how arts sector professionals and individual artists can learn from examples of successful partnerships in austere cultural landscapes

I’m sure there are still some tickets available if you’re still thinking about coming.

The website’s been a hive of activity over the past couple of weeks, with links to similarly themed events happening around the country. Sandra Hall from Friction Arts has written about what she’s hoping to get out of it and Helga Henry’s written about why the event is important.

There’s also been some strong words from Pete in advance of the event.

Today’s the last day for picking up discounted early bird tickets for Biting Back, taking place on 21 March:

a one day event from Birmingham City Council, mac and Sampad that will address how arts sector professionals and individual artists can learn from examples of successful partnerships in austere cultural landscapes.

Tickets will still be available, they’ll just be more expensive and saving money is the name of the game here. With less cash around to make things happen over the coming years, the idea is to hear from people (some from Birmingham, some from much further away) with practical experience of interesting partnerships and different ways of working.

The schedule for the day is here. I’ll be there talking about what we did with the Created in Birmingham Shop last year. Friction Arts, Stan’s Cafe, the Flyover Show, La Tabacalera, MIR Festival and more will feature too.

Biting Back is also on Twitter, Facebook and Lanyrd.

On 24 September – 1 October, Friction Arts are holding Inside Out Festival. With artists, installations and performances all hosted at The Edge, the festival will also showcase performances, installations and interventions across Digbeth.

The idea behind this mini-fest is to continue to connect the communities around our HQ – The Edge, through a shared experience of contemporary art – in and around the streets of Digbeth.

There’ll be a series of art trails around the area, taking in works specially made for the festival, but also the street art and built environment of this very special district.

The programme so far has events running across the opening weekend, with a launch party on 24 September in association with Sonic Asylum, featuring live music, installations and artwork. Other events will include art trails, live art and an artist’s brunch.

For more information on currently listed events, plus updates and information on volunteering, take a look at their website.

There are two parts to this one:

• A debate on Thurs 3 June
• An installation by Raycho Stanev from 3-19 June

Both at Friction Arts’ The Edge. Having seen mentions of this all over the place I’m guessing it’s going to be reasonably popular, which is good.

Nicky Digbeth gives the info:

The Great Excursion will be in Friction Arts’ home The Edge, Cheapside 3rd-19th June, and will kick off with a Critical Debate from 6pm this Thurs 3rd June, with a panel that includes Ammo Talwar (Punch), Paul Murphy (The Destroyers), Mukhtar Dar (The Drum) and Paradox (Munchbreak)

The debate is also part of the BASS Festival, which kicks off today.

Friction Arts are holding a free talk on their recent three-month residency in South Africa on Thursday 18 February, which should give some interesting insights into international public arts programmes.

As you can probably see on the flyer above, the talk will also be followed by a Q&A session with the artists that were involved.

The other week West Midlands Regional Observatory brought out their latest recession snapshot. For the cultural sector the figures weren’t bad:

the cultural sector continued to see increases in numbers of customers through the door in the last three months of 2009, building on the unusually high increase in footfall seen over the summer.

Strong audience figures suggest the value placed on culture by the general population has only increased during the economic troubles

However, people are expecting cuts – 72% of respondents being ‘less optimistic’ about the stability of core funding compared to a few years ago. Quite right too – on a daily basis you hear politicians dodging around the c-word like [insert inappropriate simile here].

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, has gone some way towards setting his stall out (could The Guardian have found a pic of him looking any more smug?), saying (and I paraphrase hugely):

• arts administration costs need to be hacked back to 5% of any cash government hands over
• they’ll introduce a US-style culture of philanthropy by encouraging tax breaks on lifetime giving
• The national lottery would be returned to its original good causes (which includes arts)
• they’d get rid of audience development targets in the arts

Some might find encouragement in some of that, although he did add:

I wouldn’t say that everything that happened under the last Conservative government was good

So nevermind.

The philanthropy thing has been jumped upon and was clearly at the forefront of people’s minds on a recent Cultural Leadership Programme session, as blogged about by Friction Arts in a post called Preparing for a Cultural Nuclear Winter.

On the Stan’s Cafe blog James gives the benefit of their experience and says:

Big UK arts institutions are already doing all they can to raise sponsorship and court donors, it’s not as if a funding cut is ‘required’ to prod them into action. […]

In short, the US model is deeply flawed and we are a million miles away from being able to deliver that model as well as they do.

As things stand the figures, for the West Mids in particular, support him, the Birmingham Post pulling the numbers from analysis by Arts & Business. The headline numbers there being that in the West Mids private investment dropped 25% over the last period, while the national average was a drop of 7%.

A&B chief Colin Tweedy said that:

We would like to be optimistic but predict the worst is yet to come

Here’s the bunny: