Apparently that’s our own fair Bullring in the picture above, albeit with a fair amount of retouching done. And a horde of bloodthirsty zombies running amok. [insert predictable joke here]

In case you don’t already know of it, Dead Rising is a computer game. Fluid did the branding for the advertising, POS, packaging and so on.

Bullring have launched a new website to unveil their proposed plans for the regeneration of Spiceal Street, creating a hub of restaurants around St. Martins church.

With Jaime Oliver’s Italian restaurant set to open in October, Bullring are preparing to submit their planning application for the new development, with a view for completion in the Autumn of 2011.

What are you thinking? With the Mailbox and Brindley Place do we really need another batch of restaurant chains? Or are you excited at the prospect of finally getting a decent bite to eat without the trek away from the centre? If so you can pledge your support for the project via their site.

Topshop

Topping the bill are my old Cardiff University chums done good Los Campesinos!, with support from I Blame Coco, Eliza Doolittle and Summer Camp, as well as DJ sets from Broken Hearts, Blonde Ambition and special guests.

Tickets are £10, with all profits going to the Trust, and are available from this link here and the Bullring Topshop store. They’re limited to 500, so get your skates on if you want to go.

]]> http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/2010/06/16/topshop-bandstand-picnic/feed/ 1 http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/2010/05/25/the-cib-shop-is-closed-here-come-the-thank-yous/ http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/2010/05/25/the-cib-shop-is-closed-here-come-the-thank-yous/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 15:15:54 +0000 http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/?p=5892 [Read more...]]]>

The shutters are down and the windows have been papered up. It’s as if we were never there.

A big thanks to everyone who’s been involved – to all the staff (Aaron, Dennis, Matt, Aaron, Charlotte, Frankie, Ian, Dan, Ruth and Jess) and all those who stepped in to volunteer their time when they were needed (Mark, Ellie, Jo, Karen, Laura, Nick, Louis, Leonardo… dammit, I’m going to start leaving people out now, sorry! You know who you are though).

Thank you to everyone who hired a stall, performed, exhibited, hung out, attended something, told your friends, written/blogged about us or otherwise documented what we’ve been up to and (most of all) bought something from us over the three months we were open.

HUGE thanks to everyone at Bullring – especially Louise, Rachel, Emma and Holly – who’ve supported us more than anyone could reasonably expect.

And, above all, thanks to Pete for everything he’s managed to accomplish over the past few months.

We’re taking a break for a bit now. Pete’s going to be looking at how to build on what we’ve done over the past 12 weeks (with me helping in the background), so watch this space.

In the meantime, thanks again to everyone who played a part in something that turned out to be even better than we hoped. There’s a bit of a get-together/send-off on Saturday 29 May if you’re about.

The nice folk from I Am Birmingham came down and filmed us over the weekend. Here’s the video, with contributions from Matt Murtagh and myself:

Read down – there’s a competition for free tickets later on in this post.

I’m conscious that I’ve not mentioned International Dance Festival Birmingham so much on here over the past month. Partly that’s because I’ve been busy working on it and going to just about every event that I could.

There’s only a couple of days left but still a chance to catch some good stuff. Tonight, there’s:

• Cruel by Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker (Birmingham Hippodrome)
• Self Unfinished by Xavier Le Roy (Ikon Eastside)
• Kathak Duet by Abhimanyu & Vidha Lal (The Patrick Centre)

And tomorrow (the last day) there’s:

• A second chance to catch Cruel (Birmingham Hippodrome)
• Put Your Foot Down (St Martin’s Square, Bullring)

Put Your Foot Down is a big, free event that’ll run from midday to 6pm. Worth checking out, because the festival has been doing big, free public events very well (for instance, Utopia was great).

I saw Self Unfinished at Ikon Eastside last night and it’s probably the most ‘out there’ event in the entire programme – as David Massingham (festival co-director) said afterwards, it’s probably the furthest you can get from Strictly Come Dancing.

I’m off to Cruel tonight though – athletic Brazilian dancers, knives, spinning mirrors and a ruddy great big globe-shaped chandelier. That’s entertainment. Speaking of which…

Competition

We’ve been given a pair of tickets for the spectacular-looking Cruel tonight. If you want your name to go into a draw for them then email ‘CRUEL’ to createdinbirmingham@gmail.com. We’ll do the draw at about 2pm and let the winner know the good news.

• The Created in Birmingham Bullring shop will cease trading on Sunday May 23rd.
• The market stalls at the front will continue until Saturday 29th.
• Volunteers needed to empty the shop.
• We will have a closing party of some sort on Saturday 29th.
• We’ll take a couple of months off over the summer to regroup and then maybe re-open in the Autumn.

The Details

The CiB Shop has, it seems, been a rather successful thing. So far we’ve sold about £30,000 worth of art by local people of which £22,500 has gone into their pockets.

The shop started as a fun idea but very quickly turned into something more serious and complex. It’d become apparent that this has the potential to be a viable business and and important service for the city.

We’ve let the shop evolve, reacting to what people give us to sell and what people buy, which was a good thing. But in doing so the systems we put in place to run the shop have struggled to cope with the increased volume.

On the whole we’ve been playing catchup with a shop that has taken on a life of its own. This is exciting and wonderful to watch unfold but it’s also exhausting and not sustainable in the long term.

