For starters, I haven’t got a flyer for this one but Lizzy Parks is playing in the Symphony Hall foyers today (Friday) from 5.30pm to 7pm and it’s free. Info on the THSH website. Or indeed the Birmingham Jazz website.

Earlier in the day (in fact from 12pm to 7pm) head over to Lombard Street in Digbeth for PST’s street party. This here flyer says there’s going to be food, live art and heavy bass. And face painting.

MakeIt Zone are having an open day on Saturday.

Capsule have got an event at Kings Heath’s Hare and Hounds on Saturday night called Wedlock. Dunno what that’s a reference to but I like the pretty picture.

There’s loads of other stuff happening too. Have a look at Live Brum for listings.

We’ve had 100 submissions, which seems like a good place to draw things to a close and have a look at the results:

Listings/what’s on

70 – Venues’ own websites
49 – CiBmail
30 – Birmingham City Council – What’s On
29 – Live Brum
18 – What’s on in Brum
17 – Ticketmaster
14 – Visit Birmingham
10 – Scene Central
6 – Birmingham Alive
4 – Birmingham Gig Guide
4 – What’s On Midlands (online)

Suggestions left in the ‘other’ box included The Ticketsellers, Last.fm, Songkick, Ents24, Brum Notes, finditinbirmingham.com, More Canals Than Venice, The Wire and Upcoming.

Arts/culture news

80 – Created in Birmingham
76 – Blogs/social network updates from individual artists/organisations
34 – Digbeth is Good
32 – BiNS
32 – More Canals Than Venice
24 – Birmingham Post/Mail (online)
20 – Arts Council England Arts News
15 – Audiences Central

Others included Ryan’s Gig Guide, An Craic, We Are Eastside and Area Magazine.

Who filled out the survey?

We had a roughly 50:50 male/female split, a wide spread of ages (with a slight skew to 18-25 and 26-35) and pretty much everyone has a B postcode, with a smattering of WV and DY’s too.

Any conclusions?

Nothing really concrete, but it was interesting. I’ve got an idea of the level of web traffic of some of the sites listed, so I know that the results certainly doesn’t indicate which are the most popular websites around the city. However, you could say that this shows which other websites overlap with CiB’s readership.

If anything, I was expecting the Post & Mail to come up a bit higher. Nice to see Live Brum up there.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out and/or forward on the survey.

Listings come from Live Brum (although they’re not coming through quite right at the mo, so check Live Brum itself), news comes from Chortle and they add their own news, previews and reviews. Their Twitter account puts out a weekly top tip.

The Glee Club and Jongleurs are the main venues around town so it’s worth browsing their listings too, just in case.

• All Brum / Art Brum / Live Brum – there’s a whole family of these sites now, all feeding into All Brum which tends to be my first port of call if I’m at a loose end. Stuffed with nice features too.
• Birmingham Alive
• Birmingham City Council
• Birmingham Gig Guide
• Birmingham Listings
• MyVillage – they’ve gone for a social network flavour but
• Scene Central – Audiences Central’s offering with a West Mids-wide scope
• Skiddle – as you might expect from Skiddle there’s a greater number of club nights than on many other sites but there’s a fair amount of other stuff too
• Visit Birmingham – the official tourist information visitor website
• What’s On In Brum

NB – The following aren’t really listings, just good sources of info:

There’s also Russ L‘s monthly ‘Lots Of Things To See And Do In The West Midlands’ series which tends to feature theatre, gigs, the main festivals and boxing/mixed martial arts (NB – don’t try and submit stuff to him or you’ll find yourself excluded).  The 7 Inch Cinema newsletter is always stuffed with interesting local events too – sign up for that on the 7 Inch website.

Have I missed anything decent from that list? What do you tend to use?

