For the next CiB Project we’ve been asked to take part in Capsule‘s 10th birthday celebrations. We’re getting together a bunch of Birmingham creative types, putting them on a stage for 3 minutes and asking them ‘What would you do if you were given the run of a space like Vivid?’

Featured folks will include:

ATTA Girl, Scott Johnson aka Film Ficciones, Stephen Earl Rogers, James Yarker of Stans Cafe, local historian Ben Waddington, illustrator extraordinaire Ben Javens to name but a few

That list is from Capsule’s website.

There are 20 places left for spectators, so if you want to come along then please admin@capsule.org.uk. If it goes well it might be the first of many such events.

There’ll be full reporting back after the event, so if you can’t make it down then don’t worry.

Still, I did make it along to the Arts & Business Awards. The special guest was Patrick Stewart (who walked, not teleported on stage – disappointing) and the winners were:

• Community Award – EC-Arts & National Express Coach
• Cultural Branding Award – Stan’s Cafe & AE Harris (Birmingham) Ltd
• Museum, Libraries and Archives Award – Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust & Inchscape Motors Shrewsbury
• People Development Award – Holte Visual & Performing Arts College, St Francis Primary School & Signet Trading Ltd
• Sustained Partnership Award – Sinfonia ViVA & Rolls Royce plc
• Young People Award – County Youth Arts & Balfour Beatty Capital
• Business Volunteer of the Year Award – Colin Wells from Prologic plc & Multistory (also winner of the Champion of Champions Award)

Congrats to all of them.

After that I wandered down to the Sunflower Lounge for Gallery of Owl’s ‘All You Can Eat Zine’ which was fantastic – billed as ‘a night of Zines, comics, small press, music and performance’. It provided all of that as well as a palpable sense of

I didn’t stay for that long, but long enough to catch Richard Peel‘s entertaining performance of Dracula, have a chat with Claire from ATTA grrl a buy a couple of zines (ATTA grrl and Girls Who Draw, since you asked). There was a good turnout, a great atmosphere and the excitement of knowing there’s loads of interesting stuff going on around the city.

Here’s what I picked up:

And check out the hand stamp too – easily the best one I’ve had in a while: