About Brum

In typical style, I’m fashionably late writing about this. Just like I was to the actual event. Note to self: update satnav maps (I drove straight to Brum from work via a route I don’t normally travel via – the bloody thing tried to take me the wrong way around two separate one-way systems, one in Wolverhampton and another one in Brum!) Anyway, I got there, and I wasn’t to worry, because people were there way after I said my goodbyes and headed home.

If you didn’t turn up on Monday night at the Dragon Inn, you missed out – around 30 bloggers and creative types descended on the pub for an evening of spontaneous conversation, anecdotes and other small issues… things like the future of blogging in and about the West Midlands, and how to promote the region outside of the clique of Birmingham bloggers (paraphrased from Podnosh’s Nick Booth, or Mr. Nosh as I think I might call him from now on).

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Unless something dire happens to obstruct my attendance, you can find me (along with a bunch of other friendly locals) at the second Brum Bloggers Meetup. I’ll give you fair warning now… It’s nestled just at the top end of the Gaybourhood (as my lesbian housemate calls it, and the name just happens to have caught on in our house, so that’s our name for Hurst Street). Whenever she nips down to The Fox on Hurst Street, I like to say that she’s ‘got a thirst for Hurst’, but I get odd stares and I suddenly feel the need to leave the room. You decide on that one.

To be fair, The Dragon Inn is actually nestled in The Arcadian Centre, so it’s almost separate – to get to the Arcadian car park, you just drive down (up?) Hurst Street and the entrance is there. Parking costs, according to the company which runs it, are about £1-£1.20 an hour, so put aside a fiver for parking if you’re driving there (like I’ll have to).

Now, for the brave, here are the event details:

Name: Brum bloggers Meetup 2
Tagline: or the first Birmingham Social Media Cafe?
Host: Birmingham Bloggers UK

Type: Meetings – Club/Group Meeting
Date: Monday, February 18, 2008
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Location: The Dragon Inn

Address:
Hurst Street
B5 4TD
Birmingham

Map: View

See you there!

Well, you’re in luck.

In a somewhat meta presentation at Town Hall, due to take place on Sunday the 20th of January at 2pm, a chap called Anthony Peers is going to deliver “an account of the architectural history of Town Hall from its construction through to it recent renaissance.” Apparently, “Anthony has been researching the history of the building for close to a decade and was involved in the planning of the recently completed scheme of repairs and improvements.”

Unfortunately I’m not in Birmingham that weekend – drat! However, it sounds really quite interesting, and it’s only £6 (£5 if you’re over 60, although I bet they have student concessions going if you ask nicely)… So, there’s no real excuse for you to avoid this talk if you’re truly interested in the redevelopment and reopening of one of Birmingham’s largest and best-known landmarks.

And, as a bonus, click the image above to get a full-sized version, taken (and stitched together) by yours truly. Enjoy

Only in Birmingham… Just in case you weren’t sure of the location of the last public hanging in Brum (apparently it was mistakenly thought to have taken place somewhere else for all these years), it’s now been comemorated with a plaque:

The site of the last public hanging in Birmingham is being marked with a plaque, after the spot was wrongly identified for a number of years.

Philip Matsell was hanged for shooting and wounding, in front of a crowd of 40,000 in August 1806 on the corner of Great Charles Street and Snow Hill.  An historian’s research proved it was not in Ludgate Hill as earlier thought. Public executions in London took place in Ludgate Hill which may account for the mix-up.

The new plaque, known as a History Plate, is being unveiled by Birmingham’s Civic Society. Conceding it was a “gruesome” act to commemorate, a spokesman said Birmingham stopped its public hangings many years before other cities. Mr Matsell was executed for the murder of a “peace officer” – an early form of police officer.

The unveiling will be at the West Midlands Police Museum in Sparkhill, Birmingham, with the plaque being put up under the Great Charles Street railway bridge later.

