On the 12th December from 2pm till 5pm, the general public is invited to Creative City Partnership’s discussion: “Growing the Creative Economy – Your Invitation to Find Out more About Investment and Plans for the Sector”. That all sounds like a little bit of a mouthful but it’s actually really important. Creative City Partnership is trusted by ‘The Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership’ (GBSLEP) to look after our creative economic growth. Bit lost in all of this? Then that’s probably exactly why you should go. I’ll also add a link from a previous article posted by the Birmingham News Room in February 2012 that might give a bit of handy context as to what’s going on.

If on the other hand you completely understood all of that, then you are probably looking forward to hearing what the proposed plans from Creative City Partnership are. With speakers such as Anita Bhalla, the chair of Birmingham Mac gallery; Jonnie Turpie, who is deeply invested in the broadcasting and digital media side of Birmingham’s creative ventures; Stuart Griffiths, the Chief executive of the Birmingham Hippodrome since 2002; and Jo Birch from Birmingham City University – it’s a great opportunity to hear from people at the top of our biggest creative venues in Birmingham. The discussion about the finer points of Creative City Partnership’s is a great way to understand more about how these sectors work and anyone else who is concerned, personally invested or even just interested in our city’s creative potential should come along and not feel afraid to ask some questions.

I’ve taken the time to scout out a little bit of information about each of the speakers and I’d recommend that anybody who wants to go should do the same. It’s always good to be prepared. Once you’ve got all your information then you can go along and ask as many questions as you like.

The following link will take you to an Eventbrite page where you can book your ticket (which is absolutely free) and also states the address of the venue which will also be mentioned at the bottom of this post!

And a brief summary of the presentation nabbed straight from Eventbrite itself:

“2.00 Welcome address – (Birmingham City Council Leader/ Deputy Leader)
2.15 The Plan – (the where why and how and what it means for you – Anita Bhalla, Creative City Partnership Chair)
2.35 Skills – (Presentation by Jonnie Turpie, Maverick TV with interactive facilitated session from the audience about needs)
3.00 Growth – (Presentation by Jo Birch, Birmingham City University on 3 big ideas and rationale)
3.15 Growth Breakout (Teams consider what additional issues they would like addressing)
4.00 Access to Finance – (Presentation by Stuart Griffiths, Birmingham Hippodrome on big ideas and process moving forward)
4.20 Interactive Feedback session – (Open Q&A to review concerns and thoughts from presentations)
4.50 Closing remarks – (Anita Bhalla including what will happen moving forward.)
5.00 Close.”

Parkside Building,
Birmingham City University, City Centre Campus,
Curzon Street
B4 7XG Birmingham 

The Oasis Radio has been up and running since Monday and is broadcasting until 27 January. It’s broadcasting from Birmingham City University and is being played out in the Oasis shopping centre and online.

It’s mainly music and such, but they’ve also put together quite a decent short documentary about the history of the place too:

Also, if you could tell me the ones I’ve missed (head for the comments below) then that’d help a lot.

The shows

Exhibit This 2
8-9 June, 6-9pm
BCU 3rd Media Studies
Zellig

The Annual
13-19 June. Open 10-6 weekdays, 10-4 at the weekend
BA Art and Design
School of Art Bournville, Ruskin Hall, Linden Road

Birmingham School of Architecture
Gosta Green, Brum B4 7DX
Mon 13 to Tues 14 June – 10am to 6pm
Wed 15 -10am to 5pm
Thurs 16 to Sat 18 – 10am to 6pm

School of Vis Comms (Photography, Illustration, Graphic Design, Moving Image)
Gosta Green, Brum B4 7DX
Mon 13 to Tues 14 June – 10am to 6pm
Wed 15 -10am to 5pm
Thurs 16 to Sat 18 – 10am to 6pm

School of Art
Margaret St, Brum B3 3BX
Tues 14 to Sat 18 June – 10am to 6pm
Sun 19 June – 10am to 4pm

School of Jewellery
Vittoria St, Brum B4 7DX
Mon 13 to Tues 14 June – 10am to 6pm
Wed 15 -10am to 5pm
Thurs 16 to Sat 18 – 10am to 6pm

In other new, it’s nice to see that Art School Cliche Spotting is still online and seemingly updated.