Our current shop unit in the Bullring will be going to a paying tenant soon so we have to move out. This was always part of the deal and we’re grateful we were able to have such a fantastic spot for three months, so please don’t blame Bullring for the shop ending. Their support, not to mention incredibly hands-off approach letting us do pretty much whatever we wanted, has been invaluable.

Once we’re closed and out of the Bullring we’re going to take a few months to relax, reflect and regroup. It’s clear there’s a need for a shop in the city centre run on the CiB model, but it’s also clear it can’t be run in the way we’ve been running it. We need to figure out a long term strategy and we need some time and space to do that. Many many people have offered help and advice but we haven’t been able to act on any of it because of the shop itself. (Hell, in order to write this I’ve had to hide upstairs at the back of the stock room.)

If, and only if, we can learn from this experience and figure out a plan that prevents insanity, we’ll open another Created in Birmingham shop somewhere in the city centre in the autumn.

The next few weeks

We will continue trading as normal until Sunday May 23rd. If you’re already supplying us with stuff you’re welcome to restock for those two weeks. If you’re not then I’m sorry but we can’t take anything else. And if you’ve emailed in the last couple of weeks I’m doubly sorry I haven’t been able to get back to you. Our inability to keep on top of emails is one of the main reasons for closing for the summer.

On Monday 24th we will block off 3/4 of the shop leaving the front open for market stalls. These will be trading from Monday through Saturday 29th. Details on how to rent those stalls will follow soon.

In the rear of the shop we’ll be doing a stocktake of everything. For this we will need volunteers! Yes, I’ve finally got something for all those who want to help out to do. If you’d like to help please email createdinbirmingham@gmail.com with ‘Volunteer’ in the subject so we know you’re coming and turn up at the shop on Monday 24th from 11am.

During that week artists need to pick up any unsold work and cash for sold work. We’ll be contacting the artists with more information but I’m hoping we’ll be able to start this process by Tuesday.

And then, on Saturday 29th, we’ll have a little party. Probably starting in the shop and then moving elsewhere.

That’s everything I think. Any questions?

The eagle-eyed shoppers among you may have noticed ballet shoes and tutus, like the one pictured above found in the Created in Birmingham shop, popping up all over Bullring recently.

Add this to questions like “What is Urban Ballet?” on the shopping centre’s Life Feels Better twitter stream, and this Urban Ballet website, and it looks like there will be a surprise in store for Bullring visitors tomorrow. Perhaps a little something like this:

If you want to find out what Urban Ballet is, it looks like it will be kicking off between 11am and 2pm, so get practising those pirouettes and get down to Bullring.

If you came to the launch on Feb 25th you really need to come back and see the shop now it’s full and buzzing. Here’s a video I shot on Saturday afternoon during a relatively quiet period.

I know a lot of you have been helping to spread the word about the shop which is great as we’re getting all sorts of people coming in. Thank you so much for this and keep it up!

For more updates on the shop, keep tabs on its dedicated blog (which we will update more, honest.)

Sounds like the Writing on the Wall event at The Rep the other night went well – it even created some amusing fuss on the event page’s comments thread.

There’s more Aerosol Arabic action at Bullring this weekend, with Mohammed Ali creating a big mural in the shopping centre.

There’s an online interactive element to this one – he’ll be taking suggestions from Twitter users for words, phrases, thoughts or whatever to influence his piece. Just tweet @lifefeelsbetter during the day.

After a fair amount of globetrotting, Mohammed Ali seems to be doing a fair bit more in his home city at the moment – there’s a snippet of him doing a bus tour of Birmingham mural’s from Midlands Today here too.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called Next steps for CiB in which I mentioned a few of the plans I had for this website. Buried in the final paragraph was the line:

A shop’s looking likely too

Now, I meant an online shop. However, pretty soon Created in Birmingham is going to have it’s own unit in the Bullring.

That’s the one in the picture, sandwiched between Faith and Miss Selfridges, opposite H&M. The place is kitted out with most of the backline equipment needed (there’s a till and a staff room and everything!) and all it really needs is a lick of paint and a bit of a clean.

Details are just being finalised but it looks like everything’s going to happen very quickly – I was only offered it on Monday and I could have the keys as soon as tomorrow.

The question everyone asks is…

‘What are you going to sell?’

Well, broadly speaking I want the shop to be kinda like this website – a platform for local artistic and creative talent (although the net will probably be widened a little). Best of all, it’s a chance to put some independent art and craft right in one of the busiest parts of the city centre.

For starters we’ll be looking at illustration, photography, paintings, t-shirts, books and zines. The idea is to get the walls covered with excellent stuff and build from there. Maybe have a few little events to keep things interesting.

Inspiration-wise, the shop will owe a small (and strictly metaphorical) debt to the likes of Grand Opening, Magma, NoiseLab, My Yard, planeshop and more generally the sort of stuff you’ll find in the Space Makers Network.

Want to get involved?

Excellent! Just give me a couple of days to get things sorted first (sign contracts, etc) and I’ll let you know how you can do that.

As a heads up, pretty soon I’m going to need staff to help run the place, volunteers to plug the gaps, furniture, a man with a van, suggestions for events and, of course, stock. I’ll put a post up about that stuff later, maybe shift it onto a dedicated CiB shop website.

I’ll also need some encouraging words and strong coffee.

Thanks

I’d just like to put in an early thank you to the people at the Bullring who are giving us two things – a prime piece of real estate and a fantastic opportunity.