The event will run 7.30pm – 9.00pm, Tuesday 1st April at The Library of Birmingham and tickets are £6-8 available here.

Writing West Midlands will also introduce their Literary Map of the West Midlands that highlights the talent across the region. The map was designed/illustrated by Kerry.

We commissioned the map because it’s our ambition to make sure the West Midlands is known as a writer’s region. We’re passionate about celebrating the writing of the West Midlands, both past and present.

Abigail Campbell, Acting Programmes Director

There is an incredible programme of events planned for the new season including Birmingham Independent Book Fair on April 12th at Ikon Gallery and we look forward to telling you about upcoming events for the new season.

For more information about Writing West Midlands take a look at their website, follow them on twitter or like their page on facebook.

Writing West Midlands produce the Birmingham Literature Festival, and today (March 31st) is the last day to submit your 2014 event proposals – you need to send them by 5pm. 

“A great library contains the diary of the human race”

The Cultures Season at Library of Birmingham begins today (27th January), inviting everyone to take advantage of their free exhibitions, curated visits and access to exciting collections.

Events available to the public range from ‘J.J. Audubon’s Birds of America’ on the 1st February  in the Heritage Learning Space, to an exclusive viewing of Shakespeare’s first Folio on the 5^th April in the Shakespeare Memorial room.

The Library of Birmingham Cultures Season doesn’t just focus on our past. Exciting new exhibitions such as the “Who Am I?” exhibition hosted through Leaps and Bounds with contributions from The Royal Society of Artists, the Arts Council, Birmingham Library and many others, showcases the work and art of young inspirational people from Birmingham and the Black Country from the ages of 16-19. This exhibition has been showing since the 20^th of January and will continue to be exhibited until the 16^th of February.

Other delights include Tindal Street Fiction Group presenting ‘The Sea in Birmingham’ on the 5th February, 6pm till 7.30pm. The Sea in Birmingham celebrates 30 years of the Tindal Street Fiction Group. It’s an anthology of stories, and is set in the Black Country, Coventry, Leamington Spa, Solihull, as well as Birmingham itself. And if that’s not enough there will be several readings of Birmingham based poets laureate which are free to attend.

Take a look at the programme of events for the Library of Cultures season here on the LoB website – [or download pdf] – so that you can pick and choose your events at your own leisure.

Visitors will be invited to take a moment of reflection in the busy environment to write their experience of coming to, or being in, Birmingham on a piece of paper, in their first language. The paper will then be made into an origami flower which will become part of the ‘Story Meadow’ within the Discovery Space. The stories will be shared on digital screens in the library and through social networking raising awareness of the positive contribution of migration to the city. As the week goes on the Discovery Space will become home to a meadow of stories which reflect the diversity of the city.

They’ll be in the Discovery Space between 26th November and 1st December. More information here about the residency… and more about the Discovery Season, as well as other upcoming Capsule events here.

Here’s the flyer:

Yesterday you may have seen my photos from my visit to the Library of Birmingham prior to its opening (which is on Tuesday 3rd September.) I mentioned the Discovery Season brochure curated by Capsule – of which I have now had the time to have a good read through.

Below are a selection of things that I’ll be going to/I like the look of. As ever, do check out the programme yourselves so you can see what else there is on offer. It’s four months long, so on CiB we’re more than likely to give coverage to events throughout the course of the season.

Remember, a Library is for life, and although there are great events lined up don’t forget you can join the library (if you haven’t already) to enjoy book borrowing, downloads, free access to subscription only websites, free wifi in the building and more. It’s free to join of course.

• 3rd September @ 12.30pm – the Library of Birmingham grand opening, with Sound Artists Super Critical Mass presenting Together We Breathe
• 3rd-5th September – throughout the daytime Stans Cafe are in residence, broadcasting everything they see and hear, you can listen on www.stanscafe.co.uk
• 7th-8th September – Four Squares weekender – produced by Birmingham Hippodrome – events taking place in four of Birmingham’s city centre squares: Victoria, Centenary, Chamberlain and Oozells
• You can view Capsule’s trail of sound and visual artworks throughout the Library including Su Blackwell, Lucy McLauchlan, Laura Kate Chapman and Symphony of Atlas

Further down the line there are more Discovery Season events, my highlights include:

• 8th-13th October – The Outcrowd Collective’s House of Beorma archive
• 25th-27th October – Supersonic Festival inspired Bring to Light “A weekend of adventurous music, celebrating the very best in new music and performance”. I’m particularly looking forward to the Sleaford Mods (being from Sleaford y’know.)
• 25th-27th October – Flatpack Festival present Box of Light, celebrating early cinema. I’d recommend The Icebook – I saw it at Flatpack 2012 and it blew me away.
• 5th-7th December – Volume: Art, Book and Print Fair. Plenty of great workshops going on, I’m hoping to get to Writing for Digital: Not Losing the Plot, Make it then tell everybody by Birmingham Zine Festival, and An Endless Supply presents in conversation with Peter Bilak, Czech typographer and editor.