Arts Council England West Midlands’ Digital Content Development (DCD) Programme is a three year programme of investment which aims to catalyse the creation and creative use of digital content platforms for arts organisations across the West Midlands region

The website went up recently and the map on the homepage shows some of the projects, along with how much money they received. Further information is due on the website at some point, but if you look at the page source then you can glean a little more. On the basis that you probably don’t want to ruin your eyes, here’s what I found:

• Birmingham Repertory Theatre – Towards the development of an online multi-user playwriting resource (£27,884)
• Pesky People – Development of a multiplatform approach to venue access information (£25,000)
• Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum – PostCart: creative digital access of art gallery and museum collections (£24,750)
• Library of Birmingham – Development of an Alternate Reality Game for young people (£23,750)
• Talking Birds Theatre Company – Development of The Difference Engine – a multiplatform real time access tool. Some mention of it here (£1,500 + £20,860)
• The Play House – Develop an online resource to match the company’s participatory ethos (£22,349)
• Eastside Projects and Birmingham City University – Piloting a 3D online art gallery (£22,000)
• The MAC – Playground: exploring the use of digital technologies in a new-built art centre (£20,500)
• Royal Shakespeare Company – Creation of a new digital arena for the creativity of the RSC. Pretty sure this was Such Tweet Sorrow (£20,000)
• Audiences Central – To develop a web platform and plug-in for cross regional arts marketing (£18,000)
• B Arts – Development of a new form of arts centre/collaboration (£17,380)
• Rhubarb Rhubarb – To create an online evaluation tool (£17,000)
• Shropshire County Council – Citizen Journalism (£15,612)
• Rideout – To explore the production of creative digital content engaging youth crime statistics (£15,000)
• Radio To Go – A collaboration with the British Library to pilot an online music archive. Called The Pilot Project (£13,750)
• Rosie Kay Dance Company – To create an online version of the touring production, 5 Soldiers (£12,500)
• Indigo Ltd – The development of a pilot online platform exploring new forms of crowd-source fundraising in the arts (launching soon and called Angel Shares) (£11,750)
• Wolverhampton Arts & Museums / Black Country Museums – Research and Development of a collaborative online resource for the Black Country Museums (£10,550)
• Black Country Touring – Exploration of enhancing a site specific, theatrical experience through live streaming (£10,348)
• Multistory – To create a new media platform for celebrating local stories as part of place-making (£10,235)
• Fierce Festival – Towards a Viral Online research game (£8,253)
• Birmingham Opera – Exploring new models of ownership and sales of published works (£6,737)
• Borderlines Film Festival Ltd – Experimenting with mScapes technologies (£5,600)
• Orchestra of the Swan – Research and development towards a strategic plan (£5,000)
• Capsule – To support digitally enhanced new marketing and distribution opportunities (£4,880)
• Welsh National Opera – research and development of phase one of iMaestro. To allow Welsh National Opera to research digital copyright law and the possibility of exploiting full-length opera samples under the Creative Commons license (info about that here) (£4,600)
• Ikon Gallery – Towards the development of a social media project (£3,500)
• The Other Way Works – Professional development around Augmented Reality and Transmedia (£2,575)
• Ex Cathedra – Market development, engaging an online music aggregator (£1,323)
• Dance Consortium – Exploring social media in relation to contemporary dance marketing (£1,000)
• MADE – To explore the use of digital platforms in placing making (£1,000)

As well as these projects, the programme supported a range of other activities including workshops, innovation labs and other events.

I’ve heard of one or two of these projects, but the vast majority are new to me so it’ll be interesting to hear a little more. I should probably also add that I’m involved in the Rosie Kay Dance Company project – that’ll launch next week so I’ll blab a bit more about it then.

