About Brum

I got word recently from Clare Edwards of the second Flyover Show, taking place today underneath the Hockley Flyover. If you went to last year’s event and liked what you saw, you’re in for another treat this year…

Amongst others, the lineup includes:

• Soweto Kinch, Birmingham saxophonist and rapper
• Linton Kwesi Johnson
• Bashy
• Andy Hamilton
• Cleveland Watkiss

Click on the flyer to the left to see the full lineup. Not a bad list of artists for a concert taking place under one of Brum’s flyovers! LIke last year, it’s free to go, and it’s a lovely day outside today… So why not? Just head over to Hockley Circus, B18. The concert starts at 12:30 and ends at 21:00.

For those who were unaware, the Public Consultation for the planned £193m Birmingham Library  is halfway complete (it’s been running from the 20th of April and will end on the 22nd of May).

This is the last opportunity the general public will have to voice their opinions - you can contribute yours, so get going – there’s more info on the BCC web site. Likewise, they’re also running focus groups which you can participate in.

As local residents, it’s your Council Tax money they’re spending, so why not have your say?

Some blurb from the BCC web site;

Mike Whitby, Leader of Birmingham City Council, has unveiled the design concepts for the new Library of Birmingham by the acclaimed Dutch architects Mecanoo.

The Library of Birmingham will be situated on Centenary Square between the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (The REP) and Baskerville House. The project will make a huge contribution to the regeneration of the city, creating 250 new jobs including 25 apprenticeships.

The library building will be joined to The REP at ground and mezzanine levels and will share the foyer, bars, restaurants and a new 300 seat theatre.

What bothers me the most (aside from the astounding cost, and the fact that this redevelopment isn’t really necessary) is that they’re going to be using the entire plot of land currently used as a car park – granted the multi-storey behind Baskerville House will still be there, but it’s always full in the daytime with commuters’ vehicles. When this Library is built, parking your car in the centre of Birmingham will become just that little bit more difficult.

Worst of all, as part of the redevelopment of the surrounding area, all but a few circles of grass will be removed and paved over wholesale – what happens to the water table, and why are the few remaining patches of green space in the middle of our city to be so neglected? There’s a lot to be said for being able to relax during your lunch breaks while sitting on a nice patch of grass in the warmer months.

The one good thing about this redevelopment taking place is that archaeologists from the UoB have unearthed some interesting finds just below the car park tarmac, including a “canal arm and factory remains.” From the site;

A previous desk-based assessment showed that the site was formerly within the vicinity of John Baskerville’s house in the 18th century, a canal, and was the later location of the Union Brassworks in the early-19th century, and Winfields Brass Works, one of the largest brassworks in Birmingham during the mid to late-19th century.

There’s a more detailed writeup (old link, obsolete) (with more photos and a video of an animated above- and below-ground virtual tour) on the University’s Archeology and Anthropology web site.

Related reading:

Library of Birmingham promotional web site
UoB: Cambridge Street, Birmingham
BCC: Concept designs for Brum Library
Birmingham Mail: first look at new Birmingham Library
BCC: BigCityPlan - The Core

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already noticed unmarked black gantries appearing in several areas of Birmingham over the past week or so. Some have already gone up in Digbeth, and from informal discussion with contractors installing the gantries today it appears that there are at least 10 more to go. Today (Monday), two gantries were erected at the top of Broad Street (the Five Ways end), one overlooking each direction of traffic. These gantries will shortly be outfitted with ANPR cameras – so for all you Vehicle Excise Duty, car insurance evaders and generally Naughty People, Broad Street and Digbeth high street (amongst other areas) are soon to officially become No Go Zones.

Update, August 2009: these gantries are now fitted with ANPR cameras – the reason you might not see them is because they are really small! If you look at the gantries closely, there’s one or two ‘lumps’ on each one – those are the cameras. Your travel in and out of the city, including dates, times and durations of journeys, are now being logged by Central Government. Enjoy.

According to sources at Birmingham City Council, the cameras themselves are not under their management or jurisdiction as West Midlands Police undertake day-to-day operational responsibility (with much of the central gantries set to be operated from of their Steelhouse Lane station). However, Birmingham City Council’s CCTV department can supervise and control the CCTV cameras being fitted alongside some of the gantries. 

Personally, I am in two minds to the introduction of ANPR to the city centre (as I am sure many others are)… Read the rest of this entry »

I’m currently upgrading About Brum to the latest stable Wordpress – I’ve left it too long without updating and it was becoming dangerously obsolete, so I took the plunge a little earlier today.

There will be some temporary ugliness but fortunately the WP coders have made upgrading to a new point release wonderfully simple – one click to update the database, step-by-step instructions that cover even non-standard installations, and just about all of my pre-existing settings, plus all my previous posts and categories have been carried over without a problem.

The last thing to be  completed is a transition to a new theme; I should have this finished by this evening so please bear with the temporary ugliness or occasionally distorted page layout as I tweak the final design.