There is a free talks programme including:

• Robots and Technology – taking a look at current Robotics, to coincide with Morton:Underwood’s creative residency
• Glass Lantern Slides – in the lead up to Flatpack’s Box of Light weekend, a rare chance to look at the Library’s collection of glass lanterns
• Social Aspect of Transport – presenting some of the LoB’s internationally renowned railway collection – exploring the changes in social dynamics as a result of the emerging transport system.

There’s LOADS more in the programme. So here’s another reminder to go and have a look through it.

Not part of the Discovery Season programme, but excellent in its own right, and in the near future: 13th-22nd September is the Still Walking Festival and they have just announced their full programme.

I really enjoyed walking around and seeing the new spaces. I especially liked the children’s library decorated with illustrations, the colour block book rotunda, and the rooftop terraces filled with fragrant flowers, which have already attracted lots of bees! There’s also a really good view of the Central Library from the new Library too…

Events start on Tuesday at the LoB as part of the four month long celebration Discovery Season, curated by Capsule. Have a flick through the programme for more information about the events. (I’ll be covering some of them on CiB.)

Here are a few of my photos from my explore below. If you’d like to see better photos then I’d recommend the Dezeen article, which includes the LoB designers’ Mecanoo’s concepts, thoughts and intentions for the building. Or you could head over for the opening on Tuesday and see it for yourself!

Thanks to the Library of Birmingham and Podnosh for letting me have a look around.

Reference Works is a major new photography commission in which four leading photographers will make visual responses to the current Central Library building and to the build, transition and relocation to the new Library of Birmingham.

Those photographers being Michael Collins, Brian Griffin, Andrew Lacon and Stuart Whipps

Now this from the Birmingham City Centre Neighbourhood Forum:

At 10:15am today the first iron work panel was hoisted into place on the front of the building on Floor 2.

They have pics.

To give a bit of background, every so often the city council (or a Birmingham-focussed organisation) will award a contract to a company unfortunate enough to be based somewhere other than Birmingham. In the past couple of years Marketing Birmingham and the MAC have been lambasted for looking further afield for suppliers.

The Library of Birmingham is the latest, having awarded a PR contract to a company in London called Colman Getty after a tendering process which involved several local companies. Unfortunately, the result has been the kind of short-sighted outcry that clamours for protectionism and only makes us look ridiculous, parochial and insecure.

The Birmingham Post have provided the headline most likely to feature in indignant tweets:

Library of Birmingham marketing contract awarded to London firm

Whereas Business Desk WM have been a bit more measured with:

Midlands firms beaten to Library PR contract by London agency

I like how those two seem to imply slightly different things.

On the plus side

Ok, so they might not be from around these parts, and I can’t tell whether the best company won (I haven’t read the proposals and I didn’t see the pitches) but lets see if they have anything to recommend them.

Colman Getty’s clients includes cultural and literary institutions like the Saatchi Gallery, Manchester’s Lowry Centre, the Man Booker Prize, Cheltenham Literary Festival and JK Rowling. So that experience could come in handy when drawing up a “high impact regional, national and international campaign” for the LoB.

Although bids of up to £350,000 were invited, they’ve asked for £292,000 (83% of the total). That seems decent of them, especially as we all know how expensive those London agencies are.

Incidentally, someone mentioned that that’s a lot of money to spend on marketing. Bearing in mind that’s to cover activity over a three-year period for a £189m project that’s meant to give Birmingham some international profile it doesn’t seem all that much to me.

The interesting bit that’s been missed

Colman Getty’s MD says she’s looking forward to working with Birmingham City Council and, more interestingly, “our partners, Writing West Midlands“. So there’s a local link. It’ll be good to find out what role they’ll be playing.

If you only read one thing…

What I usually do when this issue crops up is point towards the guest post that Fullrange’s Lee Kemp wrote for the Birmingham Post a couple of years ago. It’s the best explanation I’ve come across for why reserving regional projects for regional companies is a bad idea. Although I should give a nod to Pete Ashton’s post and the comments below it.

So, while I’m sorry for the likes of Rewired and S&X (who are understood to have pitched for the work – and I’ve only got the BPo and BLWM stories to go from) and others who pitched, it’s surely healthy to bring others into the city.

Tomorrow

I might round-up a load of work that companies in Birmingham have been winning from under the noses of other agencies in other cities. No-one seems to make so much of a fuss over that news.

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.