First up, the video, which was made by Vermillion Films:

And then the website, which was built by Made Media (which is where I work, full disclosure fans).

Also, blimey – I’ve just noticed that next year they’ve got a show called The Infernal Comedy:

John Malkovich stars in a stage play for baroque orchestra, singers and actor, based on the real-life story of convicted serial killer Jack Unterweger.

Yes, that John Malkovich. I’m a bit impressed by that.

• 383 Project have been nominated for Dadi Digital Agency of the Year (and would appreciate you voting for them)
• Made Media (my employers, no less) have been nominated in the arts and culture category of the British Interactive Marketing Awards

Made Media are the folks that built the websites for The Rep, Sampad, International Dance Festival Birmingham, Town Hall Symphony Hall, Warwick Arts Centre, BCMG, Tindal Street Press and many more (and that’s just the West Mids stuff – they work nationally).

I’m posting this here for a few reasons – partly for reasons of transparency and partly because I’m really quite chuffed with the move. There’s also the fact that I’ll inevitably spend work time running CiB, so it’s only fair to give Made a nod on that score.

It’s also meant a move from Digbeth over to the Jewellery Quarter. We’ll have to see if that has an effect on the stuff I write about.

While I’m at it…

The days when CiB existed solely on this site are long gone. If you don’t already, you can also keep up with us on:

• Twitter
• Facebook; and
• Tumblr

Those are the main places, at least. I’ve been enjoying having the CiB Tumblr and have been treating it a bit like the flyer wall that we had back in the CiB Shop. If you have a look at the archive view you’ll see what I mean.

There were a fair few people from Birmingham who went along and they had access to a week’s worth of West Midlands listings data provided by Global Data Point, which Marketing Birmingham had a hand in arranging, so here’s a list of the kind of things they made.

Mark James and Andrew Lowther from Made Media made a few things:

• LuvvieScore highlights cultural hotspots in UK (well, just Birmingham at the moment). CiB’s office rates as an ‘A-List Badger Fossil’, happily
• TescoFresco maps the location of theatres and branches of Tescos (pic below with theatres in red, Tescos in blue)
• Following a request, they did the same thing with Tescos and libraries

Matthew Somerville and Clare Lovell made Pepys’ Shows, featuring the extracts from Samuel Pepys’ diaries where he reviews trips to the theatre.

Stef Lewandowski (previously from around these parts, so he’s allowed it in this round-up) was busy too:

• He simplified access to 1m+ artifacts in the Culture Grid API by providing Ruby access (ruby gem here)
• In case it wasn’t obvious, he then made a mobile app to show what that means
• And finally he was involved in Filmflexicon which cross-references on-demand films and rating from Rotten Tomatoes

The full list of hacks, which included a service that uses Foursquare check-ins to work out when galleries and museums are at their busiest and Subvertle – a framework for playing with iPlayer subtitles, should be on the Culture Hack Day website later.

On the Saturday there were some talks too. If you’re interested in what all that was about then I’ve written up quite a few notes on the Meshed Media website.

(* yes, so it should have been Culture Hack Weekend)

Boxer‘s Christmas video ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner‘ is definitely worthy of a mention. As well as being highly entertaining, it also comes with the challenge of a movie quiz.

Fullrange have made this amusing video for FleetMilne Residential.

Made Media have made brought the nativity to Twitter. Warning, highly distracting, if like me, you’re going to want to switch all the people around to make sure it features your favorite followers.

Supercool‘s Christmas card was a compelling read when it arrived on the CiB desk. They’ve redesigned the classic 12 days of Christmas.

Birmingham Royal Ballet have put together this bunch of Christmas wishes.

Are there anymore Christmas creations out there that we’ve missed and deserve a mention?

Marketing Birmingham have a new vid for selling the city. It was put together by Fullrange and, among others, features Birmingham Royal Ballet, Clusta and Made Media

‘Apart from being the most criminally underrated city in the UK, it’s just two hours from London and about the same to Manchester so there’s no excuse not to visit.’

Their extensive portfolio reads like a who’s who of creative and cultural Birmingham, they have created clean, functional and stylish websites for: The Drum, Fused Magazine, Hello Digital, The REP, New Generation Arts, Fierce Festival, Maverick and Town Hall.

They are currently looking for people to help them in a usability study into some websites by spending an hour clicking around some websites, and there’s a £75 gift voucher in it for participants which that relates to the study. So if you are an average web user, not a techy, and have got an hour spare in central Birmingham between 1pm and 9pm next Monday (30 March) get in touch with Jake Grimley on 0844 581 1374 and leave a message.

For those that don’t know Fused, they produce a quarterly publication that covers fashion, music, arts, etc and so on.  They also produced a rather good students’ guide to Birmingham, a responsible for the Ltd Edition affordable art market and promote local bands overseas at showcases like SXSW.

The magazine’s distributed internationally but their blog tends to throw in lots of local mentions with posts about Plus+ and Eastside Projects recently.

Here’s what the site looks like:

Made Media made it.

It’s been put together by talented localers Made Media, Maverick, Fluid & Stef Lewandowski.