The Arts Council recently asked for regional submissions to win a significant pot of money under the title ‘Artists Taking the Lead’ – linking into themes of the Cultural Olympiad, and leading up to the 2012 Olympics.

The first selection process has happened, and details of the potential regional winners have been announced and can be found here.  Unsurprisingly, all of the West Midlands shortlisted are designed to happen in Birmingham (with perhaps the exception of Imagineer Productions – which doesn’t specify, but has obvious Coventry connections?) and so it seemed relevant to point it out to the CiB readers and point you to the site where comments are invited on which idea excites you the most.

I have rather strong feelings on the selected few and would be curious to find out what you all think.  If any particularly strike you (either positively or negatively!) then feel free to leave a quick comment below explaining why.

The lovely Ben Whitehouse made an excellent point on Twitter this evening – we spend time celebrating the various celebrities of Birmingham, but there are some terrible glaring omissions too.

On the top of Ben’s list (by default, she’s the easiest to make a case for..) is Dame Barbara Cartland – BORN IN EDGBASTON!  Other missing talent includes: David Lodge, John Wyndham, Barbara Cartland, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Sir Barry Jackson, Arthur Conan Doyle.  Admittedly, Dexy’s strikes me as the odd one out in that list – but even so, it’d make for an eclectic alternative ‘walk of fame‘ instead of the obvious Ozzy Osbourne and Frank Skinner.

If you were to add anyone to the walk, who would it be and why?

And if you were to create a more ‘cultural’ walk, where would you put it and why?

In the meantime, two things that compliment one another have come to my attention.

Firstly, an opportunity:

INTER?OGATION: WALSALL

Call to Artists:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to become a secret agent for a day in order to interrogate the public spaces of Walsall.

Using the New Art Gallery Walsall as a base you will investigate the artist’s role in the post-industrial world through one of four methods:

INTER?OGATION: ACTION RESEARCH     (09/09/09)
INTER?OGATION: CONSULTATION         (16/09/09)
INTER?OGATION: COLLABORATION     (23/09/09)
INTER?OGATION: INTERVENTION         (30/09/09)

INTER?OGATION: WALSALL explores the impact that one artist (you) can make in one place, in one day.

This programme of work is organised by Longhouse and the New Art Gallery Walsall, working with lead artist Anna Francis (who can also be found here), and is designed to investigate the impact of short, sharp interventions within the public realm.  Deadline for expressions of interest is fairly soon – 12pm Friday 28 August 2009 – so go visit the site to find out more.

Secondly, I really enjoy the idea of creative practice being fused with more spy-like activities – interrogations and investigations.. where everyone gets to be a secret agent and have their own missions!  So for those of you whose toes are curling at me daring to mention WALSALL in a CiB post, I wanted to temper that with a signpost towards a great Birmingham artist – Nikki Pugh. I feel she really embodies this excitement within her practice, but best of all has taken the time to document in detail how she’s used this approach with great effect in her “How to Wow” series.

Do you know of any other local artists who work in this way?

This Friday will see the culmination of three weeks’ creative activity by forty apprentice artists in Birmingham, as Gallery 37 hosts an arts showcase at Pavilions Shopping Centre.

Now in its eleventh year, Gallery 37, the award winning Birmingham City Council backed arts training programme, offers young people from Birmingham aged between 16 and 24 years the chance to discover and develop their creative talents and interests.

Sponsored and hosted by Pavilions Birmingham, this year’s students have been working alongside professional artists in collaboration with four of the city’s leading cultural organisations: The Birmingham REP, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Sampad (South Asian Arts).

From 4.00-5.30pm, the finished artwork will be displayed at the project’s city centre hub, Pavilions, at Moor Street level.

The Deputy Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Councillor Chauhdry Rashid will be attending, and Gallery 37 artists will deliver speeches and take part in performances.

There will be an opportunity to see a live performance from The REP, ‘The Way Back’, a vibrant new piece of children’s theatre devised entirely by the Apprentice Artists telling the story of three young people setting out on an adventure.