Erm… Well, I’m sure that’ll be hotly attended – still, might as well go take a look at it. You can’t deny that it’s certainly an evocative thing to comemorate, if nothing else! I’ll always look at Snow Hill in a slightly different light now…

First things first: I immensely dislike Christmas and everything it’s come to stand for… except for Chocolate Oranges in my stocking on Christmas Day. Mmm. However, I’m more than willing to promote events based around this season, because no doubt there’s far more people who aren’t grouchy old grumpies who actually enjoy these events! So, here’s a quick summary of what’s going on this Christmas (well, November) in Brum:

The Birmingham Christmas Lights Switch-On concert is being held from 3pm-7pm in front of Millennium Point on the 10th of November. If you’re wondering where Millennium Point is, it’s the building housing the IMAX cinema just down past the Masshouse building (basically, stand with your back to Selfridges, walk down the long straight Queensway and then bear right slightly, walking down the hill, you’ll get there in five minutes. Billed acts include McFly, Leona Lewis, Scouting For Girls and Sugababes get to turn the lights on on at 7:30pm. Wouldn’t want to miss that. The MAXMIX Diwali Celebrations take place on the 11th of November, and are again in front of Millennium Point from 3-7pm.

Here’s the best bit: the stuff-of-legend Pantomime Horse Race! The Panto Horse Grand National is always the talk of the town and draws some sizeable crowds if the weather’s not crap! It also helps raise some money for Children In Need, so it’s for a very worthwhile cause. There’s usually some foam too, so if you’re going either as a participant or a spectator, prepare to get messy.

This year, the race is taking place on the 16th of November, from 6:30pm-10pm (and although I’d guess the route is still via Colmore Row, finishing just over from the Town Hall, the official listing is “Broad Street / Centenary Square”). There’s also a very pretty-looking Broad Street Canal Boat Light Parade being held on the 9th of December along the canal running from the NIA to The Mailbox (from 5:30pm to 6:15pm). I might head along to that to take some snaps. I know it’s short notice, but I only just found out myself!

So, weather permitting, use these events as an excuse to get out the house and enjoy some pre-December Christmas niceties, courtesy of various local businesses and your City Council. And don’t forget to say thankyou afterwards.

I’ll say it loud, and I’ll say it clear: I like Birmingham Central Library. It’s a real landmark. Being built from concrete, it’s a bit dirty here and there but it has a real sense of character, plus it’s pretty cool inside.

I got lost in there the first time I went in.

The current location of Birmingham Central Library, snapped on the 2nd of May, 2007.

Credit: BCC

However, it’s looking more and more like the existing BCL is going to be knocked down to make way for a new development, with an estimated cost of about £193 million (this isn’t such a long time after they picked up the remainder of the tab for the expensive Town Hall renovation, something like £18 million on top of the EU and Lottery funding). The Guardian picked up on this story a long time ago, and published an article to that extent (and while it’s dated, it’s still relevant, so it’s worth a read). A little has changed though from the original article. This is how the Guardian report reads:

Still dominating Chamberlain Square and squaring up to some of the city’s best Victorian and Edwardian buildings, the library is to be replaced by gleaming office towers. The Richard Rogers partnership, meanwhile, has been commissioned to design a new £130m library at Millennium Point, Eastside, Digbeth. The Rogers building – a stately ultra-modern galleon – will be the flagship of Birmingham’s new cultural quarter, set across a ring-road and web of railway lines from Chamberlain Square.

This has changed slightly – insofar as the new plans talk about the location being a shared site along with the Birmingham Rep, “with the library and theatre joining together and sharing a number of facilities to create a unique centre for knowledge, learning and culture.” Hmm. “Subject to Cabinet’s approval of the proposals (on 22 October), the next step will see a project manager and design team appointed to take the project forward and conduct an international search for an architect so that design work can get underway by summer 2008, and the new centre completed by 2013.”

