Might this be useful to the folks at the recent The Challenge of Change event? So what sort of small festivals is the city currently lacking?

It’s probably worth seeing this in light of the comments from Neil Rami of Marketing Birmingham that I linked to the other day. When asked which cities have marketed themselves effectively through culture he named Barcelona, Berlin, Glasgow and:

Rotterdam, as they have come from nowhere. They have spent eight years capacity building their ability to host festivals and in that time have gone from something like 8 each year to 109. They saw festivals as a way of building a career for an artist and for telling a story. They now import festivals, poaching them from other cities as well as starting their own.

I’ve only had a glance through the discussions and the proposals put forward but the Birmingham European Theatre Festival sounds interesting. A lot of discussions seem to feature the question ‘Do we need an equivalent of Theatre Bristol?’ (which could be very nice) but, as I said before, I think the idea of everyone taking The Pledges is a good starter, mainly because it depends on no-one else.

Graeme Rose (Stan’s Cafe, The Modified Toy Orchestra, etc) has written up some notes about the first day.

There’s talk of Action Plans coming out of the event but I’m yet to find anything online anywhere just yet. Until they turn up, I rather like this list of pledges sketched out by James Yarker (also of Stan’s Cafe):

1. Attend 12 theatre shows in the next 12 months, 4 by West Midlands writers/artists/companies you haven’t seen before, 1 in a West Midlands Venue you’ve never been to before.
2. Take 12 people who have never been, rarely go, or don’t ‘do’ Independent Theatre to a show. Share transport.
3. Host a meal/party for 8 people 4 of which you barely know.
4. Write 12 comments/reviews/blog entries about theatre on other people’s sites.
5. Attend 1 mid*point or return to the next Open Space event.

They seem like common sense things that you’d hope people would be doing anyway but probably aren’t by everyone. I’m sure very similar things could be drawn up for many different artforms. James explains where the pledges came from. It’d be nice if they really were written up in some formal way. Michelle Knight has opted in. Is anyone else prepared to be held to these? If not, how come?