Craftspace are in residence at the Discovery Pavilion til 1st December, they invite you to add your story to a new artwork in the library celebrating the contribution migration has made to the success of the city. Images by Katja Ogrin.

Craftspace, along with lead-artist Jivan Astfalck, Shelanu: Women’s Craft Collective and MA students from the School of Jewellery are inviting visitors to contribute to an artwork which acknowledges the contribution of migration to Birmingham. Part of the library’s Discovery Season, the project will evolve over a week into a visual metaphor encompassing diverse experiences of migration to Birmingham.

Visitors will be invited to take a moment of reflection to write their experience of coming to, or being in, Birmingham on a piece of paper, in their first language. The paper will then be made into an origami flower which will become part of the ‘Story Meadow’. The stories will be shared on digital screens in the library and through social networking raising awareness of the positive contribution of migration to the city. As the week goes on the Pavilion will become home to a meadow of stories which reflect the diversity of the city.

Key migrant and refugee organisations in Birmingham will be invited to contribute to the artwork and books on migration will also be highlighted by the library for visitors.

Works That Work

This blog post is written by An Endless Supply who present ‘In Conversation with Peter Bilak’ on Friday 6th December at Library of Birmingham, part of Volume.

Works that Work is a new magazine that is something like the ‘National Geographic of design’. Its first two issues have travelled the globe for fascinating stories on far-ranging subjects including international food smugglers, the world’s biggest building, ad hoc chairs, and flies in urinals. Beyond great journalism it’s also thinking out loud about what a magazine can do in the 2010s.

Readers raised £29,000 to put its first issue into production and with the third issue the magazine intends to go ad-free. Works that Work is simultaneously published online and in print and has introduced a new model of ‘social distribution’, that pulls together a network of readers to promote and push the magazine, taking a share of the profits in the process. Reading groups have formed, and it has an exemplary blog, where posts have responded to reader’s feedback on the magazine’s binding, and, in Scritti Politti style, the costs of each issue have been made public.

Peter Bilak, editor of Works that Work, will speak at Volume about the magazine, and be joined by Eleanor Vonne Brown from X Marks the Bökship, to talk about reader relations, co-operatives, and different models of distribution. The talk takes place at Library of Birmingham, Friday 6th December, 3pm, and is free. You can book a place in advance via www.birmingham-box.co.uk
In the meantime you can watch a video of a talk given by Peter earlier in the year in Amsterdam, here:

This blogpost is from Clare Reddington, Director, iShed (Bristol)and REACT Executive Producer. REACT present a day of exploration into the future of book and print on Thursday 5th December. Tickets are only £3 for a Writing for Digital workshop and a panel examining in the opportunities that new technology brings to writing and publishing.

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No one thing can pick up where the book left off; instead it is everything, all of our networks, our services, our devices, the internet plus everything else, which will carry literature forward. James Bridle, Wired Magazine, April 2012

The continuing rise of cheap e-readers and tablets coupled with the prevalence of mobile and wifi networks means it is now easier than ever before to download and read whatever book you would like, whenever you would like to read it. This creates fantastic potential, but as yet the publishing industry hasn’t moved much further than simply aping the paper book in digital form.

Excited by the untapped creative and commercial opportunity of this area,  in January 2013 REACT launched Books & Print Sandbox to invest in new collaborations exploring the digital future of books & print publishing. Over a three month period eight partnerships of academics and creative businesses (and artists, choreographers, technologists, gamers, writers…) developed new product ideas to push at the edges of the possible and gather experience, insight and evidence in search of new commercial potential.

From the Secret Lives of Books, a beautiful interactive platform that visualizes the unexploited data of public libraries and bookshops, to ‘these pages fall like ash’, a digital-physical hybrid created where readers explore a city to discover (and write) the story, narrative remained very much at the projects’ heart, blending form and function to create entirely new types of book experience.

With opportunities to try stuff out, participate in a Books & Print workshop and hear about the projects, the event at The Library of Birmingham in December gives us a welcome opportunity to drop back in with the teams, eight months after the official end of their R&D period. Now in the process of taking their products to audiences, readers and customers, the project teams will tell their stories, reflect on the results and share insight with others seeking to create future book projects of their own.

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Thursday 5th December 1pm- 5pm. Tickets for the panel and workshop are £3 via www.birmingham-box.co.uk
The panel will be made up of Clare Reddington, Director of the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol, with Dave Addey, Managing Director of leading app development studio Agant; Tom Abba, lecturer in narrative theory at UWE, Bristol and member of artist collective Circumstance; Charlotte Quickenden, Managing Director of digital agency Bow Software; Laura Kriefman, Founder and Choreographer with innovative dance company Guerilla Dance Project.

