This is Voices of Digbeth by a few people who have modestly decided not to put their full names to it:

And this is Wasted Digbeth by Keanu Jones (I liked his Attack of the Dinozilla too):

We Grow Cherries is:

a talent pool of graduates from the BA (Hons) Visual Communication course at BIAD, BCU. Our Visual Communication graduates span Graphic Communication, Illustration, Photography and Moving Image

Over at CMYKern James has been picking out his highlights.

Speakers include Andy Hartwell (Substrakt), Helga Henry (Fierce Earth), Eryka Isaak, Julia Higginbottom (Aquila TV) and Alexa Torlo (BCU).

There’s a little more besides so head for the website and the Facebook event for details.

Degree shows are a great place to invest a relatively small amount of money into the art world, support upcoming artists and to pick up something you’ll enjoy for years to come. I am hoping to take a trip to this year’s shows in galleries, Uni’s and empty shops and bag myself something nice. Over the coming weeks I will keep you informed of those all important private view dates.

Firstly, BCU’s private view at Vaad Gallery, Custard Factory.

Eleven of the hottest new talents in contemporary art emerge this spring with an ambitious debut at the Vaad Gallery. Final year students from Birmingham City University will showcase their work in what will be an eclectic display of multi-disciplinary artworks that promises to show the diversity of practices born from a broad education in the visual arts.

Private View: Monday 27 April 2009 6-8pm

Media Talent Bank is a collective of creatives, media organisations and freelancers. Through this robust online database of individuals, employers can source the hottest creative talent around through personalised profiles.

This project is funded by Digital Central and managed by Media Content Lab part of Birmingham City University with the aim of galvanising the West Midlands creative and media communities into a strong and sustainable sector

It’ll be interesting to see how this takes off. If you’re a creative type then I’d say it’s probably worth a couple of minutes of your time to fill out a profile – you never know who might be looking to give you some work.

Another site maybe worth checking is Behance. It’s not for everyone though – you have to ask to be invited – but it aims to be a (fairly prestigious) platform for the world’s leading creative professionals. There’s a few folks from Birmingham on there but of those, only Suzie Webb (website) has had a mention here before.

It looks like this:

Couple of things:

• the RSS feed for the news is practically invisible and doesn’t work anyway.
• how about giving the students run of the news or an associated blog? There must be so much jewellery-related stuff happening in this city that’s going unreported and that’s as much a shame as it is an opportunity.

A neat little item this – Tales of Creativity is a collection of video and written profiles of graduates from the various courses run from Screen Media Lab that hopes to give readers an insight into the everday reality of working in the creative industries.

There are 18 profiles from a whole host of disciplines to browse through, with examples of everyone’s work.  There’s the odd advert for BCU’s MA in Media Enterprise but the profiles of people getting on and doing their creative thing in Birmingham are really quite interesting.  They’ve certainly never been mentioned on CiB before so I might pull a few out on a slow news day.

Another week, another MA show with a pleasingly cheap & cheerful approach to internet promotion.  This time it’s the turn of BCU’s Jewellery, Silversmithing and Related Products MA Show 2008.

This year the emphasis has been on extending the conventional boundaries of jewellery and silversmithing. 48 WEEKS… LATER demonstrates a variety of approaches to the subject area, including installations, animations, laser technologies and explorations of colour and scale.

Join us on the evening Tuesday 9th September 6-8pm at the School of Jewellery, Vittoria Street, Birmingham for the opening of the exhibition where 14 students will showcase their exciting new collections. The exhibition will be on display until the 26th of September.

For further info fun there’s a MySpace page and a Facebook group.

Meanwhile, this excellently succinct description/call to arms for the launch party:

PLEASE come to the annual Margaret Street MA show (Fine Art etc) Private View. Free Booze.

appears on the Facebook event.  The private view is on Friday 29 August from 6-9pm.  There’s also this ‘tacky retro animation’ (the MA Publicity peeps’ words, not mine):

Additionally, Creative Republic have arranged to jump on the RSA Fellows‘ trip to the show on Tuesday 2 September at 5.30pm which will include a welcome talk from Prof John Butler, a tour of the building and a look around the exhibition.  Have a look on the Creative Republic website for more info.