POKEMON GO FOR GOOD – Ampersand Projects

Thursday 25 August, 6-8pm at Eastside Projects

Pokemon Go is a free-to-play, location-based augmented reality game which has quickly become a global phenomenon. It has been downloaded by more than 100 million people worldwide and has been credited with popularising augmented reality gaming, as well as for promoting physical activity.

This event aims to gather cultural and community organisations together to discuss the benefit of games, and how we might use digital technology and offline elements of them to motivate people to collaborate and make change locally and globally.

Ampersand Projects, a Birmingham based organisation are interested in how we can use games to explore and solve some of the world’s social problems. Their recent project ‘The Gamification Lab’ at mac Birmingham linked up young participants with arts organisations to create gamified engagement campaigns and build skills.

Please note that this event is not a ‘how to’ so we won’t be showing you how to use existing technology but is an opportunity to explore how the technology could be used in the future. No digital expertise needed.  Free event – pre-booking essential.

More info about the event on Ampersand Projects’ website here.

POKEMON GO HOME

The event is scheduled for Saturday 10th September 2016, and will be presented in partnership with Still Walking Festival.

Bit late in the publicising of this one, but Tim Hodgson’s just achieved a successfully funded Kickstarter campaign:

Pokemon Go Home is a free post-Brexit vote Pokemon hunt aimed at promoting community cohesion in Birmingham, UK. Many businesses have used lure micropayments in mobile AR game Pokemon GO to entice visitors, this event uses the same premise to encourage the general public to visit a variety of minority and culturally specific organisations, societies and places of worship in a single day.

We will work with twenty minority venues in central Birmingham with adjacent Pokestops, from mosques to Polish cultural centres to Ethiopian cafes. We will pay for a full day’s worth of continuous lures at their venue to draw Pokemon towards the site, will help the organisations to create an open-door engagement offer for the day and will provide onsite volunteer staffing support at each venue.

All info is on their kickstarter campaign here.

Summer 2016 sees the return of BOM’s awesome week of creativity, electronics and making new friends! Perfect for budding inventors and restless minds.

7-12 year olds: Space Cadets

22–26 August 2016, 10am-3.30pm*, £125 for 5 days

This year’s Summer Camp for 7-12 year olds is space-inspired, and we’re working with artists and creative technologists to design and build rockets! BOM staff will support kids to create amazing space-inspired bots, creatures and environments for an astronomical adventure. Working in groups, learn new skills in design, craft, programming, electronics and coding.

12-16 year olds: Hacking Birmingham

11, 12, 15, 16 & 17 August 2016, 11am-4pm*, £125 for 5 days

Design, make and test experiments for Birmingham City centre to make our city a better place, AND more fun! Working with a team of artists and technologists, research and design anything – from bins that sing, to embarrassing burglar alarms for market stalls. With on-hand technical support, build your ideas and put them into action! Perfect for the curious, the inventors, the socially aware. This workshop is for the young people of Birmingham looking for something different to do this Summer. No experience needed.

12 year olds are welcome on both camps, it is up to you which is the most suitable. Co-working space is available for parents and guardians. 

*breakfast club and post-camp cool-down is available, please enquire for more information: education@bom.org.uk

BOOK ONLINE VIA: 7-12 year olds — and — 12-16 year olds

Monday 11 January ­ – Monday 25 April 2016

Recruitment Workshop ­Monday 11 January

Following the launch of successful projects #ShoutAboutBrum and Forge Magazine, the Next Gen Creative Agency are looking for young people to take part in an exciting new project  The Gamification Lab. The project is an opportunity to collaborate with Birmingham’s best creative and cultural organisations using ‘gamification’ techniques to promote and communicate what they do. Project members will learn all about gamification and will create their own projects to motivate people to engage with new cultural experiences.

Gamification is the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve different sorts of goals, anything from fitness to shopping. Gamification uses elements such as badges and point rewards, competition and leaderboards and collaboration with others. Gamification is currently being used by large companies such as Nike, who encourages users to lead more active lifestyles using the Nike+ application, and Starbucks allowing customers to collect gold stars via an app to gain special ‘perks’. Gamification has application across the work, education and health sectors ­ along with countless other real world applications ­without users necessarily realising they are ‘playing games.’

