The busy Digbeth March hare: St Patrick’s Festival and We Are Eastside

Written by Nicky Getgood on Monday, March 8th, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: 7 Inch Cinema, ben waddington, Capsule, curtain show, Eastside Projects, flatpack festival, Ikon Eastside, irishcentre, John Kiernan, John McNicholl, katrice horsley, laterna magicka, lombard method, nlp theatre, rhubarb east, south birmingham college, stannes, stpatricksfestival, The Old Crown, the paragon, TheRainbow, Vivid, we are eastside

St Patrick's Parade 2009 by Vince Thompson

Digbeth is set to get brilliantly busy this month with the impending St Patrick’s Festival weekend, closely followed by the launch of We Are Eastside, which will coincide with 7 Inch Cinema’s Flatpack Film Festival.

St Patrick’s Festival Birmingham

St Patrick's Day Parade 2009 by Vince Thompson

This coming weekend sees the famous St Patrick’s Festival.  The fun kicks off with a Festival Launch Party at The Irish Centre on Friday night, ‘a free evening of entertainment, dancing and a buffet’.  To request tickets for the event email stpatricksbirmingham@gmail.com.

A Saturday of The Reel around The Bullring leads into the big Sunday parade, which starts with Mass at St Anne’s Church before the street parade and dancing around the St PatROCKs stage in South Birmingham College.

Post-weekend, the celebrations take a cultural turn with Irish film, literature and theatre events.  NLP Theatre perform Singin` I’m No a Billy, He’s a Tim on Monday 15th March in The Paragon Hotel.  On Tuesday 16th March you have a choice between an Irish Film Night at The Spotted Dog or a St Patrick’s Literary Festival at The Old Crown Inn.  On St Patrick’s Day, Weds 17th March, Irish Storyteller Katrice Horsley will be weaving her magic at The Irish Centre, as will musicians John McNicholl and John Kiernan.  Rather amazingly, all of these events are free.

We Are Eastside

Friction Arts' The Edge - part of We Are Eastside

Once you’ve recovered from the St Patrick’s festivities you’ve a little time to pause for breath before the launch of We Are Eastside on 27th March, ‘an online and printed guide to the artists, collectives, promoters and spaces helping to transform Birmingham’s industrial heartland into a thriving creative playground’.  The weekend will be jam-packed, with the Flatpack Festival being joined by local arts organisations showcasing their wares.

On Friday there’s a Curtain Show at Eastside Projects whilst The Lombard Method goes all Cinematic on us.  I personally will be striving to catch Monuments at Ikon Eastside and mischievous audio-visual antics Synth Eastwood: Fast Forward at The Rainbow Warehouse.

Supersonic 2009 - Capsule are leading We Are Eastside and I get to post a picture of someone's bum

Saturday promises to be rather magical, with the new Rhubarb East gallery opening with The Uses of Enchantment, ‘inspired by fables and fairy stories, nostalgia and psychology’ and Laterna Magicka at Ikon Eastside, which later hosts the new concert film Burning, featuring Mogwai.  VIVID will be providing the late-night space to let your hair down, with an Eastside Plasticine Party of ‘Psychedelic claymation’ by Bruce Bickford, which I think I’ll need to see to understand.

If you’re still standing on Sunday there’s plenty going on, with Paul Sharit’s 70’s Flicker films at Ikon Eastside and Belbury Youth Club’s evening of haunted audio and creepy telly at VIVID. I love a good scare…

Try to catch one of Ben Waddington’s 90-minute weekend walking tours, ‘which will explore tradition, design and pyschogeography’.  Ben gives bloody good tours so I’ll be aiming to make this one.  Email admin@capsule.org.uk if it tickles your fancy.

So there we have it – we can finally see an end to the long, bitter winter and taste spring in the air, with lashings of Guinness and culture in equal measure.  Swap your winter coat for a fetching emerald green number and enjoy!

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Birmingham Post Supplement – Digbeth: Soul of the City

Written by Nicky Getgood on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: big city plan, birmingham coach station, Birmingham Post, digital district, Fazeley Studios, shameless self promotion, south birmingham college, The Bond

If you buy a copy of this week’s Birmingham Post you’ll find inside a supplement all about Digbeth: Soul of the City, with articles about that Big City Plan, Digital District things and places like South Birmingham College, The Bond, Fazeley Studios and the new Birmingham Coach Station.  You’ll find some spectacular photos from yesteryear on pages 4 and 5 and on page 16 there’s an article by yours truly, all about a few if my favourite Digbeth things.  In a newsagent near you until Wednesday.

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Organic Eastside: regeneration by maniacs

Written by Nicky Getgood on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 ( Start discussion )
Tags: bennie gray, big city plan, Custard Factory, digbeth business association, horton project, jonathan bore, made, organiceastide, rescue geography, richard tregrouse, south birmingham college

So Bennie Gray’s been in the paper saying Birmingham needs a few more Custard Factories.  George Ferguson, who spoke at the Organic Eastside seminar held by MADE* and Digbeth Business Association in South Birmingham College last night, would heartilly agree.  He feels that creative hubs are part of a pattern that make up ‘complex cities’.

George’s philosophy of looking beyond architecture in regeneration, planing change and bringing the best out of places rather than rebuilding, went down a storm.

He had a very interesting take on the credit crunch, that it may actually be a blessing in disguise.  It’ll stop the building of blinkered, one-use projects in their tracks for a start.  It could instead leave room for ’slow architecture’ of more flexible, mixed-use buildings, which develop organically over time, adapting to economic and environmental change as they grow.

George later said that we need to ‘identify the maniacs’ who’ll make exciting places by sympathetically utilising their environments rather than flattening and rebuilding them.  Bennie Gray is one such maniac, and Birmingham is blessed to have him.

Jonathan Bore’s less popular presentation of the Big City Plan wasn’t exactly new information – expand the concrete collar in building a bigger and better city centre.  Some felt he had too many questions (for which he’s had the time to find answers) rather than solutions and others felt the means being used to achieve the goal were questionable, with talk of areas such as Highgate undergoing ’social cleansing’.

Other highlights were the Rescue Geography presentation, Richard Trengrouse’s Digbeth wisdom and the presence of the men behind the planned Horton Project opposite Selfridges – a ‘city within a city’ that will transform Digbeth Cold Storage and surrounding buildings.  Let’s hope they move those bus stops, which are as restrictive as that concrete collar, whilst they’re at it.

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