The thing about Birmingham…
A nice moment today from the Culture Shock project. I did a group interview as part of my research into musical hybridity – and I thought I’d share this snippet with you.
Sneak preview of Daniel’s song
Day 2 of the Culture Shock project, and Daniel introduces a new song to the group.
I popped back down to the church to catch a little bit of the goings-on at Culture Shock, as a group of musicians from a range of different faiths and cultural backgrounds get together to create a 90 minute free concert – this Saturday night at St Anne’s church in Moseley.
It’s also a great source of research for me, as I start what I hope will be a fairly major piece of work examining cultural encounters, and the types of musical hybridity that emerges from them.
In the video above, Pete explains the role of a few of the musicians, and then we hear a song as it’s played to the musicians for the first time.
What if Birmingham IS shit?
Let’s get this out of the way right up front: I like living in Birmingham. I moved here from New Zealand with a job to return to, phoned them after 6 months and said “sorry – I’m not coming back”. That was nearly eight years ago.
But I am sick of this city competing for greatness.
Any time Birmingham has the opportunity to enter something in which we might emerge being considered ‘the best’, we’ll spend millions on our bid for selection. And guess what? Those other people we’re in competition with like their home town too. We pin so much on winning, and we fool ourselves into thinking that the outcome is anything other than arbitrary.
The empty rhetoric of ‘Birmingham is amazing’, ‘Birmingham is full of inspiring people’ and ‘Look how great Birmingham is’ is worse than unhelpful. It places us in a pointless competition with other places and centres our sense of self-worth around, on the one hand, what others think of us and, on the other, a series of vacuous mantras that if we repeat often enough, perhaps we’ll come to believe.
Meanwhile, our leaders are considered to be our champions and representatives to the outside world, rather than in charge of making things better. If there’s anything that Birmingham is the most amazing at, it’s putting faith in marketing as the solution to all things.
In not so local news…
That’s a photo I just took of the Moon – and beneath it, Jupiter.
Jupiter! I can see Jupiter with my eyes?! That’s incredible. Apparently our orbits are close at the moment. Even so, if we are at the closest it’s possible for the Earth and Jupiter to be to each other, it’s still 630 MILLION KILOMETERS AWAY!!
I think that’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jupiter before – but it’s so bright. I could even see it without my glasses. So much for shortsighted.
In local news…
Stephen Helebert and Stanley Hems from Johnstans Butchers, Kings Heath
I popped into my local butcher shop this morning to pick up some lovely dry-cured bacon, and they were celebrating their big win: a Gold award for ‘Best Customer Service’ and Silver for ‘Best Window Display’ in the Kings Heath Business Association awards.
Stanley Hems (right) is also the Chairman of the Kings Heath Business Association (not to mention Life Honorary President of the Birmingham and District Butchers Association), but was of course not involved in the awarding committee.
He tells me he’s been in business here in Kings Heath for 54 years. I believe this is the first time these awards have taken place, and they were voted by customers who filled in forms and handed them into the participating shops.
The squirrel tree
Out the window of my home office, across the road, there’s been a lot of squirrel activity lately. My eye is drawn to the comings and goings of the squirrels because of their rapid movement in the leafless trees – and because even though I’ve lived in the UK for over seven years, squirrels are still exotic animals to me.
I was watching a pair of them run backwards and forwards the other day, when I realised that the big tree straight ahead of me must be where they live. And then I saw the nest – or the ‘drey’ as Wikipedia tells me it’s called. It’s a clump of leaves and twigs halfway up the trunk of the tree – about the size of a football… and it has a little hole that the squirrels come in and out of.
At dusk, that’s where they disappear to. Not that I’d given it any thought, nor come up with an alternative hypothesis about where they go, but I was surprised to learn that they build these dreys and live in them. Makes sense though, I suppose.
If you look hard you’ll see the clump of leaves about halfway up the trunk. That’s it there.
Of course, now I’m seeing them everywhere. Hopefully, I’ll get to see baby squirrels in the Spring. I’ll wait and watch patiently – a bit like David Attenborough.
I'm the Director of MTF Labs, a Senior Researcher at the Industry Commons Foundation, advisor to ArtEO and founder of New Music Strategies.
I'm an author of books about technology, culture, music and radio. I'm also an award-winning broadcaster and filmmaker, a public speaker and lecturer, record producer and festival director. I am closely following developments in emerging technologies and the cultures and ethics surrounding them, and my projects typically focus on issues of justice, inclusion, and sustainability.
Most of my work involves surrounding myself with incredibly smart and talented people who would have no other reason to ever be in the same room as each other. That's when amazing things happen.
I tend to talk a lot about music (often jazz-adjacent and particularly on vinyl, but also playlists and mixtapes). I'm enthusiastic about food and cooking, the intersection of art and science, new technologies, vintage technologies, education, social progress, silence, innovation, narrative, data commons, culture, sound art and the spoken word. This blog will continue to reflect those diverse and shifting enthusiasms. I may also digress.
I'm from Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand, I have Scottish ancestry, I've spent a decade in the south of Birmingham UK, and another in a forest in the north of Sweden.
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