This project will give participants the opportunity to test out new ideas and to work with some of Birmingham’s best arts organisations. Led by freelance cultural project manager and arts marketer Kate Andrews you will learn new skills in gamification theory, collaboration, teamwork, creative communications and project management. We are looking for 16 –­ 24yr olds with a passion for creativity to get involved, no technical knowledge is required.

Take Part

If you are 16 ­– 24 and want to get involved with the project or find out more, fill in the application form available here and come along to the open workshop at the mac on Monday 11th Jan 2016 at 6pm.

From there a group will be selected to take part in the programme, with meetings commencing weekly on Monday evenings until the end of April.

If you have any questions in the meantime please don’t hesitate to contact the Next Gen team by e­mail at next.gen@macbirmingham.co.uk

It’s coming up to 383 Project’s annual Canvas Conference!

Canvas is back for its fourth year in Birmingham, with a stronger line-up than ever. With speakers from the likes of Graze, Etsy, Medium, NASA and TED, this day event reveals the insider stories from teams building some of the world’s most useful products & services. Over ten talks from international organisations, you’ll hear from people who are solving problems at the intersection of technology & business. Canvas is a cross discipline event, so the audience is made up of a great mix of engineers, designers and entrepreneurs.

We’ve got our hands on a discount code, so use ‘Friend’ for 15% off tickets!

For the full lineup & ticket information, see www.canvasconf.co.uk

Here’s a video of last year’s conference:

Canvas Conf 2014 round-up from 383 on Vimeo.

Next Gen invites you to the Future C U R I O U S Launch Party taking place on Friday 31 July 6-10pm at mac birmingham.

Future C U R I O U S is a wide-ranging, free, open access development programme for aspiring and emerging artists, developed and produced by Amy Martin and Yinka Danmole, exploring future arts practice through artists talks, commissions, workshops, lectures, visits and labs.

More information on the  facebook event which you can RSVP to, or e-mail nextgen@macbirmingham.co.uk to book your free place.

Creative Alliance’s new unique and innovative digital platform Compass launches this Thursday.

Compass will support students in finding careers in the creative and digital sectors, connecting them with the best businesses in the region. The launch event will be an opportunity to bring businesses, schools/colleges and young people together.

Businesses

• Find out how Compass can help you recruit the best, can provide free promotion and marketing opportunities and is a unique way to develop the skills of your staff.

Schools and colleges

• Find out how Compass can upskill and educate your students, can help them find their ideal job and can enhance your careers provision.

Join them for:

• Complimentary nibbles and drinks
• Live music and entertainment
• An opportunity to network with professionals from across the region
• An exclusive world-first look at Compass.

The event takes place Thursday 2nd July, 5 – 8 pm at Impact Hub Birmingham.

Register to attend their launch (and read more information about Compass) on eventbrite.

It’s not just in the city centre that exciting arts events are happening. This week in Yardley a school group will be promoting their local community centre in what could be the start of an interesting new arts/community space.

Children from Oasis Academy Hobmoor have joined with Coventry-based digital-dance company Mercurial Arts to create a new dance performance for their community. Working collaboratively since May, sixty Year 5 pupils have worked on the project, inspired by and exploring neuroscience.

As well as the dance performance, half of the children have been working on a ‘Digital Play Space’ to compliment the work featuring insights into the brain, interactive projections, film footage and sound using new technologies.

As a starting point, the children visited the University of Birmingham’s Medical School for in-depth investigations into the workings of the brain, and looked into complex questions such as, ‘Where do ideas and movements come from in the body?’

Mercurial Arts’ Artistic Director Oliver Scott said:

One of the exciting things about this project is we can set the children complex and real challenges. Not only will they become a fully-fledged dance company making their own new work, they will share it with the general public. It is an ambitious task that develops physical, personal and social skills that will stand them in good stead in many contexts.

