Fine but show me how the web can solve ‘real’ issues.
There’s a great story over at Pete Ashton’s blog about how his post on the use of street advertising by the Birmingham Rep got a response from the senior staff involved (of both the Rep and the advertising company) and resulted in a solution, an apology and even a donation to charity.
Now the title of this blog post is more to bait comment than suggest that the defacing of a work of art isn’t a ‘real’ issue but I think it might be less of an issue than the systematic decay of the streets where my Mom lives in Alum Rock. I did three things to try to get some movement on this. I wrote to the local councillors for the constituency, I made a request through fixmystreet.com and I blogged about it. The letter got a response to say it was being looked at, the fixmystreet.com request got acknowledged by streatcleansing@birmingham.gov.uk very quickly but with no progress two months later and the blog post got a single comment.
So what’s going on here? How do I work the web in such a way that produces the kind of swift action we saw over the Rep’s adverts?
Birmingham – a cinematic backwater
(Trailer for Synecdoche, New York. I want to see this NOW)
First some nostalgia: I’ve been a Birmingham cinema-goer for a long time. Get me drunk enough and I’ll bore you to within an inch of your life by listing the films I’ve seen in cinemas now long gone. From The Towering Inferno in the upper circle of the ABC New Street to queuing round the block for Jaws at the Beaufort in Washwood Heath and watching Godzilla double-bills with my Mom at Ward End’s Capitol.
At some point in the mid-1980s I discovered ‘arthouse’ cinema. Or rather my brother did and I picked up his interest. The Triangle was our cinema of choice and it did that repertory thing of combining new leftfield film releases with retrospectives and cult movie double bills (I recall a packed 11pm screening of Taxi Driver and Hardcore).
One of the things I discovered as I combined a love of the mainstream with world/independent cinema is that the former would arrive in Brum on the week of release but the latter always tailed behind. I’d be getting excited by reviews of Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice only to realise that it wouldn’t be showing anywhere near here for a week or two or three after its initial release.
The reasons why were partly about the scarcity of prints and the whims of distributors but also to do with the pattern of regional film theatres established by the British Film Institute in the 1960s which effectively overlooked Birmingham as a regional centre for non-mainstream film viewing (see Terry Grimley’s excellent article in The Birmingham Post last year for more context).
This week I note that nothing’s changed. The list of non-London cities showing Charlie Kaufman’s highly-rated new film Synecdoche, New York in the week of its release include: Sheffield, Nottingham, Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool, Newcastle, Norwich, Edinburgh, Glasgow. Birmingham’s not up there. Oh we’ll get it okay – as soon as next week at the superb Electric. But that’s not good enough. I’ve been waiting until next week since the mid-1980s and I’m sick to death of it. It may be just lack of venues and when the MAC is back on stream it’ll all be fine. Or maybe we don’t have the punters, maybe they’re a more eager, cultured lot over in Norwich. If so then let’s get some audience development initiatives underway.
I doubt it somehow – we’ve been seen as a second-run city for cinema for as long as I can remember and I’m really not sure how we can change that perception. Not even publicly subsidised digital distribution has helped. Ideas anyone?
Best Lunchtime Run Ever
View Lunchtime run in a larger map
As I continue to plod my way through Edinburgh Marathon training I’ve taken to doing a bit of running at lunchtimes (now that I at last work somewhere with shower facilities). I thought it worth sharing the route with you as it’s a fantastic, popular, traffic-free run with a few interesting sights along the way.
The start could be from anywhere in the city centre or Jewellery Quarter but, as the map indicates, I start from the B1 building opposite Spring Hill library. I enter the canal near Summer Row and then proceed towards the National Indoor Arena. You could cross here and continue down the Birmingham and Worcester canal but better by far to head up the Birmingham Mainline canal, the M6 motorway of the West Midlands canal system.
I say that because it’s dead straight, very wide and with a towpath on both sides. And it’s full of lunchtime runners. Most just go up and down but I do a loop round the Soho loop. This runs at the back of the prison and then comes out again on the Mainline canal where you can head straight back to base. The straightness of the canal really lends itself to some short sprinting if you’re so inclined. There are several bridges so it’s worth trying to push hard between them and then recover to the next, repeating until you run out of bridges.
In total the run is just over 5 miles. It would make a pleasant enough walk as well. If anyone fancies coming along with me one lunchtime just ask.
Google Street View plus Fixmystreet – a winning combination
For too long now the houses in the street next to where my Mom lives (in Alum Rock, East Birmingham) have been boarded up ready for demolition. Some have gone but others remain. In fact they’ve remained that way for several years now. I don’t actually know what the plans for them are but I seem to recall that subsidence issues meant most of the street had to go.
I’ve been cross about this situation for a long time. These are the streets I grew up in after all – a proud working class neighbourhood, once predominantly Irish, now largely Asian. The gradually neglect of these streets is a disgrace and I wrote a letter to my Mom’s councillors about it a few months ago to little effect (a response from one of them promising to look into it). I pointed out that if this was a more middle-class area the situation simply wouldn’t be tolerated.
