Posts Tagged ‘ museum ’

Birmingham community museums reopen this week

Aston Hall, Blakesley Hall, Sarehole Mill and Soho House open their doors again from April 2. Open every week – Tuesday to Sunday from 12pm to 4pm – until October 31.

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Stuff what is on this weekend

I dislike groupings of things, I like to be able to pick an choose my own stuff – be that food from a buffet, items from a website via RSS feeds, or cultural events. Festivals work well when they’re curated by someone with a clear vision, not when they do a land grab and pull anything vaguely related that might have been happening anyway under their cloak. Flatpack doesn’t attempt to include the new Spiderwoman film at the ODEON in their programme, Supersonic doesn’t list every metal gig in the Midlands as part of the fest. That works. The idea of having a “London 2012 Open Weekend” where things unrelated to sport, or to London, or to each other are on doesn’t for me. Especially as they may well have been happening anyway. That sort of annoys me, because individually they’re all interesting things. So here they are, don’t let Sebastian Coe and Boris Johnson put you off: Made in Birmingham: 24 – 26 July 2009 – all day. Exhibition exploring Birmingham’s Victorian manufacturing heritage. Venue: Centenary Square, Broad Street, Birmingham, B3 3HQ. Tickets: Free Admission. Amplifying the Map : 25 July 2009, 11am – 1pm. Rediscover familiar places...

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Music be the food of Brum

Music be the food of Brum

The Birmingham Music Archive is a new project, and especially a web site that is trying to build up a huge collection of anything to do with music in Birmingham and how it has affected us Brummies. It’s entirely open to anything, so if you care more about Go Kart Mozart than ELO that’s equally important. Did Bev Bevan help you carry a drunk mate down some stairs? The archive wants to know. Dip in to the archive itself and see what you can add, see what you can find — I’ll be searching it for titbits daily. Did you know that Apatche Indian invented “bhangramuffin”? He’s opening a new bar soon I hear.

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Denim and Leather

Denim and Leather

It had completely escaped my notice that Capsule’s Home of Metal had its own website. It does. Whether you’re strangely attracted to Rob Halford’s bald head which gleams making him look a little like a roll-on deodorant, or it’s the poorly designed Aston Villa merchandise that adorned Napalm Death that really does it for you, then your memorabilia and memories could contribute to a fascinating digital archive of the music scene that the Midlands gave birth to. First up, you’re all invited to Wolverhampton: Saturday 25th October : Wolverhampton Art Gallery 10am – 4.30pm Lichfield Street Wolverhampton, WV1 01902 552 055 Home of Metal is a brand new project aimed at creating the first digital archive of metal music, memorabilia and fans stories, to tell the story of this unique moment of Midlands’ musical heritage. Launching at Wolverhampton Art Gallery on Saturday 25 October, 10am – 4.30pm, the project coincides with the 40th anniversary of when the term ‘heavy metal’ was coined by music journalist Lester Bangs when describing Black Sabbath. The launch event at the city centre Art Gallery encourages fans of Judas Priest, Napalm Death, Godflesh, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin to come along and share their...

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Go and look for that dinosaur

Birmingham Museum and Art gallery used to have a huge T-Rex in it, I loved it. It’s not in the Collections Centre in Nechells, but lots of other rarely seen BMAG artefacts are – and this weekend you’re allowed in to have a shufty and photograph them. It’s part of The Big Picture (disclaimer: I’m working on this), and the centre will be open – with photographic advice on hand – Saturday 5th April 10.00am – 3.00pm. More details on the Big Picture site.

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Tanks for all the fish

Charlotte Carey posted on her blog that it was cheaper (with a Railcard, admittedly) to go to the science museum in London than to Brum’s Thinktank and how it was, as someone has even bothered to write on Wikipedia, quite upsetting seeing as the old science museum was free. That’s certainly something I’ve heard before, and actually said without thinking myself, but what’s the reasoning behind it? My limited understanding was that museums owned by the local government were legislated to be free entry, but there was something about Thinktank that made it not a museum. And if, as is easily surmised, it was the extra “interactive” stuff was that worth the £8.50? This isn’t quite the case, Thinktank isn’t owned by the city council but by “Thinktank Trust” which means that it isn’t legislated to be free to the public – it does however receive an annual grant of £2 million from Birmingham City Council to cover a portion of its day to day costs. Some of the exhibits are on loan from the BM&AG collection – semi-permanent loan it would seem as there’s no Science Museum to give them back to. Apart from the council grant the...

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BiNS is mostly by Jon Bounds a Birmingham based social web consultant, producer and writer., You can hire him to work on your social web campaigns or anything really—he's not fussy. Follow him on twitter or drop him an email.

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