from the roadside where feasible and store them as usual. We will endeavour to collect your items as soon as possible or on the next scheduled collection for the particular service affected.” “We are committed to clear any backlog over the next few days, weather permitting.” A fantasy land of the past where bin men got bags from your bins rather than you having to put them at the edge of the road. If they’re going to come round as-and-when to clear the backlog they you obviously need to leave them out.

The story of Superprix is told in many ways: hushed whisperings in council cloisters whenever anyone comes up with something monumentally odd, in flowers along Bristol St every spring, and now in a book, Superprix: The Story of Birmingham’s Motor Race. “The idea of a motor race in the heart of England’s motor city (to emulate the Monaco circuit) had been mooted as early as 1966. In the end, the city’s arterial roads round the Bull Ring and the city centre provided one of the most exciting racing events ever staged in the UK.” Sample pages are available on the publisher’s website.

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Birmingham City Council

After the Lord Mayor’s Show

This shit just got local

What ‘culture’ do you do?

Gone for a Burton

Making it up as we go along

Guesswork?

Danny Smith: Tag nuts

Keep your bins in out of the cold

Collection of Prix

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Birmingham's emotional wellbeing* on Thursday 17th of May 2012 08:18: 57 % (average)