About Brum

Roll up, roll up – it’s the shiny new About Brum podcast, replete with delicious podcasty goodness and compatible with all half-decent media players and devices.

The inaugural episode features Nick Booth of Podnosh and Birmingham Social Media Surgery fame! Also, Birmingham- or West Midlands-based band? Get your music featured on the next instalment… Contact me for more details.

Click here to download the podcast's audio file

Links to articles mentioned in podcast:

http://www.paradisecircus.com
Nick Booth: PodNosh.com
Nick Booth: BeVocal – Acock’s Green SMS

Intro music for this episode: Advantage – Never Say Never

If you think you deserve to be featured in a future podcast, get in touch - I look forward to hearing from you!

A short and sweet entry this time for the end of July. If you missed “Centre of our World”, the six-part insight into Birmingham’s diverse ethnic communities written and presented by Birmingham’s very own Professor Carl Chinn, Radio 4 are currently repeating the series every day this week at 3:45pm. Starting with Birmingham’s Irish community, the programes move onto the Polish, Yemeni, Chinese and Greek Cypriot communities over the course of the shows. At 15 minutes long, the programmes are just right to ‘dip into’ – so go take a listen.

If you missed the first three episodes, you can listen to them for the next few days on iPlayer.

It’s not just canals coming out of the Black Country these days, we have some superheroes all of our own too. Employing the talents of Matthew Craig, Donato’s bringing the Bostin Heroes to the world – and he’ll be on the radio on Sunday to talk about it. From the Brum Mail article about the idea; 

“It will be a Midlands-themed comic, aimed at a broad audience, but anchored in familiar landmarks, such as Dudley Castle and the Bullring.

“Over the coming weeks, teaser images and background material will appear on the website, gradually introducing the characters and their world, in advance of the launch of the ongoing strip.

“I am hoping that it will capture the public’s imagination as there is a hero inside all of us.”

The strip will be written by Matthew Craig, aged 32, from Perry Barr, and illustrated by Jack Davies, 20, from Sutton Coldfield. Matthew, a former molecular biologist, and Jack, who has been drawing since the age of four, have both been tipped as Britain’s next big comic book creators.

…and From Mister Bostin himself:

You’ll be pleased to hear that i will be on BBC WM this Sunday 27th at 2pm ish on Carl Chinn’s show to talk in more detail about the comic and some of the stories that will be unfolding.

If you are not in the UK you can listen to all BBC WM shows live or on play again at hCarl Chinn’s BBC Birmingham feature page along with details how to message Carl at this page too.

If you want to see the comic and meet the team behind it, they’ll both be at the Birmingham International Comics Show this October.

Image credits: Birmingham Mail and Bostin Group