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…
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!
Everyone knows that the Irish have an extremely enviable literary history. But what do most know of the details? Can you quote any Brendan Behan? Apart from having nothing to declare from his genius what else did Oscar Wilde have to say? Was Ulysses a sea-faring Sinbad type character?
This year the St Patrick’s Festival aims to provide an easy introduction to such matters by hosting it’s inaugural Literary Festival. Members of the community will be reciting some favourite Irish poems and prose and providing a little insight into a treasure trove that has remained in a darkened room for many of us.
This free event is due to take place at The Old Crown Inn on Tuesday March 16th at 7pm. If you’d like to get involved, why not come along to The Spotted Dog at 6pm next Tues 23rd Feb to chat event plans in the building with fellow literary souls?
The Birmingham St. Patrick’s Festival Committee are holding a community meeting at the Irish Centre on Thursday 4th February at 7pm in order to discuss all their plans for this year’s Birmingham St Patrick’s Festival and Parade, which this year is on the weekend of 13th March. This is your opportunity to meet with the committee, make your own festival suggestions and share ideas!
The Birmingham St Patrick’s Festival is the biggest community event in the city, and we really depend on community feedback/involvement to ensure we can curate a great festival. Please make every effort to attend and encourage others to do so.
One part of the St Patrick’s Festival I did manage to make was this presentation by Ultan Cowley, bringing to life the world of the 20th century Irish navvy. Here’s some blurry highlights. It was insightful stuff that rang true for a lot of the many people there, some stories were quite sweet and touching but a lot shed light on what was a life of back-breaking hard work.
THIS WAS A SECRET WORLD OF ‘TUNNEL TIGERS’, ‘HEAVY DIGGERS’, AND ‘MCALPINE’S FUSILIERS’; OF ‘HEN HOUSES’, ‘COCK LODGERS’, AND ‘THE LANDLADIES’ BREAKFAST’; OF ‘PINCHER KIDDIES’, ‘LONG DISTANCE MEN’, AND ‘SHACKLING UP’; OF ‘DEAD MEN’, ‘WALKING PELTERS’, AND ‘MURPHY’S VOLUNTEERS’; OF ‘THE SHAMROCK’, ‘THE GALTYMORE’, ‘THE BUFFALO’ AND ‘THE CROWN’; OF EXILE AND ISOLATION AND LONELINESS AND DESPAIR.
As you know, I pretty much missed out on the weekend, but thanks to the internet I get to see what happened all the same. I get to see pictures of pretty Irish dancers by Very Quiet via Created in Birmingham:
And I get to see the parade on YouTube.
The crowd awaits expectantly and here it comes! St Patrick on a bus:
St Patrick ditches his bus for a tractor:
How do the dancing girls curl their hair like that?:
Possibly the most bored looking carnival queens I’ve ever seen:
The idiot, bum-baring element, and probably the reason for the street drinking ban the Big Cat Group were so disappointed with. The Doyenne of Digbeth is not impressed with the King of Stourbridge:
These guys were probably some of the people who made Digbeth High street look like a zombie film set later that night. It was like 28 Days Later, with the infected blindly chasing after taxis.
Also check out Midge Diabolik’s Flickr set of the St PatROCKS stage on Bradford Street, which has some photos of The Destroyers in full force.
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.
YouTube – St Patrick’s Day Parade Preview – I did a serious double-take on Tuesday when I saw St Patrick walk through the Custard Factory’s reception. Seems this is what it was all about.
The 
