Characters from the Festival of the Rea – part of the House of Beorma archive of the city’s lost origins

Six weeks into the Discovery season and we’re getting great feedback on our celebration of the new library. The Discovery Trail is open for you to explore throughout the season. And each week there are one off events and workshops to get involved in.

This week the Outcrowd Collective are in residency. They present the House of Beorma archive, a selection of artefacts from lost local history. Come visit them til Sunday 13th October in the Pavilion, and make your own offerings in honour of Birmingham’s lost customs and festivals.

Reference Works is an exhibition featuring new works by photographers Brian Griffin, Andrew Lacon, Michael Collins and Stuart Whipps. Each artist diplays their creative responses to the new Library of Birmingham, the ‘old’ Central Library building and the build, transition and relocation. Stuart Whipps will be giving a free exhibition tour this Saturday 12th October at 11am.

There’s still time to sign up for the Shangaan Electro dance workshops. Your chance to be part of the South African dance craze that became a youtube sensation – workshops are 1pm or 3pm on Friday 25th October at Dancexchange, Thorp Street. Workshops are totally free, you just need to sign up via [email protected]

Shangaan Electro will also perform as part of the Bring To Light weekend of adventurous music, 25-27 October. The next in the Discover New Music series, this event features the artist Dinos Chapman, roboticist Sarah Angliss, the Brain Pulse Music of Masaki Batoh and many more. Day and weekend tickets are available viawww.theticketsellers.co.uk

Building on their project The Festival of The Rea that took place at Supersonic Festival 2012, The Outcrowd Collective will turn the Pavilion into a museum of fictional and real archival material around ‘Beorma’ the chieftan of the Beormingas clan who are the first known Anglo-Saxon settlers and founders of Birmingham. Drawing on Benjamin Stone’s photographs of rural procession and folk celebrations – held in the Library of Birmingham’s archives – The Outcrowd will also present re-imagined celebrations and rituals to Beorma.

Visit The House of Beorma Archive at Library of Birmingham from Tuesday 8th October til Sunday 13th October.

Festival of the Rea from Lawrence Roper on Vimeo.

dance of the dun cow from Lawrence Roper on Vimeo.

Last week we were at The Joyful Bewilderment exhibition opening at Rough Trade East in London, it was like Birmingham on sea, well not quite but a good percentage of Birminghams’ creative community were either exhibiting their work or had just come down for support – safety in numbers as it were!!! The event was a total success with absolutely loads of folks in attendance, at one point they had to stop the crowds coming in.

Our contribution to this shindig was Einstellung performing in the later part of the evening, the band played a storming set which was well received by all. As you can see from the photo the band had a hoot.

Here is Log, one of the Out Crowd founders and co-curator of the show looking slightly fearful, which is either due to being surrounded by so many ladies or the free dodgy Lidl beer.

French, Marcus, Peplow and Ben, perhaps slightly concerned that the dodgy Lidl beer may run out at some point.

Jenny and I on the other hand were fine, enjoying seeing friends including the lovely Fuck Buttons boys who made a special trip to pop in and see us, surrounded by great art work and the bright lights of London.

And most importantly the art work, which you can read all about on The Joyful Bewilderment blog, and I believe many of the pieces are for sale, so go and check them out.

Some of the brummies exhibiting were Lucy McLauchlan , Rik Cooper, Lee Basford, Stef Grindley, Ben Javens Tsz and Log Roper.

Photos by our very own Jenny Moore

Capsule are proud to be involved with ‘The Joyful Bewilderment…“, a group exhibition showcasing the outpourings of a group of like minded image-makers which will take place at Rough Trade East in London from 2nd October – 27th October. Fundamentally, the artists in the show all share an essential motivation to explore the possibilities of enhancing everyday life by making magic from the mundane. Over 100 artists from all over the world including members of The Outcrowd Collective as well as several other West Midlands inhabitants from LUCY MCLAUCHLAN, RIK COOPER, STEF GRINDLEY, LEE BASFORD, BEN JAVENS, CHRIS KEENAN and LAWRENCE ROPER to name but a few as well as host of other reprobates including FRENCH, RICK MYERS and JAMES JARVIS.

EINSTELLUNG will be performing at the opening night on Thursday 2nd of October, in preparation for their forthcoming release on Capsule Recordings, a limited edition vinyl release of ‘Wings Of Desire’, with art work by Lucy Mclauchlan. (Due for release in November).

Einstellung are Steve Hough (ex-Cable Regime, Godflesh, Grover) on bass, Simon Rider (Ex Grover, Moneygods) on drums, Andrew Parker (ex-Katastrophy Wife, Sally) and Andy Smart on guitars.