It’s the end of my second stint on CiB. I ran it for much of 2008 and picked things up again from October 2009 until now. Over this last period there’s been a few new things – CiBmail, a Facebook Page, the CiB Tumblr a month of contributions from guest bloggers and the shop in the Bullring (I’ve just about recovered from that last one).

I’ve just looked up the figures and apparently I’ve published 991 posts since October 2009 (with Alex Jones and Ian Ravenscroft chipping in a few more). That seems to me to be quite enough – no wonder I thought some fresh blood was long overdue.

There’s a small group of people taking over the site shortly but it’s probably best if I let them introduce themselves (if they want to do that). I think they’ll all be excellent custodians of CiB and hope that you’ll give them a warm welcome and support them in whatever they choose to do with the site.

I’d like to give a big, hearty thank you to all those responsible for the stuff that I’ve written about, who’s emailed to say hello, shared links with friends, left a comment, said hello at events, invited me to things or simply asked to meet up for a coffee and a chat. CiB wouldn’t be any good (and certainly wouldn’t be any fun) without you.

So then, onwards…

Anyway, quite a lot of people got in touch saying they’d be interested in contributing and I only wanted to pick a handful this time round. Thing is, I reckon all of the people I turned down would be great at blogging about creative stuff around Birmingham. Really great.

Thing is though, the whole point of CiB was to show that it’s now ridiculously simple and cheap to publish info online and build your own audience for that – there’s no need to focus on the limited number of incumbent publishers. The idea was that once enough people saw that there would be tens of CiBs and this site wouldn’t be needed anymore. Instead, CiB has become one of the limited number of incumbents.

There are literally dozens of people out there who have said that they’d be prepared to do some regular writing. Imagine if they all had their own sites – all writing about different things in different ways, linking to each other, competing with each other and making this site gloriously obsolete.

So basically, I’d love it if the people who asked to contribute to CiB started their own websites and talked about what’s happening in Birmingham in their own way.

Sure, to start with you wouldn’t have the audience that this site has, but that’ll come – it took this site ages but could be done much quicker now, if that’s what you want. If you want to get started but don’t know how or you fancy a helping hand of some sort – maybe someone to help share the load or bring complementary skills – then leave a comment below and  we’ll see if we can match you up.

Otherwise, I’d recommend you head to wordpress.com or Tumblr, sign up for a free blog and get started. The more the merrier, I say.

By the way, there’s been a lack of posts over the past while. I’m just sorting out handing over the running of the site and am sure usual service (or maybe something radically different) will resume shortly.

Coffee Club Collective (@WeAreCoffeeClub) describe themselves as a “jolly bunch of illustrators from Birmingham” and the first post on their blog says they are (or possibly were, by now) final year BA Illustration students.

They are:

• Tris Tolliday (@tristolliday)
• Katie Bennett (@votekatie)
• Joe Stephen Taylor (@Lumber_Jack_Joe)
• Jasmine Hortop (@razamajaz)
• Lucy Kenny

Recently they’ve had some of their work in the Made in Birmingham expo, Urban Coffee Company and Joe’s got an exhibition over in Coventry next month.

I’m thinking it might be nice to have a small handful of contributors. Maybe after six months or so some new people will come in and maybe the previous people will move on. We’ll see how things go.

Meanwhile, I’m going to take a bit of a backseat, looking after the site from behind the scenes to make sure everything works properly.

WLTM

You don’t need an exhaustive knowledge of everything going on in the city to write on CiB. Quite the opposite. I reckon it’s worked really well when the writer has been curious about what’s been going on, taking nothing for granted and not quite understanding who does what and why.

I don’t want to be too prescriptive, but you should probably:

• Be able to write with reasonable grammer and as few typo’s as possible
• Be up for writing something regularly (I tend to post something daily, but we’re hardly talking essays here)
• Have a vague idea about how blogs/social media work (although I’ll be around to provide a few pointers if needed)
• Understand that CiB is all about promoting everyone but yourself

What’s in it for you?

Um… well, unless you count the (occasional) invitations to shows and events, nobody gets paid for writing things on this site. It’s a bit of fun. Or something to put on your CV. Or an excuse to get out and about more often. Personally, writing on CiB has been one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Of course, you’ll have free rein to write about what you like, how you like (within reason – no more legal troubles, please). In fact you don’t even have to write – if video, photo, audio or something else is more your style then go for it.

How to get involved

Email createdinbirmingham@gmail.com saying hello and that you’re interested. Please don’t write an essay, it’s really not necessary – just a short message will do. Maybe with a link to your own blog, Tumblr, Twitter account  or whatever instead.

Depending on how many people express an interest (if anyone) by the end of next week, I’ll work out how to take things forward. You may detect that I’ve not really thought this through completely, but then that’s always been the way with this site…

If you want a flavour of what to expect, then Martin Pickard’s has a load of lovely photos from the rehearsals.

A side note: I saw a complaint on Twitter about The Voyage not being very well advertised (from someone who heard about it, went along and enjoyed it). I wasn’t there but I’ve heard crowd estimates of between 3,000-4,500 people, which sounds pretty good for something starting at 10pm on a less-than-balmy evening. This pic certainly makes Victoria Sq look pretty full.

I’m not dismissing the comment out of hand though. I’ve heard quite a lot about The Voyage over the past few months, but then I’m plugged into pretty much every possible source for this kind of news. I wonder if the problem is that we just haven’t got enough ways to get the news out around Birmingham at the moment.