Their new season features quite a few returning companies as well as some new faces, with Hofesh Shechter Company, 2faced Dance Company, Company Decalage, Rosie Kay Dance Company and Bare Bones among the ones performing. There’s a special season offer for this lot too:

Book for 3+ shows at once, get 20% off, and book for 5+ shows at once and get an amazing 50% off! That means you could come to all 10 shows in the season for just £50!

Ten shows for £50 really is a ridiculous bargain and no, I’m not on commission here.

They’ve also brought in Supercool to sort out their website, which is a relief because the previous one was pretty awful.

The Typographic Hub is:

part of the Birmingham Institute of Art & Design at Birmingham City University; the Hub works to promote the history, theory and practice of typographic design

They organise an annual typographic symposium (16 March this year) and will be publishing a fair amount of typographically-related articles.

The website (built by Supercool) has had a fair amount of good attention from the likes of Hoefler+Frere-Jones (I’ve no idea who they are but 100,000+ followers on Twitter show’s they’re doing something right) and Gary Hustwit (who did the Helvetica and Objectified documentaries) among others.

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?

Patterns contains loads of exquisite illustrations from five fantastically talented screenprint artists, who each have very different styles – Karoline Rerrie, Sarah Lynch, Ruth Green, Helen Entwisle, Daisy Whitehouse – and yeah, I did some stuff too. (Though I can’t call myself an artist!)

Love to Print Patterns #1 will be available at The New Art Gallery Walsall’s Artists’ Bookfair on 22-23rd May. If you can’t make it there though, watch this space for other ways of getting your hands on Pattern

Her post has photos too.

In 2008 I organised a 48-hour film competition. It went well, especially considering it was put together on zero budget and six weeks notice. Now…

Film Dash is back!

It’ll happen over the weekend of 5-7 March 2010. Here’s the deal:

Write, cast, shoot, and edit a short film in 48 hours. If you’ve got a camera – even one on a mobile phone –
you’ve got all you need to make a film. You don’t need any experience to join in with Film Dash and it’s FREE to enter.

This year’s theme is ‘happiness’, so get thinking; what makes you happy? But remember – you’ll be given a prop, a character, or even a line of dialogue to include in your film, so don’t have too much prepared!

Also: Prizes! Judges! The chance for your film to be shown all over the place!

Register your team here.

You can get info and updates on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to Film Dash on YouTube to see the films as they’re produced.

Here’s the poster, designed by the good people of Supercool:

And here’s the winning entry from 2008 – Dunkirk by Team TTV.

Dunkirk from Pete Ashton on Vimeo.

Katie Parry aka @supercoolkp, a designer with supercool, did just that and managed to get her tweet read on air on the evening news.

Katie said:

I can’t begin to tell you how chuffed I was – I watch Channel 4 News every weeknight so to see my (Twitter) name on the screen was brilliant.

And it’s another small yet powerful example of the amazing connective potential of Twitter. How else would a graphic designer in Brum get their poem recited on the national news?

The segment is available to watch on YouTube and the best of the rest are on Channel 4 online.

(PS – if you’ve not yet voted for Created in Birmingham today, please go here – http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-uk-blog/)

Ok, well there’s a few things coming up.

• On Friday there’s Likemind, hosted by James from Supercool and Lucie from Saint Caffe at the latter’s cafe on St Pauls Square.  Drop in any time between 8.30am and 10am to grab a coffee and have a natter.
• On Monday 23rd there’s a meet-up of a group loosely calling themselves ‘bloggers’ at the Flapper & Firkin.  Details are on the Paradise Circus blog and here’s the Facebook event.  Drop in any time after 6pm.
• Last, and certainly not least, Creative Republic are hosting an informal get-together at Concrete, just under the Big Peg in the Jewellery Quarter on Thursday 26 June from 6pm.  They promise

No pack drill… No speeches… And no cost

Which is as good a sales pitch as you’re likely to find.  Details are on the flyer here.  Please RSVP to that one so they know how many to expect.