from, oddly, the council’s new Facebook page.
FlixFixer is Social Cinema at the Custard Factory Theatre. “It allows you to choose movies you love, find a venue to screen them and invite friends, family or other like-minded film-lovers to share in a screening where you set the rules – be it dress-up, dress down, no hats or no food. It allows you to build a community of friends around your shared love of movies and get together regularly to celebrate that. We screen here on Wednesdays… or you can screen here whenever you want” Loads of special nights already booking, including an offering from the Dirty Bristow team.
From Birmingham News Room: “Curators from Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have secured funding to restore sculptor William Bloye’s 1934 statue of the Greek God Pan, which formerly had pride of place the West garden at Aston Hall. Just one problem – the statue’s head was stolen by vandals six years ago. Aston Hall & Park reopened to the public in July 2009 following a £12.75m refurbishment and restoration project. The refurbishment of the West Garden was not included in the original scheme but thanks to ongoing fundraising efforts a package of restoration and landscaping work to the garden costing some £70,000 will be carried out this year. Artists from specialist sculpture company Eura Conservation have completed an initial clay maquette (small scale model) of the missing head which will ultimately be carved in Portland stone and reunited with the rest of the figure. Unfortunately, there are no detailed images of the statue prior to the vandalism and sculptors need help to recreate an accurate copy of the missing head. That’s where Birmingham residents can help. Curators are urging members of the public to send in photographs of Bloye’s statue to assist the restoration project.” Upload photographs to http://www.flickr.com/groups/1614884@N23/ or...
“New maps revealed” says the Mail and although I think I’ve seen these before, Soviet era Russian maps of Brum are surely not new anyway. They are pretty interesting tho’, and apparently have “military targets” down at Fort Dunlop. You’ll have to search the website old-maps.co.uk for Birmingham to see them, ’1977 Russian Map” should be in the results.
Devastating news from the Nature Centre, where the Red Pandas have been shipped off to Bristol. Replacements are Coatis — apparently also members of the raccoon family and known as “snookum bears”: Info from this new blog about the nature centre from a volunteer there.
Got a chance yesterday to pop into the mac (still a week or so before the opening, and work being done all over the building) and taste the catering. Yum. The building re-opens to the public on May 1st, with loads of events, a very much refurbed bar and café and free wifi streaming out into the park. The cinema, theatre and hexagon theatre have all had a spruce up and there’s now extra performance space around the building. Most impressive is the huge new gallery space — a vast room that already looks to be very flexible. The opening exhibition ‘Plug In’ is currently being installed, and features a ton of locally related art, including a sound piece by Peter Cusack, photos by Stuart Whipps and this masterpiece too long out of sight: It’s also got the Brum word cloud in situ — have a quick look on the mac blog. But best of all I found out that the mac had once been the site of Bob Carolgees’s brief foray into the World of architecture:
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...
Here’s a tweet I saw the other day, a sentiment we’ve all heard (and maybe said) before: “Wish Birmingham’s creatives would shout louder about the great stuff that goes on in the city”. There are lots of good things, but by definition there’s chaff with the wheat too — so are we really after “the creatives” to do the shouting? Wouldn’t we be better served with a batch of critical eyes, exposing the greatness? Or is the shouting the first stage of that, do people need to be aware of ‘something’ before they can pick the best bits? But do “the creatives” (a pointless generalisation, but I may as well stick with it as everyone else seems to) really want to let us know they’ve got a trumpet? Or, do they just want to impress the art scene, get a few quizzical looks from passers-by and be able to moan that “people from round here don’t care”? There’s always been that suspicion floating round my head; notice how all the excitement is round the ‘private view’ or the party (something I’ve never really understood) rather than the exhibition itself, think about how odd (and ad-hoc) opening times prohibit dropping...
Brum’s (perhaps the World’s) best film festival starts today — I’m off to the Stephen Duffy film on Sunday at least. But here’s some recommendations from other people Danny Smith (more here): “Down Terrace – Friday 26 march Normally I stay away from anything that even resembles a kitchen sink drama having been inoculated against the allure of grey bleak humanity by growing up in a house with EastEnders on every single day. But when you introduce Ben Wheatly (him what did Ideal and Modern Toss) and tense crime plot then I have to say I’m a little more than intrigued.” & PixieSixer from More Canals…: “Short Film Triple-Bill at VIVID on Thursday 25 March (6-10.30pm). With a selection of regionally made animated shorts, highlights from Shooting People’s Shooters Film of the Month competition, and an assortment of music videos and other shorts from London’s only weekly short film evening, Short and Sweet, it is sure to be a highly entertaining evening jam-packed with creative audiovisual goodness. And, what’s more, it’s free!” If you’ve got any yourself I’m sure we’d be glad to hear them.