Chaotic Liquid Network is part of an exploration into the brain Mercurial Arts have been undertaking over the last year, and first investigated during their project The Seed, performed at the Coventry Mysteries festival in 2013.

The public performance of Chaotic Liquid Network will take place at 11.45am this Friday (4 July) at Oasis Hobmoor Community Centre, Yardley. Capacity is limited. Book via the school. The Digital Play Space will be open as a drop-in, from 11am-3pm on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 July 2014.

Find out more about local Arts fora and the Arts Champions scheme here.

Frame Creatives are a Birmingham-based collective encouraging, supporting and promoting the local photographic community.  They are quickly building a strong community of interest by carving out a forum where creatives can share ideas, voice their concerns and support each other.

They are holding the FRAME 14 Conference at The Custard Factory on Saturday 12th April. The event is open to professionals, artists, students, retailers – and anyone else who wants to get involved in the arts and culture scene. The FRAME 14 Exhibition follows on from this conference, with the gallery opening to the public with a private view at 6pm.

Submissions are closed but this is still an amazing opportunity for people who want to dip their toes in the water and find out about all the creativity bubbling beneath the surface. There will be judges from The Royal Photographic Society, The Association of Photographers, SIGMA and City & Guilds displaying the best of all the submitted artwork.

Tickets for the conference in the daytime are £20 for students and £25 for everyone else.

Find out more about FRAME here.

‘The Event‘ at The ThinkTank at Millennium Point is an opportunity for young and youngish people to debate and decide the future of local art, heritage and culture. On Saturday 15th March, people from across the West Midlands are coming together for this free creative consultation event that empowers young people to take leadership roles.

There are loads of reasons to get involved with this. Birmingham is becoming a hub of creative collisions and this is just one example of of programmes promoting youth culture.

It is organised by Priority 5, a youth-led organisation under the Arts Connect West Midlands umbrella. The objective is to mobilise young people into getting involved in our vibrant arts and culture scene.

The day includes a Market Place hosted by the BBC, Creative Alliance, Fixers, The MAC, Live Unltd, Ikon and Arts Connect among others.

There will be a photography workshop supported by Ming De Nasty. Not-so-discreet roving camermen and photographers will be filming and producing live media content . You can release your creative juices by creating a cut-out version of the West Midlands using cardboard. And of course, representatives from cultural superpower Beatfreeks will be in attendance.

Tickets are FREE and can be found HERE.

Full flyer:

From the 23^rd of January till the 18^th of April Library of Birmingham will be making new use of its’ space by hosting photography works. The Photographers’ Wall will be located just above the library cafe, promising to be a welcoming and easily accessible exhibition. The Wall is already planned to host the work of Brian Griffin, Dean O’Brien, Andrew Jackson, John Myers, Lily Wales, Mahtab Hussain and Sonia Audhali.

This first exhibition includes a range of individual works drawn from larger projects made by artists who hail from or are now based in Birmingham and the West Midlands. It also includes images from the nationally designated and internationally significant Library of Birmingham Photography Collection.

This event not only brings attention to our photography archive at the Library of Birmingham but it also brings attention to Grain. Grain are supported by the British Art Council and work with the library with a pure focus on digital media and photography. Their specific focus has been stated within their key objectives:

GRAIN: Key Objectives

• To identify and address the needs in the sector in the West Midlands region. To produce a range of interventions to develop and build upon existing strengths and activity in the region.
• To build an ambitious and sustainable programme and infrastructure for photography in The West Midlands.
• To create new collaborative and partnership approaches offering a wide range of regional, national and international opportunities to promote photographic excellence.
• To build new relationships with the corporate sector to encourage collaboration, sponsorship, philanthropic and market facing initiatives.
• To create new audiences and markets for fine art photography and photographers in the region.

Not only is The Photographers’ Wall an opportunity to showcase photography work from our city but it also presents the opportunity for aspiring photographers to learn some useful information from where they can gain support and exposure. The Wall is free for everybody to see from Monday to Friday 8am–8pm, Saturday 9am–5pm and Sunday 11am–4pm. As a public art space and representation of our local photographers it should prove to be well worth a visit.