More info’s available on the BCC web site’s “Library Of Birmingham” pages, and this is where you’d see it should it be built:

The council’s plans include converting the space between the Rep and Baskerville House, currently used as a car park (which is kinda useful!) into a massive Library. However, what’s wrong with Birmingham Central Library being in Chamberlain Square? It’s a great venue, the vista as you stand with the Birmingham Gallery to your back is really something (with the “inverted ziggurat” of the library towering over you and curving around the long ampitheatre-like steps down to the fountain).

I can see the need to put one’s best foot forward, and as Britain’s Second City, I fully agree with that. However, a cost of £193m for a new building on property already serving a useful purpose – parking is already hard enough in the city without another car park being bulldozed… Is it really necessary?

The Council rationalise their thinking by informing us that:

Birmingham’s existing Central Library is the busiest public library in Britain and the city’s most visited public building. However there are major problems with the building, which was built in the early 1970s. The fabric is in very poor condition and the design unsuitable for modern-day needs. The storage capacity and environment, and level of public access for archives, photography and rare printed collections are unacceptably poor given their national and international significance. The Library of Birmingham will provide an exceptional solution to this.

So just closing the Library, gutting it and renovating it then reopening it isn’t enough? Oh wait, I forgot, you want to convert the prime real estate in Chamberlain Square into office blocks, I forgot about that.

If you want to support those who would keep things the way they are, there’s a Facebook group where all the cool people hang out. According to Love Concreation, “Friends of Central Library are proposing to have a meeting on Tuesday 20th November at 6pm – location TBC, somewhere in Bham town centre.” So, keep your eyes peeled if you’d like to take part.

Yes, Gigbeth begins tomorrow, and I’ll be there (helping represent Revolver Records, who are also one of the event’s sponsors) – I won’t be hard to spot, I’ll be the one who looks like he’s the odd one out and running round with a camera! See you there.

I’ve been lazy recently – must update more! I’ve been sitting on this stuff for a while now, and I thought it’d be time to blog about this (especially considering I told them I would!)

If you were watching the local events calendar recently, you might have noticed that the  2007 Birmingham Festival of Xtreme Building (now finished, sadly) had an events space where guest shows could come and exhibit. I was just walking past, walking down to take some photos of the area around the TIC in Millennium Point for a future blog, when I noticed this exhibition going on, so I dropped by - admission was free.

I was amazed to find what I did; a cornucopia of little mysteries (and one copy of Great Mysteries), all with their own stories to tell. The exhibition was entitled “Belongings”, an exhibition (and indirect celebration) of all things Lost and Found.

Katharine Kavanagh, a Curator
(she promised me the specs were
hers, but I don’t believe her!)

Put on by two UCE graduates, Natalie Wilson and Katharine Kavanagh (under the moniker of Kipipeo Arts), the exhibition’s sole purpose was to bring to the surface all those things people discard or lose, and give you a little food for thought, to take a minute to just wonder the situations and circumstances that resulted in the items being where they were. All of the items were tagged with the date of, and where, they were found (or discovered), plus any backstory if there was any. The majority of items were completely anonymous, which lent them a definite air of curiosity (and I like curious mysteries!) When I asked Katharine about where they’d collected their items, she explained to me how she’s a bit of a hoarder (like me!) and that she and Nat had either found items at random or gone to public places (libraries, railway stations, the main Birmingham bus terminuses, etc) and just used their eyes. They had a trunk with some ‘Restricted Items’ in (things that might be dangerous for little kiddies to get their mitts on -good idea) but they also had some rather curious finds like a woman’s handbag (left in Birmingham Central Library about 3 years ago) which had not just her purse in, but her cards, her passport (!), her various forms of identification, a Visa (which had expired a while back) and some letters from what I guessed were her sponsors. You can see the handbag, and the trunk, in the photo of Kat to the right.

