Artsfest is this weekend in Birmingham. I’d never noticed it in previous years which was, in retrospect, somewhat foolish of me. Given that the Birmingham Flickrmeets group is officially photographing the event (photos will go here) this year I’ve naturally been somewhat more attentive and By The Gods there’s a lot on! The program, which you can pick up in town, runs to 60-odd pages and it’s jammed full of events covering an absurd gamut of mediums, styles and genres. I’ll be there for all of it from Bangrafest on Friday night to the post-event Flickrmeet on Sunday evening.
I can’t begin to recommend most of it as there’s so much to get my head around but there are a few live music events I’d like to point you towards. In Chamberlain Square (the steps outside the Library) you can catch post-rock noisesmiths MotherTrucker at 1pm on Saturday, which should be wonderfully context-warping. A little later at 4pm in the same place I can also recommend The Devil And Casey Jones who are a lot of fun in fucking mental kinda way. Actually most of the bands on that stage should be good. On Sunday in Centenary Square (outside Symphony Hall) I’d urge you to witness The Destroyers at 2.30pm who, quite frankly, kick monstrous ass with their 16-piece gypsy-folk-esque extravaganza.
On Saturday, over in the-area-now-known-as-Eastside, Capsule and 7 Inch Cinema have gotten the keys to the old Curzon Street Station.
Sorry that needs an emphasis.
They’ve got access to THIS BUILDING:
Which alone is fantastic but they’re also putting on loads of interesting stuff inside including the aforementioned Destroyers playing along to “traveling film shows” from the 1900s and Modified Toy Orchestra member Mike In Mono doing what I believe the kids call “a set”. Details of Platform 9 are here (and worth printing out as it’s not in the booklet.)
Above all, all of the stuff this weekend is free. That’s free as in no-strings free. God bless socialism!
Now if you’ll excuse me I need to finish work on TTV Contraption 2.0 (shorter, sturdier, more productive). There’s a bit of a light-leak in my top-camera slot.
Glad to see Curzon St Station is being put to a good use – a fine building with nothing much of any interest surrounding it. When I was working for the Council over Christmas, there was talk of it possibly being used as part of the development of the new City Library – any news on that front?
Regarding the library, the last I heard (second hand, gossip, etc) was that the funding for the Big Library Move had got all messy and fucked and it wasn’t going to happen for ages, but that was a while back and things move so very fast in Birmingham these days, especially with regards to redevelopment.
So I don’t know.
Curzon Street Station was actually acquired by the Royal College of Organists a year or two ago, as I recall. Though currently they’ve got their archives in Millennium Point, or some such. Let me try some Googling…
http://www.rco.org.uk/news_displaystory.php?newsid=28
Hmm, I am not sure about tea cloth’s latest comment as wikipedia says (somewhere) that the funding fell soft by £1 million. Don’t worry, though it’s Grade I listed so it cannot come to any harm and will be put to good use eventually.
As an aside, they managed to destroy it’s big brother, Euston Station, in the 1960s and there is no way Curzon Street can be allowed to disappear. It’s the only remaining relic of the first real inter city railway, the London & Birmingham Railway.
Oh, unfortunate – that’s what you get for high-speed Googling, I’m afraid!
There’s a press release on the City Council web site that says the new library building will be between Baskerville House and the Rep.
If you happen to be in the Central Library, there’s an exhibition about the merits of the present building on the first floor. It’s a great example of twentieth-century design, so they say. The Twentieth Century Society is campaigning to preserve it.
There was talk of the library being on a split site though – the main bit between Baskerville House and The REP, and the archives section down in the “Learning Quarter” in Eastside, potentially in Curzon St Station. I’m fairly sure that the Royal College of Organists have some claim on it but aren’t actually using it at present, for whatever reason.
It’s probably worth noting in this thread that Curzon Street Station is surprisingly small inside, especially as it mainly consists of a big central staircase. The actual rooms are teeny.
Odd, but an understandable misconception given the scale of the front.