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:
Last night Boxxed opened the doors to its new home of The Wild Building on Floodgate Street, which has formerly hosted the Flatpack Festival and Jibbering Art, amongst others. I’ll let Boxxed’s About page do the introductions:
boxxed has been created to provide a unique and meaningful programme of arts exhibitions and music events, alongside providing services, space and support to local artists, musicians, creatively minded individuals and collectives.
Alongside that core ideal, the directors of boxxed have partnered with local educational institutions to provide equipment, services, workshops and space to teach their arts & media orientated courses. [The main local educational institution Boxxed are currently partnered with is Birmingham City University.]
Boxxed kicked things off with an art exhibition, courtesy of local lad Chu & Tiger Beer, who are celebrating the New Year of The Tiger with 5 exhibitions across the UK. Chu’s creation is a big box in the middle of the warehouse space, the inside walls painted with red-and-blue outline images best viewed through 3D specs.
Using his own bare hands he’s put together a huge wooden 3D cube inside our warehouse, and after putting on the magic specs, intrepid art goers…will get to see the end result of Chu’s stunning work. He’s composing a piece of art that’s not only in ’special glasses’ 3d, but in physical 3d, melting the edges of his giant wooden box. Genius? We think so.
I’m not sure how long the exhibition is on display for, or what’s in store for Boxxed, so watch their space and call in if you can.
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!
Once again the Flatpack Festival takes over venues across the city with a colourful line-up of film and performance. Highlights at Ikon Eastside include optical illusions from French artist Julien Maire, a retrospective of work by infuential film-maker Takashi Ito, and an investigation into Birmingham’s lively cultural scene during the 1930s with author David Lodge.
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.
