Paradise Circus

Rage Arts invite you to view the online premiere of Out of Our Grieving taking place on Monday 5th July between 9.30pm & 10pm GMT +1hr.  The film, created as part of their Urban Film Club activities, highlights the difficult subject matter of gun culture and gangs and is worthy of a look. There’s more information over at their Posterous site.

The Urban Film club was setup by the charity Rage Arts to give young people skills to help them take the next step in their lives. They’re really passionate about celebrating the achievements of the young people they’ve been working with, so please catch the online premiere if you can.

The next Brumbloggers will be on Tuesday 13^th July, meeting at The Flapper & Firkin (Kingston Row, City Centre) from 6pm until we all fall over or into the canal. To mix things up a bit, serial lunatic Danny Smith will be running the second Art is Easy evening to coincide with the meetup, so you are presented with the tantalising choice of drink and banter, or drink, draw and banter. I’ll let Danny explain what exactly Art is Easy is:

“I try and show everyone that drawing is a skill that can be taught. We drink, the better amongst us help the ones less able, we draw, we laugh, and I try not to stab anyone with my lovely sharp stabby stabby mechanical pencil.”

Fair enough. Fear not, I’ll be there to supervise him. Or restrain him.

We’ve had a show of interest already for this, so for those who have expressed an interest, please show your face and bring a pencil (HB or 2B), a hardback sketchbook (not essential but you will find it easier) and an eraser. If you haven’t already expressed an interest, this is not a problem – if you fancy a go at this just bring some kit with you on the evening. We’ll kick the drawing bit off from about 7.30ish. Prepare for an odd or disturbing still life composition to draw because, let’s face it, this is Danny we’re talking about after all.

If you’d rather poke your eyes out with blunt spoons than draw, that’s absolutely fine because, as with all the blogmeets, you can just tuck into a selection of exquisitely boozy liquids you’ll be able to purchase if you talk nicely to the bar staff.

See here for a shiny map to lead you to our lair.

This is a public service announcement on behalf of a Birmingham Hackerspace:

There’s been a lot of discussion about a London Hacklab forming, and us in Birmingham are jumping on the bandwagon. We’d like to get as many people together to talk about what we could do, to bring a hacklab/openspace/hackerspace to Birmingham.

“A hackerspace or hackspace (from Hacker and Space) is a real (as opposed to virtual) place where people with common interests, usually in science, technology, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and collaborate.” – WIkipedia

This will hopefully be a place where people can explore technology, blog about their surroundings, meet and organise themselves. Even though it is usually geek based, more interesting, and innovative things will happen the more people use it.

We have the pre-requisite mailing list.

We are probably going to be meeing at The Bull in Birmingham City centre. (Geek friendly, with wifi)

Although this maybe subject to change, so sign up to the mailing list to keep up to date.

To arrange a time a meet-o-matic form has been set up. So please put in the times that are best for you. PM = 6pm-10pm.

Please tell your friends about this, blog about it, twitter it. At the moment we just need to build up interest and people that want to actually *do* something. The more people we tell, the more likely we
are to find those that we need to get his off the ground.

Just a quick post on returning home from the second free Social Media Surgery that we held for Birmingham’s voluntary organisations at the BVSC in Digbeth. As with the first event, tonight’s event was very popular and we hope everyone went home with some practical ideas and the confidence to try them out. We look forward to online activity from organisations including City Centre Neighbourhood Forum, Perry Barr Multifaith Network, the Get Walking Keep Walking project and Digbeth Trust to name but a few.

I’m sure more details will emerge over the next few days about what was achieved (please link to any further info in the comments), but for now, I’d like to say thanks to the following ‘surgeons’ for giving up their free time to offer advice to some worthy local voluntary organisations:

• Robert Annable
• Pete Ashton
• Nick Booth
• Jon Bounds
• Joanna Geary
• Nicky Getgood
• Stef Lewandowski
• John Mostyn
• Henry Mostyn
• Phil Oakley
• Stuart Parker
• Antonio Roberts
• Chris Unitt
• Ben Whitehouse
• Gavin Wray