Fancy a trip to Transmediale?

As Chris alluded to in the 2000th post I’m lurking in the background of Created in Birmingham at the moment. If there was an office it’d have “Special Projects” stenciled on the door, but there isn’t and it really just involved Chris and I sitting on the sofa figuring out things to do that can either generate an income for CiB or raise the profile of CiB. Or both. We’re also looking at ways to use Created in Birmingham as a name to do interesting things. One of the first things I want to do is see if it can send a bunch of people to Germany.

Transmediale is an arts/digital/activist festival that takes place in Berlin in February. Information is pretty scant on the website, which is a shame, but from what I can gather it was started by a bunch of troublemakers and rebellious sorts in Berlin, evolving out of the post-Cold War cultural scene. Or something. At the very least it’s a gathering of a load of people who are doing interesting things with art, technology and society that would probably blow our Brummie minds.

The Arts Council have sent artists over there before and have expressed an interest in helping some Interwebby people go this year to have their horizons broadened, to make connections and to bring interesting and exciting ideas back to the West Mids. I’ve got a couple of people in mind but we need 8 names in total. And due to the unique way funding applications operate we need to know ASAP.

You have to be free during the first week of February (2nd to 7th) and able to travel to Berlin. Flight, accommodation and entrance to the festival will be covered – you need to pay for food and local travel.

The decision on who goes is mine. It’s be nice to have a fair and transparent decision making process but frankly we don’t have time so I’m going for the Interesting quotient. That doesn’t necessarily mean the someone who’s done loads of interesting things will go – I’m more likely to chose someone with potential who needs a conceptual kick up the arse.

Specifically I’m after people who are doing interesting things using media with the aim of shaking up or understanding society better. This could be a website, a zine or simply a curiosity. The model I’m using here is my trip to SXSWi in 2008. Before I went I had loads of ideas but no idea if they were realistic. In Austin I met loads of people who were actually doing the things I’d been thinking about which gave me the confidence to actually do some of them on my return. I’d like to take people who are in that position.

Please note that this is not a done deal. The application still has to go through the Arts Council’s processes. But in order to do that it needs names on it.

If you’re interested drop an email to peteashton@gmail.com with a couple of paragraphs on what you’re doing, where your mind is at and what you might get out of such a trip. Don’t worry if you don’t know – just give me a sense of where you’re coming from. I’m particularly interested in hearing from people I don’t know and people who haven’t been on these sorts of funded trips before. Oh, and people who don’t consider themselves Artists. But artists I know who’ve been funded trips are also welcome.

If you can let me know by Thursday morning that’d be great.