Category archive for: Uncategorized

Liquid Architecture by Garry Corbett

Arts All Over The Place 2008 is “a celebration of Arts and mental health. This year we are looking to expand AAOTP to even more public venues giving people who have experienced mental health problems a chance to participate, exhibit and perform in artistic activities.”

Events are happening all over the place, as shown on the flyer, and a significant part is happening at the Custard Factory with a festival of the arts and mental health running from Friday 4th to Wednesday 9th July featuring…

Daily art workshops for you to participate in, music and drama events, drumming workshop, Working Arts Group open session, printmaking, music, an installation of an Anthony Gormley-esque style mass of clay figures and much more!

For details contact Emma on 0121 678 2700. Info via Created in Birmingham.

The sun is out and the photographers are slowly coming back to Digbeth with the seedy corners of the Custard Factory attracting them like bears to honey. Sarah, aka lomolibertine on Flickr, has posted up a few shots taken with cheap and crappy cameras (known as Trashcams in the trade) taken around the site, specifically the car park next to Devonshire House. Like many I’ll miss the chaos of that place when it’s all tarted up next year.

Anyway, here’s a couple I like from her set:

And I couldn’t resist this action-cam shot of the penguin:

If you’re posting photos from around the Custard Factory on Flickr make sure you tag them custardfactory and I’ll find them.

Keeping tabs on Tom Horton’s prodigious flow of gig and club photography is a full time job, and I’m just monitoring the stuff he shoots at the Custard Factory. Here’s his report with photos from Heducation’s DMC Championships at Medicine Bar.

Found on my regular YouTube search - a whole bunch of shaky-cam short videos from Rickydazzle from the Sunday Flea. It’s just him walking around waving a camera at things but it’s nice to see the Flea recorded. Here’s one.

More on his profile page.

Island, the installation at Ikon Eastside by Soi Project, finishes on June 22nd. To say goodbye their educuation team is running a free tour this Friday at 1.30pm. “Experience the island as it gradually shifts from day to night and colonise your own section with stickers of fish, beach umbrellas and boats.”

After the farce last year with the council and the Bull Ring fighting to see who could put the most sand in the city centre one might be skeptical about urban beaches in Birmingham but I’m liking what I see of The Rainbow’s efforts in this department. Making use of the railway arches of Digbeth seems to be a theme right now and they’ve turned the smoking area by their warehouse venue into a covered sandy spot that, judging by these photos from Midge, looks rather keen.

And more importantly there’s no budget airline sponsorship or Heart FM DJs. The beach runs throughout the summer from 5pm and is on Adderley St a couple of minutes east of the Custard Factory. Here’s the flyer.

James Knight’s Festival Previews for Vice Magazine are on his blog, though they don’t seem to have made it onto the Vice site yet. His entry for Supersonic is rather touching.

The Capsule gang are local Birmingham promoters of good shows who have slowly grown Supersonic from being a well picked all dayer into a raging three day contender for the best festival anywhere ever. Supersonic has the balls to book the kind of bills that the laughably complacent ATP once made their name promoting. This years lineup is no exception. It looks like the kind of bill that a Wire reader would come up with if he was being balled into submission by a burly Terrorizer reader. You get the mathy twiddles of Battles, the komische flourishes of a reformed Harmonia, the lumpen sludge of Erath and Harvey Milk’s first ever UK appearance as well as a whole raft of straight weirdoes like the Fuck Buttons kids, Scotch Egg and Justice Yeldham. All of this before you get to the exclusive screenings our forthcoming Heavy Metal in Baghdad documentary and the fact that you can while away hours in record fairs and lectures when you’re not falling over sideways into that big paddling pool thing from all the cheap Brummie larger and you should basically be getting the message here that Supersonic is not to be missed.

Supersonic 2008 runs over July 11th - 13th at the Custard Factory and weekend tickets are £65. Details here.

Alex Field of Audio Affair, the hifi specialists on Gibb St, was profiled in The Telegraph last week about how he started his business. CF-specific quote follows:

Getting the shop was tricky. “We needed space where we can play music equipment, similar to someone’s living room or lounge.

“It took a while to find somewhere suitable. We looked at office blocks and industrial units,” he says.

“There were issues with soundproofing. It needed to be big enough. We found it in the Custard Factory, where there are a lot of creative businesses. It’s a very buzzy, nice sort of place to be in.”

The space is sufficient for two demo rooms - one for lower-end and the other for higher-end systems.

Photos of their shop taken from their website:

Time to start singing from the same hymsheet is the title of Custard Factory Spaces Created Director Simon Jones’ most recent column for the Birmingham Post that I think is worth reprinting in full, copyright be damned.

