We Are Eastside | Birmingham – Another new local website is live and raring to go! We Are Eastside is ‘your guide to the organisations that host and produce bold new work across film, digital media, crafts, music, visual arts, literature and photography all based in Eastside,’ I suspect the site will be getting particularly busy this month, in the lead up to the fantastic Flatpack Festival, which will inhabit lots of local venues such as Ikon Eastside, VIVID, The Bond and The Rainbow. Tickets for events have just gone on sale and are already selling fast so get in quick!
We Are Eastside has some very useful local information, such as a We Are Eastside map (which I’ll be replacing my old Digbeth arty trail with), and guides to Shopping, Entertainment, Eating Out and Places to Stay. Contributions to the blog are from the local cultural aces that are:
About : Flatpack Festival – A sneak preview peak at the Flatpack fun in store. Digbeth treats include:
WALKING DOWN BRISTOL STREET at Ikon Eastside on Wednesday 24 March, with guests including great Brummie author David Lodge.
Dublin collective SYNTH EASTWOOD: FAST FORWARD ‘present an eye-popping night of audio-visual antics’ on Friday 26 March at the Rainbow Warehouse. YouTube film above for us walkie guys.
JULIEN MAIRE: DEMI-PAS, a ‘Mesmerising performance using modified slide projections’ on Friday 26 to Sat 27 March at Ikon Eastside.
BELBURY YOUTH CLUB give us ‘haunted audio and spooky 70s TV’ on Sunday 28 March at VIVID
More festival details will be coming soon, so be sure to watch their space!
Flatpack Festival is back this year from 23rd- 28th March. As always, we will be treated to a programme of weird and absolutely beautiful films, music and workshops that will take place in venues right across the city. For the fourth Flatpack Festival bus trips, art deco cinemas and optical illusions will be a few of the offerings. I can’t wait!
I can’t wait either as I’ve heard Digbeth features heavily in the Flatpack plans, so like last year we’ll be in for a rather serious treat on our doorstep. If you’d like to give the lovely chaps at Flatpack a hand in making it happen, they’re after volunteers – get in touch and get involved!
With parts pillaged from other projectors, Vancouver-based artist Alex MacKenzie has built his own ingenious hand-cranked device called The Wooden Lightbox. Drawing on ideas and techniques from film’s infancy, he presents an intimate expanded cinema performance to conjure up hidden dream-worlds. By way of a supporting feature 7 Inch Cinema will provide a platter of Canadian 16mm, musical interludes and cake.
Ticket are £2 on the door – a real bargain for a Saturday night of fun, film and cake.
Again, Jibbering used the space brilliantly. You can visit just to admire the great array of art on display, which ranges from the sweet to the scary.
Or you can pick up some pieces to jazz up your home. There’s a sale room of work under £75 for those of you on a budget. As with the Mayday Art Crawl, we had the phenonemmon of the invading bikes riden by incomers to Digbeth.
This is Jibbering’s third art exhibition at the Wild Building on Floodgate Street. As with previous exhibitions the art has escaped the venue and spilled out onto the street.
Line Steppers, following on from Gallery 37 and 7 Inch Cinema’s residencies here, is helping to establish the Wild Building as a versatile local arts venue. So it’s such a pity that landlords The Custard Factory find themselves unable to support it, and build upon their invaluable contribution to Digbeth as a cultural quarter, by letting one of the many interested creative parties take over the lease. Rumour has it they have instead opted to rent it to a car valeting company. This interesting space will be a sad loss to the local creative community.
News March 21st 2009 | – Friction Arts talk about their Flatpack Festival weekend, which consisted of ‘Outersight’ psychedelic psynema on Saturday night and a picnic on Sunday:
…a celebration of the pubs, past and present around Digbeth. The Edge had loads of bar accoutrements in, a cafe serving pub food, darts, bingo, skittles and of course beverages for the punters. There was table service from the ‘Two Dorises’ (Sandra Hall and Mitra Memarzia in performance mode, slightly evil waitresses you would tip to leave you alone) and every variation on the cheese cob you could imagine from the frustrated tea shop owners of Twinkle Jones…
I got given a lovely array of food, and watched pub quizmaster Ben Waddington eat several massive pickled onions whole.
nikki pugh | Blog Archive » visitation – Nikki entertains some visitors by taking them to the Custard Factory and Flatpack Festival in Floodgate Kino to see ‘Knitflicks’:
…I was suddenly struck by the realisation that I was sat in a warehouse with a hundred or so other folk watching films about thread. Excellent! The cake was nice too.
Doesn’t that just say how brilliant Birmingham can be?
Flatpack 2009» Blog Archive » Steet Art and Stitching – Eleanor takes us through her Flatpack Festival Saturday, which she spent a large part of at Floodgate Kino and the Custard Factory Theatre. The jammy cow not only got to see David O’Reilly’s Secret Cinema but interview him for Electric Sheep as well. A friend who saw David’s film selection said his choices were downright disturbing, and seeing some of his cartoons I can well believe it. I’ve become a bit of a fan.
I’m writing this from underneath my duvet on the sofa. Seems I’ve got some nasty, minging bug that’s had me out for the count for the last couple of days. The timing, quite frankly, sucks.
So you kids have fun. Don’t go paying me a second thought, whilst you’re enjoying your must-see films, cultural highlights, brilliant live performances and pints of Guinness. Oh no. You go off and enjoy yourselves.
