BXL are offering free desk space in a fully networked office, along with access to a vast database of schools and businesses in Birmingham and Solihull.

What’s that? Nothing comes for free? Okay, in return for your free space you also have to commit to giving up a bit of your time, by sharing your expertise to support BXL’s work in schools, which to be fair, is still a good deal.

If this sounds intriguing, they’re open to suggestions and ideas of how their work can work together with others, so get in touch with Chris Bishop at chris.bishop@bxlworks.org.uk or call on 07919887212

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In the latest Monocle (the monthly with the unhealthy obsession with airport lounges and a design sensibility that Unhappy Hipsters would adore) there’s a look at ‘Rebranding Britain’.

As you’ll see from the slightly grainy pic above, there’s no mention of Birmingham (although they found twelve other cities worth naming), just a pointer in the general direction of the midlands and the suggestion:

Failing towns should be abandoned

Oof.

Ta to Johnny Cullen for pointing that one out.

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DanceXchange have announced their Autumn 2010 performance season, which starts from 30 September at The Patrick Centre, Birmingham Hippodrome.

• Thu 30 Sep: The Featherstonehaughs – Edits. This highly anticipated new work translates the convention of film, photography and painting into dance.
• Fri 1 Oct: The Featherstonehaughs – The Featherstonehaughs draw on the sketchbook of Egon Schiele. A classic piece created in 1998, which brings the tormented and stunning artistic vision of Egon Schiele to life.
• Thu 14 Oct: New Art Club – This is Now. Britian’s funniest dance duo, jump into the dark pool of yesteryear, as their ‘delightfully silly’ show deconstructs the first ever ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’.
• Sat 6 Nov: Tavaziva Dance – Wild Dog. These high-octane performers capture the beauty and elegance of one of Africa’s most endangered species against a mind-blowing soundtrack by award-winning Bawren Tavaziva.
• Thu 11 Nov: Eddie Ladd – Ras Goffa Bobby Sands / The Bobby Sands Memorial Race. This solo dance piece is performed on a 12ft x 6ft running machine, following the life of Bobby Sands, who dies on hunger strike in the H Blocks, Belfast in 1981.

Tickets can be bought online at www.dancexchange.org.uk or by calling 0844 338 5000.

If you’ve not yet signed up to CiBmail – our weekly email stuffed with news and upcoming events – then jump on it, we’ll have a competition giving away danceXchange tickets soon.

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A couple of weeks back Will Perrin put some thoughts down, responding to government plans to encourage the development of up to twenty new local TV stations by 2015. The general gist of his post (although I’d encourage you to read it) was that there’s no need, it won’t work and, besides, the web would do the job better.

Nick Booth has built on this and claims that Birmingham’s informal, fledgling network of local, mainly volunteer-led news websites shows that people are already delivering the kind of activity Jeremy Hunt says he wants to encourage using TV stations (see Nick’s post for details).

My generally unconsidered view on this is that establishing a local TV station wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing – if someone (and I think City TV are still looking to get involved) can make the finances stack up and run something that doesn’t depend on handouts then great. It just doesn’t seem to be a particularly forward-thinking thing to spend public cash on.

If money/time/effort/attention/whatever is going to be spent on local media, I’d rather it was spent on getting people using the web and using it better – helping them access local information and publishing it themselves. There’s no reason video can’t be part of that – see I Am Birmingham for an example of someone using a website with a free template and a YouTube account to do regular-ish video content.

Also in the web’s favour – costs and barriers to entry are lower and the skills required are more readily transferrable. It’s also relevant to the government’s current strategy of closing down public services and replacing them with websites (Jobcentre Plus, Business Link and so on).

The whole ‘more TV by 2015′ thing bothers me too. 2015 is five years off. Bear in mid that YouTube is only five years old and you get a sense of  how much things could change in the intervening years.

Anyway, I feel I’m starting to edge slightly further away from CiB-land now. If you want to get involved in the debate then see what people are saying on Will and Nick‘s posts.

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Following the one-off live event back in January before part of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre was demolished, Soul City Arts in association with mac and The REP presents Mohammed Ali’s Writing On The Wall – The Documentary.

Taking place 3 September, 4-7pm at the mac, the event will screen the documentary, plus live performances and a Q&A session with Writing On The Wall artists: Mohammed Ali, Zena Edwards, Amir Sulaiman, Dreadlock Alien and Jonzi-D.

Pete Ashton will also be on hand, chairing a panel discussion on the topic of ‘Creative collaboration – the way forward for cross-cultural arts and public engagement in B’ham?’

Take a peek at the documentary trailer, which we posted up a few weeks ago.

Tickets can be booked at www.macarts.co.uk, and are £5 / £3 concessions. This also gives you entry to a bonus event the following day: In Conversation with Amir Sulaiman & Performance, at The Hubb.

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Outside IN is a pioneering project which promotes the visual art work of leading disabled and deaf artists. The New Art Gallery Walsall has been chosen to launch this new venture on Thursday 16 September.

DASH‘s Artistic Director Mike Layward introduces you to this ground-breaking concept, the galleries, the artists and their work. We then hand you over to internationally renowned performance artist Bobby Baker (author of recently published book Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me) as she strikes up an unmissable conversation with The New Art Gallery Walsall’s resident artist, Sean Burn.

The launch will be open to the public from 1-4pm, and if the art isn’t enough to tempt you down, there will also be games of marbles, activities, artist talks, plus nibbles – great!

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The Photography Collective and Birmingham Photospace have teamed up in association with Rhubarb Rhubarb, to bring us Contact. From 3-18 September the Rhubarb East Gallery will play host to a collection of seven emerging photographers working in the West Midlands.

Curated by Kathryn Kliszat from Light House, exhibiting artists are gwbenson, Ian & Mark James (Jimmy Photo), Hannah Rumsby, Jo Hallington, Jasroop Grewal, Rita Fletcher and Matt Murtagh.

The variety of styles and formats challenges the viewer to consider how contact is made between objects both animate and inanimate, between the past and present, between analogue and digital and between photographer and subject.

The exhibition will be open Thursday – Sunday, 11.00am – 5.30pm, and there will also be an Artists’ Talk on Thursday 9 September, at 6.30pm, allowing members of the public to meet the photographers and discuss the stories behind these powerful images.

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I linked to Switchboard a couple of weeks back in one of those round-ups. It’s billed as:

a steering group which aims to put the West Midlands at the forefront of the convergence revolution

To kick things off, they’ve put together a survey to see what sort of support people and companies in the creative sector might need.

The survey is online here and is only a quick one-pager. Fill it in by 17 September and you’ll be included in a draw to win a bottle of champagne.

For what it’s worth, I’m sitting on the steering group and, although it’s early days, I’m of the opinion that this could be a Useful Thing.

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When I was 17, a considerable time ago, I wrote a short story which I was very proud of and equally pleased with. It consisted of just a handful of sentences/paragraphs, but “artistically” it was personally satisfying. I have always remembered this story in great detail, and in many ways consider it as the most authentic thing I have ever created

Paul Busst, thanks to some friendly coercion via Facebook, is now planning to make that story into a short film. The 43RPM Productions blog is:

A record of making a short film with no previous experience

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