Performances staged in collaboration with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Sampad will also be screened at the Showcase.  Visual art inspired by the work of artists in Ikon Gallery’s current programme, including Carmen Herrera and Birmingham based artists Simon and Tom Bloor will also be on display in a window installation at the Gallery 37 hub.

Continuing their support of the arts, Pavilions have sponsored a celebratory meal and will display the work as a lasting legacy of the project for shoppers to enjoy.

In the meantime, Birmingham’s creative communities continue to toil away and many things have been going on.  Here’s a snapshot of where we’re at right now!

‘Hey for Lubberland!’ can be spotted gracing the canals around Brindley Place.  This work, by Simon and Tom Bloor (and part of Ikon’s off-site projects) will be in situ on the towpath behind Bank Restaurant in Brindleyplace until 13th September 2009.  Visitors can be transported by this working barge, and whilst onboard peruse the floating library of utopian design.  The title ‘Hey for Lubberland!’ was derived from a 17th century English ballad about the New World, mistaken for utopia, but in fact a kind of fool’s paradise.  You can be transported between 13:00 and 17:00 on Tuesdays – Sundays, and best of all admission is free!

If you’re interested in creative networking opportunities, then there’s a new group which will have it’s first meeting on August 13th.  Creative Playground is being organised by Steve Gray and Kate Manion, and offers:

..a chance for people who work in a professional capacity in the creative and digital sectors to get together for drinks and a chat, make new friends and hopefully make some new collaborations as well. Ultimately it is about strengthening the city’s creative community and we’ll be looking to the RDAs and various bodies for support to help us do this.

It looks like a slightly different group of people to those you might meet at BSMC etc. and will hopefully prove rather interesting!  You need to signup with meetup.com and then apply to become a member as there is a selection process as explained here:

The ground rules of joining are: 1) You must be in a professional role within the creative industries, 2) You or your business must be located in Birmingham, 3) You must fill out all the introductory fields in your profile with sufficient detail, 4) You must upload a photo of yourself to your profile. No company brands etc.

Also on Thursday 13th August is the private view of a brand new collection of work, entitled SAMPLE:

New work has been created by a range of Midlands artists including Daniel Westwood, Martin Donnelly, Matt Clugston, Steve Ellis, and Joe Mitchelmore.  The work will be available to view online after the launch at the SAMPLE website, so even if you can’t make it you don’t have to miss out!

And lastly, so that this post isn’t completely ridiculously long, on a transatlantic note, Birmingham-based photographer Chris Keenan (who recently featured in the Visual / Art of Ideas 2 exhibition) has had a piece of work selected for a world-class international exhibition, Art of Photography.

This year they received 16,000 entries from 57 countries.  111 images were chosen for the final exhibition and Chris Keenan’s Franz Joseph Glacier (above) was one of them. The selection was made by Charlotte Cotton, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

If you’re likely to be in and around the San Diego area any time between 29th August 2009 and 1st November 2009 then stop by the Lyceum Theatre Gallery and marvel at some Birmingham talent!

CiB’s ‘about’ page clearly states:

There are two reasons for this blog:

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1. To find out what’s going on around Birmingham and promote it
2. To show that blogging is a simple and effective way of engaging with audiences online

This is the most recent incarnation of CiB but I wondered about the real core of CiB and why it came to exist in the first place.  Back in Nov 07 Pete put together his thoughts on the pupose of CiB, which was somewhat more detailed:

With a few exceptions I want every post on CiB to take people to somewhere else on the web where they can get more information be it an article, blog post, MySpace page, etc. CiB is not a comprehensive news service. It doesn’t exist to cover absolutely everything that’s going on in Birmingham because to attempt that would be impossible. There’s a criteria here.

• Is this something people might not be aware is going on?
• Is this something people might learn from?
• Is this doing something interesting?
• Is this using the internet in an innovative way?
• Could this help people to do what they’re doing better?

• Is posting about this going to encourage people to use the internet, and blogs in particular, for themselves?

