Links for December 16th

Chris Unitt — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:08:34 +0000

New ‘Creative’ guide launched for West Midlands entrepreneurs
I can’t find a copy but it looks like it could be a blimmin interesting/useful document to get your mitts on. Can anyone find this online?
Young People Arts Project: New Project Opportunity – Audiences Central
“Audiences Central, with arts consultant Kerry Endsor, is looking to develop and deliver a high-profile, public-facing, arts project that will encourage and inspire young people in the West Midlands to engage with the arts and culture”. If you’re interested in getting involved then register your interest on the Audiences Central site before 19 Dec
Welcome to BYPY
Nominations for the Birmingham Young Professional of the Year are open
heavy handbag
Ramjeena Aujla is a “split-second-stealing snapper” and she blogs at Heavy Handbag
Screen WM – The year that was… 2008
Suzie Norton wraps up what they’ve been up to over at Screen WM this year
B(l)og
A couple of the Audiences Central peeps have started their own blogs recently, with this one from Fiona likely to be the most, um, quirky. She has/had a secret obsession – rating the city’s (and likely other cities’) toilets. So far pubs and restaurants feature highly
Birmingham Jazz News – Birmingham Jazz gigs in Guardian’s top gigs of 2008!
Congrats to Mary and co for gaining “recognition from respected Guardian Jazz critic John Fordham on the Dave Liebman tour and the Django Bates StoRMChaser project amongst others as highlights of the year”
Make and Do at The Edge
Antonio Roberts went to “the first Make and Do Party over at The Edge, which was hosted by Friction Arts. There were about 20 artists present and there was a strong emphasis on just having fun creating art!”. He has a quick write-up and some pics

24th Birmingham International Jazz Festival

Chris Unitt — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:25:22 +0000

I’m very much liking the website for the 24th Birmingham International Jazz Festival. I’ll come back to that though. Meanwhile…

The dates/programme/etc for the jazz festival have been released. It’ll take place across a whole host of venues from 4 – 13 July.

Musicians and bands from USA, Spain, France, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, Holland, Czech Republic and Venezuela line up alongside the best from the UK and from the region to present a feast of some 180 concerts in ten days, almost every one free to the public.

Having browsed through the programme there are no acts there that jumped out at me. Now, I’m not the most studious jazzhead in the world so it’s entirely possible I’ve missed someone big so please let me know any top picks in the comments.

Back to the website though, and it’s a joy. It’s nice and clearly laid out, the listings are easy to navigate and it works. So they’ve got the basics right. Beyond that though, what I like that they’ve got a blog (which they’re using) and that they’ve listed the events on Upcoming (so you can slot the ones you want into your (non-physical) calendar easily. They’ve done the same with Last.fm too, which is good to see – I use the event listings there to track which gigs I’ve been to and get recommendations for others.

Also, they’ve got a Flickr account and are accepting reviews on the site itself which you can send via the contact form, by email or by Twitter. Oy yeah, they’re on Twitter too. This is all good, useful stuff and the best local example of this kind of thing that I’ve seen. Hopefully their audience will engage with all of this.

Just to balance out the praise, most of the gigs are free but for the paying ones links to the ticket sellers would be good. Actually, an artists section and links to the artists’ websites would be useful – especially for someone like me who’s interested but clueless as to who these people are.