If you look with open eyes at our modern metropolises you will see that there is an undeniable relationship between a city’s entertainment culture and how desirable it is to live there. I know there are the occasional nosy-never-noisy neighbours who seem to move into the city centre and then spend the rest of their lives desperately trying to work out a hidden meaning to the term ‘mixed use’, but in general normal members of the public look more favourably on an area if there is a strong and exciting artistic undertow. Now this can be ballet, music, theatre, art or whatever floats your particular cultural vessel, but entertainment is unarguably the life blood to a vibrant city and any area that can boast an eclectic mix of quality artistic activity will find itself automatically short-listed for the estate agent good books.

Birmingham has always been a creative hub and one area we have especially excelled in is music. Not just producing it, but also promoting it and allowing new sounds and styles to be heard with open ears. From sound clashes on Soho Road and Blues parties in Balsall Heath, to punks in the Aston Triangle and dance music exploding in Digbeth in the early nineties, Birmingham has been on the ubiquitous cutting edge of music ever since the gramophone. The only problem is that if you talk to anyone outside of a B postcode the first musical icon they come back with when they think of Birmingham is Ozzy Osbourne. Now there is an element of kudos to this association but times have moved on a lot since The Prince of Darkness was stalking the land and it’s the current culture of music we should be seeking national recognition for.

What does, and deservedly should, make our fair city more attractive to the eyes of the nation are some very independent, very astute and very well-organised music venues and promoters that Birmingham can proudly call its own, and with not one of them having to bite the head off a bat to make an impression. At The Custard Factory Spaces we have grown from a small bar servicing the creative industry’s notorious drinking habits to a large full site venue that has been championing the most innovative new sounds in music. We brought acts like DJ Yoda, Layo & Bushwacka! and Mr Scruff to the city and have continued to push the line ups with acts like Public Enemy and the revered dubstep DJ and producer Benga. Then you have The Rainbow in Digbeth (just a stone’s throw from us in Adderley Street) who have been developing their site over the past few years and are now so respected on the national tour circuit they’re netting gigs from artists such as Mary Anne Hobbs, Daddy Freddy and The Prodigy. Adam Regan who co-owns and books for two of Birmingham’s leading suburban late night ents venues, The Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath and The Bulls Head in Moseley, has been getting the likes of Roy Ayres, Gilles Peterson and The Bees (thanks to DJ Guy Carless) to play very intimate, very special gigs for a very fortunate out-of-town crowd. Birmingham Jazz and Birmingham Conservatoire has spawned The Cobweb Collective who regularly bring the latest jazz and fusion to venues such as The Yardbird in Centenary Square (a very cool Jazz venue in itself and now that Ronnie Scott’s is no longer something this city really needs to champion), The Cross in Moseley and the Corks Club in Bearwood. Whilst stand-alone promoters such as Capsule, who organise the Supersonic and Integra festivals which we hosted at The Custard Factory, and individuals such as Mark Reck, Richard Batsford and Anne Marie Pope, who are behind the Project X Presents promotions, have been bringing some of the most renowned international performers to innovative events in Birmingham. The wealth of independent musical creativity in this city is simply astounding, not just that but its getting bigger and better every year that passes.

I call you all to arms. Go out and spread the word that Birmingham is a city full, literally bubbling over, of exciting music both past and present. We have some incredible promoters in the region and we should be prouder than proud of what goes on within our city walls. So whenever you speak to someone who is ranting and raving about the uber cool warehouse party they went to in Salford or Shoreditch, be sure to mention that you are going out at the weekend to see Soweto Kinch play at a small pub in Digbeth, or you’re off to enjoy a rare DJ set from Soul II Soul founder Jazzie B at a venue in the suburbs, or you’re very excited about the Estelle gig you have been lucky enough to snag a ticket to. Failing that, run your fingers down the listings of any local paper, pull out a name and start boasting. You might not help the first-time buyers looking for the steal of the century from the Birmingham property markets but a bit of well deserved self promotion is something this city could use a little help with. You heard me Brummies, start showing off.

Rich Batsford picks up on this with a post title Encouraging Signs. Just an excerpt this time:

My only addition to the stirring piece would be to emphasize the remarkable quality of our homegrown talent. Whilst Simon is strong on recognising the hard work done by promoters and venues to bring world class talent to Brum to perform, lets also recognise that in fact the majority of the top quality entertainment happening in the City this weekend will be Birmingham based and Birmingham developed.

Our very lack of one homogenised “scene” may have cost us some kudos points in the past - particularly in terms of London based journalists looking for something easy to write about - but that very diversity is our strength and there is a place for everyone in this most fertile of creative genepools.