I totally clicked with Kat’s mindset – I’m a serial hoarder too, I love collecting things and never throwing anything away, because you never quite know when that oddly-shaped screw or collection of elastic bands might just come in handy. This festival was as much a celebration of not throwing anything away as it was discovering items which would otherwise remain locked away in windowless back rooms in public buildings (only to see the light of day when they were either discarded into a bin or tossed away into a dump). To recycle all these curios in the way they did meant a lot of legwork and effort on their behalf (they apparently spent many months collecting before the exhibition began), but it was most definitely worth it. For the identifiable items (like the handbag with the passport in), Kat said that they were going to do their best to return those items to their original owner, which was a nice touch.

There were some items I would’ve loved to take away for myself (and she said that if I wanted to take something I was more than welcome). I wanted all the 78s! However Kat professed to have claimed them herself because the 78 player was hers I can’t take a record from someone so I let them be, even though she offered to let me have one to take away, but that would have ruined the collection… So, as a fellow hoarder and an avid (nay, obsessed) vinyl collector, I let her keep them all. (I know how much it means to someone to have a record which is subsequently taken away from them for one reason or another.) I did snap loads of photos though, so I did get to take something away I suppose

Here’s the best (imho) photos I took (there’s more available, including shots of the most important pages from their explanatory Portfolio) on my Flickr page):

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All in all? A very worthwhile afternoon, even if it was a bit overcast. Can’t blame them for the weather, it didn’t rain though. The event was on all weekend, but I never even knew about it until I walked past on the Sunday (I left just after the exhibition closed). I had a great time, and it was an enjoyable morsel of brain food.

So,  the moral of all this? Always be prepared to deviate from your original plan when out in a city, and keep your eyes peeled because you never know what you might stumble upon and have a great time exploring.

An odd couple of bedfellows, but both quite significant events that took place last weekend – Birmingham hosted the Gay Pride weekend, seeing hundreds and thousands of people converge on the second city for a weekend of festivities, celebration, drinking and general madness… My lesbian housemate certainly seemed to enjoy herself, though she’s not shown me some of the snaps from her weekend exploits yet!

Unfortunately, as is customary with any big outdoor event, it rained all weekend. Oops. However, it doesn’t seem to have dampened peoples’ spirits, as is evidenced by taking a look at the photos from the weekend on the BBC Birmingham pages.

Last weekend also marked the start of Tolkien Weekend 2007 – something I’m far more interested in What’s not so well-known is that J.R.R. Tolkien (more info on the BCC pages) drew a lot of inspiration from the scenery in and around Birmingham when he was writing his Lord Of The Rings saga (as he lived in Birmingham at the turn of the century), and a lot of that which he drew his inspiration from is still around for all to see today. Buildings like Perrott’s Folly (just down the road from me in Edgbaston, and across the way from the Ivy Bush, the pub where Tolkien used to drink) serve as a mysterious reminder to those who are fans of his work as to how he even partly envisioned his amazing universe in the first place. The Folly gave Tolkien the spark for his idea of the Two Towers of Mordor- the Folly was built in line with the old water tower, and when you view them from a distance the similarity is striking.

Other landmarks include Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog, the blueprint for Fangorn and the Old Forest, as well as various places in and around the Midlands where Tolkien grew up. Tolkien didn’t just derive inspiration from Birmingham however, and there are many guides (including this one by Simon Rose) detailing in much greater depth many of the other buildings and locations whose influence can be seen in his later writings.

Photos from the 2007 Tolkien Weekend are available here, here and here.

In other good news, Longbridge will be officially back in action from today – the 29th of May – after it was announced that Nanjing Automobile are not only making Longbridge their EU headquarters, they are reopening the factory for production and using the factory as an R&D facility for new development. Since buying the company in 2005, Nanjing has invested many millions of pounds into the facilities and have long said they have wanted to resume production at the facility. They’ve also premiered several new models of MG vehicles based on old Rover designs at this year’s Shanghai Automobile Show, and now seem set to scale up production of new vehicles. (More info here, here and here.)
Credit for all photos: BBC News Online