an epic new choral work from composer Jonathan Harvey to be performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Which was a coincidence because, only a few days before, the person behind the @thinkwalsall Twitter account mentioned to me that Jonathan Harvey is from Sutton Coldfield.

I’d not heard of Jonathan Harvey before but I did some quick digging around and here’s his website and his Wikipedia page. Very recently the BBC put on a weekend of music, film and discussion celebrating his music at the Barbican.

If you’d like a listen to some of his work, here’s ‘Madonna of Winter and Spring” for orchestra, synthesizers and live electronics, from 1986.

I’d still struggle to explain exactly what it is, so here’s some blurb from the council’s press release:

The Creative City initiative will play a significant role by:

• Creating a fund to build on existing public sector funding of the arts through loans, grants, match-funding and investments. The allocation of funds will be based on the potential for job creation and economic growth.
• Outlining the vision for a new ‘museum quarter’, including a new museum of photography and the development of a new contemporary art gallery.
• Exploring ways to unlock private sector and philanthropic support for culture, linking cultural development to wider economic growth.

So this was really the launch of an idea. In the way that Manchester has Media City and London has Tech City, Birmingham (if it wants it) could claim the title of Creative City.

Thing is, the designations of those other two seem to have been built on much stronger foundations (a strong BBC presence and an already burgeoning tech scene, respectively). All we seem to have at the moment is ideas, visions (like this one for a Museum Quarter), pledges and plans with comparatively little substance. Maybe’s it’s just early days, but if the intention of this event was to make people excited about the possibilities on offer then I don’t think it worked.

Maybe the more substantial conversations are all taking place behind closed doors this afternoon – but then I got the sense from others that therein lies the problem. Chatting to people afterwards actually left me kinda depressed by it all.

Personally, I’m not sure what to make of it and I’m pretty busy, so here’s the audio from the speeches that were made. Please have a listen (they’re all quite short) and I’d love to hear what you make of this in the comments below.

In typical Peter O’Hanra-Hanrahan style, I managed to miss the bit where James Yarker from Stan’s Cafe thanked Cllr Timothy Huxtable for name-checking his theatre company but asked him how he squared that with the council cutting their funding by 100%. The response is in the final audio clip above (although it does make for uncomfortable listening).

On the subject

It would be hugely remiss of me not to point out this rather angry post by Pete Ashton, many of the sentiments of which I would endorse.

A couple more links

• This from James at Stan’s Cafe should be read
• As should this from Stef Lewandowski, should be read too, with some interesting comments
• Philip Parkin is upbeat but says he “struggled to find the substance”
• BOP Consulting point out this launch is all “particularly interesting as it is one of the first LEPs to announce its ambitions for the creative industries’
• Pete’s done a round-up of some of the discussion
• Pete also pointed to the discussion on the Re-Stirred forum

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.

• Ed Vaizey (Conservative)
• Siôn Simon (Labour)
• Lord Clement-Jones (Lib Dem)
• Marc Reeves (TheBusinessDesk.com)

Journalist, broadcaster and author, Rosie Millard will chair the debate.

The politicians on the panel are, or have until recently been, party spokespeople for arts and culture. Marc Reeves has recently advised DCMS on new models of independent news provision. They’re all busy people at the moment so pinning them down can’t have been easy.

What would you want to see them asked? How far spending cuts are going to go? Whether encouraging philanthropy is going to help anyone other than large venues? What the heck they were thinking with the Digital Economy Act?

You can watch follow the debate on CiB below and chip in with any thoughts or comments as we go along. The liveblog has a page of its own here too.