Screen West Midlands are hosting City As A Platform, at Aston University Business School and Conference Centre this Thursday, 17 Feb.

In an era of public sector cuts and greater emphasis on local engagement, what happens when a city opens out its public infrastructure, technologies, data and buildings to digital media content developers?

The event starts at 9.30, and contemplates ‘The future for the creative industries’, with a variety of sessions and speakers throughout the day, including keynote speaker Jon Kingsbury, Director, Creative Economy Programmes at NESTA.

Panellists will explore the contours of these emerging ‘urban operating systems’ and consider the implications for society and the built environment through sessions including:

• Open data: the challenges and opportunities
• Contracting: navigating the public sector procurement map
• Make it local: developing public services
• Library as a platform: opening up archives
• Transport: playing the daily commute
• Healthcare: bringing greater benefits through digital

Panellists and speakers come from across the public and private sectors, including the Greater London Authority, Rewired State, Rattle, University of Warwick, Maverick TV, Digital Birmingham, Mudlark, Podnosh, Birmingham City University and In Cahoots.

Limited places are available for this event. For more info, full list of speakers and to sign up, visit the Eventbrite page.

The Typographic Hub is:

part of the Birmingham Institute of Art & Design at Birmingham City University; the Hub works to promote the history, theory and practice of typographic design

They organise an annual typographic symposium (16 March this year) and will be publishing a fair amount of typographically-related articles.

The website (built by Supercool) has had a fair amount of good attention from the likes of Hoefler+Frere-Jones (I’ve no idea who they are but 100,000+ followers on Twitter show’s they’re doing something right) and Gary Hustwit (who did the Helvetica and Objectified documentaries) among others.

Travel advice aside, arts and culture will be getting a foot in the door a few times over the duration, including this lot:

• Jonathan Watkins (Director of Ikon Gallery) has been invited by Jeremy Hunt MP to speak on Sunday. His speech will apparently “highlight the cultural wealth of Birmingham and promote Ikon’s ambition for the creation of a new museum of modern art in the city”
• Screen WM are putting on a fringe event called City as a Platform (reminiscent of the much-referenced, lesser read Dan Hill post) on Monday
• Ed Vaizey MP will be off and about on Monday. He’ll be officially opening Zellig and later on checking out BCU’s Skillset Media Academy
• Rosie Kay Dance Company will be performing Double Points: K at the Symphony Hall on Tuesday

There’s probably more happening too, but those are the ones I’ve come across.

I’ve also been invited, with a bunch of other local bloggers, to go and meet Sayeeda Warsi (Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party and Cabinet Minister without portfolio) and Andrew Mitchell (MP for Sutton Coldfield and Secretary of State for International Development) later today.

This may be appealing to those of you with a keen interest in games design or development. Gamer Camp begins in November and is backed by several major industry bodies, including Rare, Blitz Games, Sony and Codemasters, to provide exclusive courses which will leave participants fully equipped for a career in the games industry.

Set up as three intensive courses, Nano, Mini and Pro, the camps are staggered in terms of skill level, duration and start date. The first of which is the Nano Camp, running from 3 Novemeber – 3 December, and will provide the skills needed to produce games for the iPhone/ iPod Touch/ iPad.

The closing date for applications on the Nano Camp is 8 October.

Applications for the next set of camps are due to open in 2011, with the Mini starting in March and the Pro in September 2011. Keep an eye on the Gamer Camp website for further information and to apply for a course.

It’s nearly the end of term, and you know what that means… showcases! Birmingham City University are already on the case with Exhibit This by its final year Media and Communication students. And the plan is…

…to display their creative work to industry professionals and the general public while celebrating their achievements throughout their degree.

As you can see from the flyer, you can expect work from a range of media disciplines, from photography to web and new media, so if you want to check out some new talent in the field, it might be worth a poke around.

Exhibit This is at The Bond in Digbeth on 7th and 8th June, between 6pm and 8.30pm.