Artsfest is a big sprawling beast of a festival and a difficult one to wrangle from a listings perspective. A few people have chipped in with their take on how things could/should be presented but for me, while all of them help in some way, none of them really hit the nail on the head.  Still here are they:

• Every event has been manfully wrangled into the Live Brum database
• Jon Bounds has scanned the programme and put it online
• He’s also put together a map showing what’s happening where (but not when)
• Matthew Somerville from Dracos.co.uk has put together a searchable list of events listed by time, not location

I’m pretty sure that the small team running Artsfest wouldn’t have the budget or reach to put something like the above together, so it’s great to see the local community take it upon themselves.

In case it’s of any use to anyone, here’s what I’m planning to do.  Or at least what I think looks interesting.

Friday evening

Friday’s fun takes place against the backdrop of Light Night, of course.

• Stan’s Cafe are opening the doors of AE Harris Factory (110 Northwood Street, B3 1SZ) for Of All The People In All The World (6.30-9pm)
• From 7pm (not sure until when) there are two interesting things happening at the Council House.  Definitely worth seeing are Willard Wigan’s astounding micro sculptures.  Sonia Bhamra will be Painting With Light in another room which might be worth a look if you’re there
• Gallery 10 at BM&AG has Comfortism who, I think, mixes up poetry, theatre and stand-up with the odd bit of audience participation.  Could be interesting
• At 8pm there’s a parade from the Pavillions to Centenary Square
• The Town Hall present Late Night Light Night and they’ll be open from 8pm for perfomances by Soweto Kinch, The Sub Ensemble, Manga and Maylight (who I’m looking forward to seeing)

Saturday

Saturday’s the tricky one.  There’s loads happening so the best thing might just be to go for a wander around the city centre and see what you stumble across.  That said…

• Nic Gaunt’s exhibition ‘The Rotunda: 21 Stories‘ will be at The Pavillions all day
• From 3.30pm to 4.30pm there’s Raw Magic which is “a visual installation and promenade performance built into a maze of tents, for audiences to explore and choose which direction they would like to take”.  Some of the people here were involved in the very popular B1 Labyrinths from this year’s Fierce Festival
• From 8pm to 10pm BRB, CBSO and Birmingham Opera Company share the Centenary Square stage for one of the weekend’s big items.  Plus there’ll be fireworks.
• After that it’s Project X Presents for me.  It’s not Artsfest-related but it does look pretty exciting, so that’s where I’ll be.

Sunday

• If I’m functioning at 12pm then I’ll want some ‘beautiful heartwarming acoustic/electronica music’.  At the Custard Factory, Elliot Jack will be playingjust that.
• After that I might wander into the Custard Factory Theatre for some short flicks courtesy of Shortcuts
• From 7pm Needle & Thread Theatre are doing the rather charming-looking ‘Between The Lines’ – walking theatre around the Central Library.  This is on on Saturday too (call 07530 939 380 to book a free place)
• It’s Kerrangfest in Centenary Square from 12pm with The Mexicolas, The Metros, Envy & Other Sins and The Levellers later in the evening.

Of course, whether I actually get round a fraction of all of that is another question.

an online music magazine about the West Midlands. This is a fledgling project and we are hoping to grow in the coming months and years. Cul-de-Sac is designed to be a one-stop resource for music fans in the region, as well as being a vital source of information for people regardless of their geographical position

Cul-de-Sac has the sort of news, album reviews, gig reviews and so on that you’d expect from this sort of music site but with a West Mids slant.

I’m dead pleased to see this spring up, partly because I’m hoping it’ll take a weight off CiB.  When I get emails with local bands’ MySpace pages or gigs/nights/etc listings I’m wary that if I mention one I’d have no reason (other than my own bias) for not mentioning them all.  There are a bunch of sites doing that job better than I ever could.

There’s Live Brum, What’s On In Brum, Birmingham Gig Guide, Birmingham Alive and others for listings. Birmingham Live and The Hearing Aid take care of reviews and again, there’s a few others doing that too.  However, there was a big Cul-de-Sac-shaped hole for news and reviews.  I’ve high hopes for this one.

What might be even more interesting would be for a few of the above-mentioned to find a way of sharing their content somehow.  Just a thought…

Spotted by BiNS.