Birmingham

When is a full car park not a full car park?

When it’s Birmingham City Council’s Brunel Street Car Park. Brunel Street car park “the red cage” is my favourite place to park in the city centre; the cross-hatched metal design is truly wonderful and the overall structure clearly an influence on the plans for the new Central Library. I’m the mayor of the place on Foursquare, I love it because it inspires oddness, I love it because it seems to have an odd soul of it’s own, but most of all I love it because it’s remarkably cheap for such a central place. I’m tight like that.

Birmingham’s Third Rate Reputation

Nothing too new here in this Independent piece about “Britain’s ‘Second City’ a third-rate reputation”, but they’ve done a fair amount of research —Adrian Goldberg, Trevor Beattie, Siôn Simon, Khalid Mahmood all quoted. “In other parts of Britain there is an almost wilful ignorance of Birmingham’s attractions; a determined refusal to acknowledge that there is anything worth tasting inside its spaghetti swirl of motorways. “It’s seen as this grimy manufacturing city with an impossible one-way system – when it’s actually long-gone,” says Clare Short, former International Development Secretary. “Then everyone despises the accent. That’s the sneer at Birmingham.”" That they go on to use a stock picture of could-be-anywhere canalsde living, sort of undermines or re-inforces the lack of identify we suffer. As ever, cover your eyes before the comments if you don’t want to see the bile.

Local Election Coverage – Live

The count in the council elections starts at 10pm tonight, with a third of the seats up for grabs. We’ve sent columnist Danny Smith to the media centre to see what’s going on. He’s tweeting from our @BirminghamINS account, and will do a full write-up whenever he gets to it. For proper coverage there is an official council Live Blog (embeded here): Local Election Count 2011 They’re tweeting using the hashtag #brumvotes2011. More info here.

The global media sensation the 4am Project was a perfect excuse for about 40 photographers to get access to our beautiful Central Library in the middle of the night. From the stacks in the basement to the very roof, we got to see the lot. Nilki Pugh’s photos, my photos. Am sure there will be more an better than mine at least appearing online, feel free to drop links to any you find in the comments:

God save the Queen, but why?

From the Mail: Council street services boss Timothy Huxtable has extended the deadline for applications to hold a bash on a public highway until April 18. The local authority has so far only received 12 firm applications, while neighbouring Solihull, has received 24, despite being a much smaller council. But Coun Huxtable (Cons, Bournville) told the full council meeting that the council has also received 17 ‘expressions of interest’ over street parties from communities. Coun Huxtable said: “We have received a further 17 requests for further information and so have extended the deadline to give those people, and anyone else who comes forward time to apply. He added that social clubs, church groups, pubs and community associations were all planning their own events.” I simply can’t think of a good reason why the Council are so desperate for Birmingham to be seen as whoopingly, 30s-style, patriotic. Can you?

Festival smestival, festivals are just marketing exercises where the same shit as normal is glossily repackaged and the “vibe” is some flyers. Not when they’re painstakingly and artistically curated by a team that manage to make Birmingham the centre of the performance art world for a week each year. Go Fierce. Including ‘ Burningham ‘ all week: “a playful intervention on Eastside Green conceived and constructed by acclaimed French architecture collective EXYZT. The site is in the shadow of Birmingham’s abandoned Curzon Street railway station and on the route of the proposed HS2 high speed rail link. You are invited to drop in and help EXYZT in their process of ‘urban psychoanalysis’ of the city. Does Birmingham have low self-esteem? Does Birmingham have multiple personality disorder? Should Birmingham be renamed? Visit throughout the week, and join us for a public feast at dusk on Saturday 26th March.”

Festival smestival, festivals are just marketing exercises where the same shit as normal is glossily repackaged and the “vibe” is some flyers. Not when they’re painstakingly and artistically curated by a team that manage to make Birmingham the centre of the film world for a week each year. Go Flatpack. Including ‘The Secret History of Birmingham‘ on Sunday: “The screening will include Miracles Take A Little Longer, a film about Birmingham’s reconstruction which includes brilliant colour footage from the post-war period and narration by Frank Bough. We’ll also have some marvellous amateur cine footage of Bournville from the 1950s.”

Planning your journey online can be useful, save time and money if you do it right (and if then the busses actually turn up of course) so kudos to Network West Midlands for promoting that. In a bold marketing move, they’ve got for a poster campaign all over the city to promote planning your journey online without mentioning where one might do that. Small posters and large billboards: No web address, URL, app, QR code, nor mention of any of the three online journey planning services they promote at all. Brave egalitarian move, or oversight (all of the posters they’ve got that promoting offline things like bus-passes do have their web address on)? Bold, brave. Er, Centro?

Page 3 of 56

« 1 2 3 4 5 … 56 »

Recent Comments

Archives

Birmingham

When is a full car park not a full car park?

Birmingham’s Third Rate Reputation

Local Election Coverage – Live

Central Library at 4am

God save the Queen, but why?

Fierce Festival 2011

Flatpack Festival 2011

Network WM in URL Hell

Get more Brum:

Is Brum Happy?

Birmingham's emotional wellbeing* on Thursday 17th of May 2012 08:22: 56.3 % (average)