Ticket holders for the Bill Drummond keynote event can access this afternoon event for free, please contact [email protected] with VOLUME in the subject line for more details.

Birmingham’s Pram craft fairytales from concrete reality. The second city’s spin cycle of perpetual renovation, from the slum clearances to its current cosmetic upgrade, is etched in Pram’s restless groove, an endearing and gently refusenik mix encircling early Rough Trade innovators The Raincoats, astro jazz, sci-fi soundtracks, creepy Victoriana, tropical analogue and tumbledown funk.

You can see Pram perform at the Library of Birmingham on Sunday 24th November, supporting the Adrian Utley Guitar Orchestra’s interpretation of Terry Riley’s ‘In C’. It’s the last show in our Discover New Music series for the opening season of the library – so don’t miss out!

Tickets are available via www.birmingham-box.co.uk

An extended residency in our Pavilion series, the Library of Lost Books is here til 24th November. The project was the brainchild of Birmingham based artist Susan Kruse in 2011 as a way to celebrate the move from the old Central library to the new Library of Birmingham in 2013. She assembled a collection of the library’s unwanted, damaged books and sent them to more than 40 artists and printmakers from around the UK to re-work, breathing new life into them through their interactions and interventions. Because many of the books are old, or obscure, this was a unique opportunity for artists to work with books, manuscripts, papers, typefaces and bindings that they might not otherwise have an opportunity so to do. www.thelibraryoflostbooks.blogspot.co.uk

Images by Katja Ogrin.

Library of Lost Books is accompanied by a three day conference, Resurrecting The Book 15-17 November.

Sunday 24th November at Library of Birmingham
Adrian Utley Guitar Orchestra – Terry Riley’s ‘In C’ + Pram

Adrian Utley (Portishead) brings together an orchestra of electric guitar players to interpret Terry Riley’s ‘In C’. Written in 1964 and perhaps one of the most influential pieces of music from the 20^th Century, one that established minimalism as a music genre, In C’s simple musical rules – 53 musical phrases in C and no duration – allow for infinite variations. Utley’s impressive Guitar Orchestra is augmented by percussion and organs making for a vintage and mesmeric sound. The effect is an organic musical experience very much created in front of the audience both fragile and thunderingly uplifting.

We have recruited a number of extra players for this performance to make it truly unique, including members of Mugstar and Sunday Mourning.

Birmingham’s Pram craft fairytales from concrete reality. The second city’s spin cycle of perpetual renovation, from the slum clearances to its current cosmetic upgrade, is etched in Pram’s restless groove, an endearing and gently refusenik mix encircling early Rough Trade innovators The Raincoats, astro jazz, sci-fi soundtracks, creepy Victoriana, tropical analogue and tumbledown funk.
www.myspace.com/pushthepram

Book tickets now via www.birmingham-box.co.uk

Charlemagne Palestine and Rhys Chatham first met in the late 60’s in New York and last Saturday saw the two giants in modern composition collaborate for the first time in 30 years.

Their performance gave us an insight into 2 performers who respect and admire each other and even featured some audience participation. Their onstage banter was one of old friends enjoying themselves.

The evening began with a captivating performance by Ex Easter Island Head in their large guitar ensemble guise. 12 guitarists (plus 1 drummer) played adapted guitars that created a joyous cacophony of repeated phrases and harmonics.

All images

by Katja Ogrin

Last week was a fantastic week for the Discovery season with both Bring To Light and Box Of Light providing weird and wonderful sounds and visuals throughout the library, including a magnificent residency from Film Ficciones where artist Scott Johnson explored early techniques of creating moving image.

Girls Who Draw in the Pavilion. Photo by Gush Sohal.

For half term week Girls Who Draw are in residency with their Museum of Mythical Creatures. The museum is a collection of magical characters, fabulous beasts and imaginary beings inspired by myths, legends and folklore from around the world. Created by illustrators Girls Who Draw, they have painted, printed, cut, drawn and even sewn an array of imaginative artwork, done wall murals from scratch and unusual objects to inspire, intrigue and entertain visitors of all ages. Over the last few years Girls Who Draw has evolved from a small group into a larger network including both emerging and established illustrators.

Rhys Chatham

And this Saturday, a magnificent show in the Library of Birmingham Studio Theatre sees two giants of contemporary composition perform a UK exclusive collaboration. Rhys Chatham and Charlemagne Palestine first met in the late 60s in New York, at the end of 2012, they decided to revisit their collaboration. Support comes from Ex Easter Island Head’s large guitar ensemble, utilising an ensemble of experienced local musicians the piece sees an ensemble of guitarists playing modified ‘third bridge’ guitars from a unique graphic score to create a unique shimmering soundworld, rich in heavenly drones, overtones and repetition.

Tickets are available via www.birmingham-box.co.uk