In an ideal world I want there to be lots of blogs like CiB and a whole load more that are nothing like CiB. In fact I’d love it if this blog wasn’t necessary. I want the Birmingham creative community to be behaving online in the same way they behave at a launch party, milling around discussing ideas and introducing people to each other.

I think for me, this last part if absolutely crucial in examining CiB’s relevance and place.  When CiB started, Pete identified this need to highlight and link, because other blogs were scarce and weren’t already doing this.  Now, in 2009, blogs are everywhere and people are much more alert to opportunities to publicise, promote and link.  Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting we have reached Pete’s original utopian vision, but we are in a very different place to that of 2007.

With this in mind, I want to invite you to tell me what you want to get from CiB – why you read, and what you want this established online vehicle to do. I have my own ideas of what CiB could or should be, but these still need to be ironed out a little bit.  I’m also going to meet with those who’ve been involved with CiB throughout to look at direction, and so before we meet I would really appreciate some feedback from readers.  You can either put your thoughts in the comments, or if you’d prefer to keep them private you can email me on the CiB address: createdinbirmingham@gmail.com

This is your chance to influence future direction!  Please don’t be shy!

The Event - 2007

The first two weeks of April 2007 saw the culmination of a series of artist-led activities within Birmingham, and this was ‘The Event‘.  At that point in time, the number of artists choosing to stay and work within the city had increased, and an intensification of artistic production had taken place.  It felt very much like Birmingham projected a unique sense of identity, and it was easy to believe that the city held great potential.

Consisting of exhibitions and performances devised by ten of the brightest young visual art organisations in Birmingham at that point in time, the sixteen-day celebration focused on a myriad of event-based practices and exhibitions in such a way as to implicate the whole city into its logic.  Participating organisations included: a.a.s., Capital Art Projects, Colony, [insertspace], International Project Space, Modulate, Periscope, 7inch Cinema, Spectacle, and Springhill Institute.

A lot of interesting work took place, and indeed some of these organisations have developed and flourished (surely most notably 7inch Cinema) – but those without links to their work above, and even some who do have links, are either no longer working as artists / arts organisations, or have begun working under different names without leaving on online breadcrumb trail for me to follow.

In 2007, whilst not all that long ago, there was a definite sense of optimism and indulgence in the arts and arts practice – much moreso than we now have in 2009.  The recession will inevitably have played a large part in this shift, with organisations cutting back or closing down – but what other changes has Birmingham faced that has brought us to this point, so different to that of 2007?  Is there still intense artistic production?  Do people still believe that Birmingham has this great potential?  Have artists changed their practice in response to the current financial climate and retreated back into their stereotypical draughty garrets?

In a timely fashion, The Event has returned once more to open up and explore contemporary art making.  Through an open submission process, artists are invited to send proposals to be included in the November festival.  The deadline for proposals is quite soon – July 13th – but submissions can also be emailed.  I’ve included the details taken from the website below, but please send any specific queries to kaye@the-event.org I will be keen to see which artists are selected, and how their practice reflects the current mood of the city – and also how different the artforms will be, if at all.  Will The Event be inundated with digital submissions, and will there be any entirely virtual submissions running concurrently?

Open Submission

Deadline Midday 13 July 2009

The Event is a contemporary arts festival in Birmingham, showcasing the best in artist-led activity.

We are currently seeking proposals and submissions from artist projects and artist/curators in the Midlands for inclusion in The Event, November 2009.

Proposals with a budget of up to £2000 can be considered. Deadline for submissions is midday on Monday 13 July, proposals received after the deadline cannot be considered.

Proposals must include the following information:
Project proposal (maximum 200 words)
Brief biog/CV
Indication of project costs
Supporting material

Postal applications should be clearly marked:
BCAF Steering Group
The Event
Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane Birmingham
B9 4AR

NB. Please enclose a SAE for return of material.

e-mailed application should be compiled into one document and emailed to:
kaye@the-event.org

Please contact Kaye Winwood 07834 244 609 or email kaye@the-event.org with any queries.

Following on from my previous post, I was alerted to another site focusing on the digitisation of collections, offering similar functions to the Pre Raphaelites site, but covering a greater range of collections.

