Posts Tagged ‘ culture ’

Birmingham Music Map — new home needed

With the Birmingham Popular Music Archive I’ve been inviting the public to contribute to an online database of music culture in Birmingham, by placing venues, artists, people or anything they feel relates to music on a map. You can see and add your memories to the map, here. An editioning of the results so far were commissioned in the form of the Birmingham Music Map as part of ‘plug in’ an exhibition at mac curated by Simon Poulter. The exhibition has now finished, and the artwork (printed on toughened glass and around a metre wide by 1.4m high) is looking for a new home. I’m happy for it to be displayed in any public place as long as they will display an artist’s card next to it and look after it — it would be brilliant if it was mounted somewhere appropriate, but if you’re interested please drop me a line at jon@jonbounds.co.uk. If you’ve not got the room or worry about your walls’ durability for such a monster, poster/print copies are available, screenprinted on gorgeous white archival paper at B1 (707 × 1000mm /27.8 × 39.4in) in a signed and numbered limited edition of 100 copies. Go buy one (£25 plus £5 postage...

Call for Papers – UB40 Symposium

Cue tabloid outrage about "a degree in UB40"… this looks a fascinating way to get into the history and significance of Birmingham an popular music.

Sounds like Birmingham

Feature in the Post about the documentary Made In Birmingham: Reggae Punk Bhangra. I’ve seen this, it’s very very good.

New Arts Market for Birmingham City Centre planned – Creative Open Workshops

The COW have the opportunity to establish a regular city centre craft and arts market — this is no doubt a very good thing, just the sort that a City of Culture would need — and would like opinions at this very early stage. Great news.

I have just finished Catherine O’Flynn’s new book — it’s a corker. As the acknowledgements page makes very clear this book is not about Midlands Today, nor is it about Nick Owen (despite the theme of poor witticisms in local news bulletins). It’s not a book about Birmingham Central Library, nor its architect John Madin. It’s not a book about Birmingham, despite being set here (brilliantly evocatively without being cliquey). If Catherine O’Flynn’s first novel What Was Lost was about longing, The News Where You Are is about loss. Loss of loved ones, loss of the past, loss of hope for the future — and, more than that, the loss of past hopes for a future that doesn’t materialise. A future of pedestrian walkways and inner (and outer) ring-roads, of clean lines and surface. It’s not bleak, in fact it’s very human — for each loss there’s a new beginning, for each demolition a listing (or at least a stay of execution), for each problem as resolution of sorts. Except the standard of food in the BBC canteen. Frank Allcroft the novel’s ‘unfunniest man on God’s earth’ is a kind of Nick Owen, but he’s also Gordon Burns, Fred Dinage,...

Sarah Jane Lynch (on twitter) is s putting together a project on Moseley, its history and community over the last 100 years — she started by interviewing Pete the Feet… Pete Mckenzie, better known as Pete the Feet, aged 64 has been propping up the bars of Moseley, Birmingham since the hedonistic days of the sixties. His resilience against the norm of wearing footwear, the fact he has created his own merchandise in form of homemade lighters and purses which he carries everywhere, and not least his warm and friendly nature have made him into something of a local legend. For many Pete is an iconic figure. He isn’t one of the many millions on the social networking site, Facebook, but a group set up in his honour has attracted over 1000 members. He has had a song written about him by local band ‘Katlama’ and was even voted the ‘most famous Midlander who isn’t actually famous’ in a radio poll. I caught up with Pete to unveil the real man behind the legend and to discuss his love of Moseley, the corner of Birmingham he is synonymous with. “ I came here I was about 20, I’d travelled...

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:

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...

Birmingham Has No Music Scene

Birmingham Has No Music Scene says Jeff Stuka and is all the better for it.

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Posts Tagged ‘ culture ’

Birmingham Music Map — new home needed

Call for Papers – UB40 Symposium

Sounds like Birmingham

New Arts Market for Birmingham City Centre planned – Creative Open Workshops

The News Where You Are

Pete the Feet Exclusive

Spit and Sauce, Us

What ‘culture’ do you do?

Birmingham Has No Music Scene

@onBirmingham – Breaking Brum News on Twitter