I had been meaning to bring my camera along to take some pics but with the beauty of Street View I don’t have to. There’s the whole street in its neglected glory set out for anyone to see. Have a look around. Go to Farndon road as well, that’s the same. Admire the boarded up house that confronts my Mom every time she goes to the shops.
So having grabbed a few stills from Street View I’ve now used them to make a submission to Fix My Street (or rather, Fix My Mom’s Street, that’s a website waiting to happen isn’t it?)
To give my Mom some credit she doesn’t seem too bothered about it. I’m not sure she knows how to cause a fuss but even if she knew I doubt she would. Clearly I’ve developed some kind of middle-class angst about it but if this was your Mom’s street wouldn’t you try to do something? She’s lived in this house since 1967 and she’ll probably stay in it for many years to come so the bottom line is it isn’t something she should have to tolerate. I’ll report back on progress; should there be any…..
Digital Strategy for the West Midlands
I gave a presentation at the LUCID dissemination event today in which I proposed that the region needs to think afresh about setting a strategy for identifying opportunities in the digital economy. I know, sounds grand doesn’t it. The bottom line is that I have to write a short paper for Advantage West Midlands to influence their agenda in this area.
I’ll be writing that paper on a blog platform over at digitalstrategywm.co.uk.
The theme I’m using (the same one they are using for the Digital Britain consultation) allows for comments on each paragraph which I’m hoping will get populated sufficiently so that I can work them into the paper I send back. I’d welcome co-authors as well as commentators although I’ll appreciate it if the thought of writing strategy fills you with dread. The site is looking a bit bare at the moment but I’ll be setting out the sections of the paper very soon so do subscribe to the RSS feed. In the meantime I’ve posted up the presentation that kicks it off both here and on the consultation site.
Hanging about on the wrong side of the curve
Just thought I’d get this down as it’s an issue raised in the meeting I’m sitting in as I type this now:
“Are the city’s creative industries too far on the other side of the social media curve that they’ve forgotten how to engage with everybody else?”
The meeting is generally made up of representatives from businesses (big and small), support agencies, funding agencies and the like. I gave a brief presentation on social media and how the wider business sector might make more use of it (much like the one I gave at Aston Science Park in January).
One of the points made after my bit was that although the Creative sector is well ahead of the game, and ahead of the curve, in taking up social media technologies they’re in danger of cutting themselves off. Specifically, cut off to those seeking to enter the sector. The argument being that creatives have become harder to find and communicate with, particularly to those who lack developed digital literacy skills or indeed access to the internet. It was clear behind the query there was concern about the diversity of the creative sector.
Does this ring true? Or is it actually easier now in that once you’ve found the way in you get opened up to a very wide range of contacts much quicker than previously? Thoughts welcome.
Forever summer on google street view
Google Street View went live today and is tremendous fun. Perhaps the most fun is to be had by zooming in on people in the street and to see the moments that will now be with us until Google decide the time has come to send the camera car out again.
Jon Bounds is asking if there is any ‘odd stuff’ going on but I’m more enamoured by the whole summery feel of the photos and how even in the streets close to my place there are some lovely fleeting moments that will be with us every time someone wants to take a look at Bournville.
Below is a greeting between a couple and a woman that gradually builds to a hug as the google car passses.
And here’s shirtless proof that it really was a hot summer day:
The best park in Birmingham – maybe
It occurs to me that I rarely write about local stuff. Which is a shame really as I live in a fairly pleasant part of Brum – not many people get to live within sniffing distance of a chocolate factory. But as nice as Bournville is, the best park in the area is Cotteridge Park. It has something that Bournville’s other open spaces lack – community.
Friends of Cotteridge Park are the very active group that look after the interests of the park. They were set up to stop the planned de-commissioning of the park for housing in the late 90s. There’s a bit of history on their website (including the fact that apparently during the war the park was used to store barrage balloons) but to give you a flavour of the work they’ve done:
- Redeveloped some derelict land into an orchard
- Hold a fantastic free summer music/arts festival – CoCoMAD (clip of The Destroyers in 2007)
- Organise a Christmas tree recycling point
- Built a fantastic natural amphitheatre in the park for open air concerts
- Lobbied for and got a skate park, new playground equipment and re-surfacing of the dilapidated tennis and basketball courts
- Run a toy bank and volleyball games during the summer
- Do tons of traditional fund-raising with quiz nights etc.,
- Build Wigloos!
And of course they won the battle to save the park in the first place. Their most recent plans are for a funky shelter building.
The park is next to the cross-city rail line between Bournville and Kings Norton and has a good mix of open land and wooded areas, as well as the orchard of course. It’s on a decent slope which, for a runner, makes it good for short hill sprints along the paths but there is a flat area which I think may have been a bowls green at one point but which is now ideal for impromptu five-a-side. The play area is great for most ages and the skate park attracts a good selection of motley teens – all of them unnervingly polite when faced with a six year old trying to do wheelies on her scooter.
It’s a great park – am chuffed to live in walking distance of it.
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Pic: Pete Asthon