Inspiration Bank showcases rarely seen artworks and decorative objects from Midlands-based gallery, museum and library archives – currently including Birmingham Central Library, New Art Gallery Walsall, the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery and Wolverhampton Arts and Museums Service.  The easy-to-use site contains over 5,000 zoomable images, including artworks by Van Gogh, Lowry and Epstein, glazed ceramics from the heart of the potteries and locally produced objects from the time of the Industrial Revolution.  If you follow the links above, you’ll see that not all of these destinations have their own dedicated site, and so it seems even more important and exciting that Inspiration Bank exists to unlock some of their hidden treasures!

Whilst use of the site is completely free, you do need to register with them in order to collect and comment on your favourite zoomable images using an online album.  Schools and colleges interested in discussing how they could make the most out of the site within the classroom should contact Inspiration Bank manager David Allen at info@inspirationbank.com or 0121 204 9886.

Inspiration Bank was built by and is managed by Birmingham City University’s Media Content Lab, who do lots more interesting projects besides – so go have a browse of their site!

I’ve often wondered why museums and galleries aren’t using their web presence in more innovative and useful ways.  I worked within a gallery for a number of years, and this gave me the unsurprising insight that many factors contributed to this: underpaid overworked staff, simply no capacity (in terms of time) to explore new avenues, gallery staff restricted to working within strictly defined roles with little room for experimentation, and those who do maintain the web side of things being under supported and in need of upskilling.  Plus above all, there are many challenges facing gallery collections (from conservation to valuation to interpretation and beyond) that the additional pressure of creating new ways of accessing that information sits at the bottom of anyone’s agenda, particularly when it could just end up as a copyright/intellectual property/Digital Rights Management nightmare.

Finally, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have been brave enough to tackle these issues head on with the decision to publicly release their world-class Pre-Raphaelite collection, the largest in Europe, becoming the focal point for this work.  With assistance from JISC, BMAG appointed Birmingham-based digital agency TAK! after a five way pitch to design and develop a website application to achieve their goal.  And the resulting site is a beautiful, delicate and sensitive piece of design.  Visitors will be able to access high quality content which will enable schools, universities, and the general public to have a greater understanding of the collection in their own time, and in their own space – which in turn could encourage new visitors and raise the profile of the museum.

“TAK! have helped us create the largest online Pre-Raphaelite collection in the world” concludes Linda Suprdle, Project Manager at BMAG. “It’s a fantastic resource and provides an unparalleled level of access and quality to the works on display. Anyone with an interest in art should visit the site and discover the importance of the Pre-Raphaelites.”

I hope that this project will encourage other museums and galleries to consider making their collections accessible online.  They have the opportunity to create such valuable learning resources which could cross so many diversity and access barriers, and it seems a shame that the majority of artworks only ever see the light of day if and when a curator deems them relevant enough. Using online technology, all collections could eventually be available to view regardless of current exhibition theme!

If and when that does happen, I will be interested to see how the role of ‘the curator’ responds to that change.  The Pre-Raphaelite collection site already encourages users to create their own personal collections, so how far a leap would it be for people to share those collections and reasons for their choices with other users?  Imagine an itunes playlist or an amazon reading list – but for art, complete with personal interpretations, anecdotal thoughts, factual evidence and academic input.  THAT would be something I could become obsessive about!

Moseley Festival 2008 at the Patrick Kavanagh

Happening annually for over 30 years, organised entirely by volunteers from Moseley, this year’s festival has the biggest line-up to date featuring over 80 creative and community events in more than 50 locations happening between 26 June and 5 July 2009.  That’s a pretty packed line-up in a short space of time, so to make sure you don’t miss out on anything that particularly tickles your fancy make sure to visit the festival site which has all the latest news and details on all the events.  With a line-up that includes (but is certainly not limited to) Morris Dancing, jazz improvisation, burlesque, farmers markets, open gardens, Rocky Horror, Handel, and an art trail, you’re going to need to be quick on your feet if you want to see even half of what’s on offer!

Live music at the Fighting Cocks 2008

Moseley Festival street fair 2008