Cheers!
Christopher

For all folk lovers (and I know there’s a few of you out there, I’m partial to a little of it from time to time) TheTicketSellers just announced that they’ll be “releasing the full lineup at the Tunng & Tinariwen gig at the Rainbow Warehouse on Adderley Street, Digbeth on Saturday 28th March.” The festival itself gets underway on the 4th of September, 2009 (running through until the 6th).

 With previous artists including Kate Rusby, José González, Fairport Convention, Morcheeba and Tunng, odds are on that this year’s lineup will be just as diverse.

To quench your thirst for folk in the meantime, the Moseley Folk Festival web site has an excellent archive of past performances (including a bunch of them on YouTube) plus plenty of photos to accompany. Tickets for this year’s MFF go on sale on the 1st of April, and will probably be around the £55 mark – bookmark their Shop and check back then

… Or slides into a row of parked cars, as I saw earlier this evening. (Turns out that this white powder can also be extremely costly for some people.)

Yes, in case you haven’t noticed, Birmingham has once again been swathed in snow. Local Highways Agency gritter depots run out of rock salt, more salt is brought over on boats from Spain and Italy (but won’t arrive until several days after the worst weather has passed) and people are once again reminded that no, you can’t just put the car into first gear and off you go. High gears low revs, people! And if you have a rear wheel drive car… Just stay at home, it’s best for everyone.

And of course, time for some customary pictures, courtesy of local publications the Brummagem Mail and the Sunday Mercury (here’s their offering). A little word of advice from the Met Office as well, via the Mail’s web site:

A low pressure system from the south is due to hit the region on Monday, bringing with it up to 15cms of snow. And with no thaw on the horizon, any snow is likely to stick and remain on the roads for days.

Flippin’ eck, that means I’m going to have to pack the table salt in the rucksack this week. The Mail’s report continues;

“We’ve got a band of sleet and snow in the north Midlands on Sunday which clears as the day goes on,” a Met Office spokesman said last night, “but the main complication is a low pressure system in the south bringing snow and sleet, which may or may not reach the Midlands. It’s more likely to stick if it does come and then we’re looking at between 10 and 15 centimetres of snow. There’s no sign of a thaw so it could well be more serious than last week. Even if it (heavy snow) doesn’t hit the region, it’s still another wintery week and the hardest hit area will probably be Warwickshire.”

Prepare for some more sledging days telecommuting days as you unfortunately can’t make it to work! For shame.

Moving on to this little corner of the web: I’d like to proffer the excuse that AboutBrum’s not received any updates due to my Internet connection being snowed in for a few weeks, but unfortunately real life has taken precedence. I’m currently almost finished in my final year at University (at BCU/UCE/BBC/whatever they call themselves these days), and projects, coursework and sleep seem to be soaking up more and more of my free time. However, at the last Birmingham Blogger’s Meet I attended I managed to snatch a few minutes of Mr. Booth’s time to run a few ideas past him for this humble web site - and as he didn’t immediately snap back that my ideas were a load of old codswallop, I think my ideas may have a little potential

(Note to readers: if you see a slightly crazed-looking bloke wandering around Brum town centre with a portable audio recorder, don’t approach him. He will, no doubt, be me.)

I have a sneaky redesign planned for this web site too, so watch out for that. Anyway, safe travels and try not to fall over walking to the shops (like I already have once or twice.) Ta-ra a bit!

Welcome to 2009 everyone Been quiet on this blog recently but plan to hit the ground running in 2009 so keep an eye on this place.

If you had your beady eyes open this Christmas (I didn’t!) you will have noticed that Sky used the German Market as the background for their Christmas idents across Sky1, 2 and 3. 

Check them out on YouTube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7HoTNE0q5II&feature=related&fmt=18

(Hat-tip to Simon Howes for pointing it out to me, I’d not watched Sky throughout the entirety of Christmas so missed it on TV completely!)

This sounds like fun – a shame I’m 80 miles away from Birmingham this weekend, this gig sounds exactly like the kind of thing which could keep me entertained for hours.

As LiveBrum explains;

Project X Presents invites you on a journey into the heart of Digital Dystopia.

A carefully sequenced evening during which many performers combine to present a seamless 7 hour show of sound, light and interaction…an “omnimedia experience”. Three stages and multiple projection screens will allow the presentation of a seamless flow of multi genre entertainment, including bands, performers, comedians, VJs, DJs, dancers, poets.

A few of the Headline acts: 360, Subsource, Marc Reck, Reginald D Hunter, Rich Batsford, Shana Tova. Tickets are £10. www.projectxpresents.com/eflyer/index.html

UPDATE: The excellent Radio To Go podcast has produced a show dedicated to the Project X Presents event on Sept 13 and featuring a great selection of tasters of the music. Check it out for a listen here: http://radiotogo.blogspot.com/2008/08/project-x-presents-4.html

This sounds really quite fascinating – so if you like your alternative music and fancy some stimulation of several senses at once (maybe more if you drink alcohol!) then trip along to BUSK tomorrow evening. Smashing.

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