Monthly Archive for November, 2009

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Birmingham City Council to be be part of a young people’s steering group for the City Of Culture bid for 2013. I was really quite pleasantly surprised and happy to be asked, though essentially it is a bit of free work consultation to see what young people want from the city.

At first it involved a group of us meeting to discuss what we like about our city, but moreso to try and identify things that related to these three categories:

Culture on Your Doorstep – exciting cultural activities delivered outside of the City Centre (including local streets and parks)

Next Generation – small and large scale cultural projects and programmes of work led by children, young people and young adults (to include personal and professional development opportunities, mentoring and shadowing)

A Great International City of the Future – cultural projects which celebrate our past, present and future and raise the profile of Birmingham internationally (including creating large scale works of art in and around the City and a potential Autumn Festival).

Now they’re looking to the wider, under-25′s audience for their opinion. There is a three-page questionnaire that young ‘uns can fill out, but more interestingly I think it’d be better to get involved in the discussion on the Facebook Group (liek wot all da cool kids iz doin)

Interestingly enough, even though it asks for people under 25 to contribute, Martin Mullaney has gotten involved in the discussion. Errr, thanks!

Answers on a post card by 4th December!

Last Thursday I gave a short presentation at Eastside Projects about fizzPOP. There were a few presentations on the night, all of which focussed on what artists have been up to since their studies. Although I’ve been out of university since July 2007 fizzPOP has really been my main activity since then.

Photo by Nikki Pugh

What’s interesting about fizzPOP is that in many ways it relates to one of the aims of artists/art groups, which is to be part of/build a community and acquire their own space or studio where they can explore their practice.

Although fizzPOP did start off as being nomadic and taking place in pubs, bars and even around people’s houses we’re now in the much more fortunate position of being hosted by Friction Arts. Whilst not all hackerspaces would consider this an ideal situation what it does is give us that all important space for us to hold our activities and a central place for the community to meet.

From conversations with other artistic friends I’ve heard that one of the potential hazards of forming a collective in order to acquire space is finding committed people who are willing to put money and time into making the space viable. fizzPOP is no different. Regardless of the current economic climate there will always be problems in finding enough people to pay the rent, heating and electricity bills! However, the fizzPOP Howduino on Saturday proved that there is a community and interest in things like this.

We had a wide variety of people attend, some of whom knew very little about technology.

Some may consider making lights blink or generating random noise to be simple tasks, but for a beginner it opens a door to a whole new approach to their work. Being able to build a device from scratch or knowing how one works bring massive benefits to anyone.

You can read my slides below. There’s lots of stuff, including credits, in the notes.