Public domain and hi-res: “The Prospect of Bermingham, from Ravenshurst (neere London-road) on the South-east part of towne (Birmingham).” Wenceslaus Hollar of Bohemia. Might have been made at any time from around 1625-1660. Plus the British fashions of the time, by the same artist. The inscribed date on the muffs (engraved 1644 from an 1640 […]
Archive for the ‘Birmingham’ Category
£10m funding for Black Country Living Museum
Excellent news, £10m funding for Black Country Living Museum to create 450 jobs. The £10m from the Lottery will then lead into a… “second-round application to the Heritage Lottery Fund in October 2018 to release the rest of the funding [a “£21.7m project”]. If successful, construction will begin with a view to be completed in […]
Senior Lecturer in Games Art
Lovely job… Coventry University wants a Senior Lecturer in Games Art, at up to £52k full-time. Ref: REQ005098.
1000 volunteer mentors needed
The new elected Mayor of the inner West Midlands is seeking 1000 volunteer mentors to help guide unemployed young people into the world of work. Sounds good. Though so far as I can tell it only covers the inner ‘Greater Birmingham’ bit of the West Midlands, not the real West Midlands.
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Jobs
Vacancies for Casual Gallery Assistants at The New Art Gallery Walsall. REF: EE02017. Deadline: 18th June 2017. Obviously not closed yet, then.
Big maps of Brum
Late Victorian O.S. maps of Birmingham, at a huge 1:2500 scale, with zoom. The map sheets must surely be public domain by now, but sadly there’s an ‘All Rights Reserved’ notice.
Deliaphonic
Celebrate Delia Derbyshire’s 80th birthday at Coventry Music Museum. Delia was the pioneering musician who adapted and recorded Ron Grainer’s classic Doctor Who theme for electronic music, and later helped to inspire the late 1970s wave of sci-fi electropop (John Foxx, early Gary Numan etc). Coventry was where Delia grew up, and there are weekend […]
Curator of Natural Science
Curator of Natural Science at Birmingham Museums… “to lead on a number of significant projects and to research and develop Birmingham’s important collection … covering botany, entomology, zoology and earth sciences” with an initial focus on setting up child-friendly displays. Deadline: 20th March 2017.
Pull My Finger
Pull My Finger podcast pilot (and currently eight podcasts). Lead presenter Tony James not only has a great voice, he has a great offer on Fiverr: a 150-word smooth West Midlands working-class voiceover. Sounds like he’s originally from north-east Birmingham/Walsall?
Birmingham stereograph
A high-res public-domain stereograph of the station at Birmingham, England, in the later Victorian period. Should be possible to repair, and do a large format 3D view of this. Perhaps in some colorised lenticular manner. I’m not going to be the one who does that, so feel free to ‘have at it’…
Trigger warning: map-spreading
The social media accounts of Birmingham’s local councillors, mapped, all bar a few bits of Aston…
New gallery at Wightwick Manor
10 Feb 2017 at 14:55
David Haden
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The William Morris -associated house near Wolverhampton, Wightwick Manor, has a new gallery opening soon. “We’ve begun work converting the Old Malthouse into an exciting new art gallery. The gallery will open in April 2017 with the launch of our partnership with the De Morgan Foundation.”
“T’wit ‘t whooo?”
Birmingham’s local councillors now have a handy up-to-date spreadsheet listing their Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Treepedia
MIT Treepedia, using Google Street View to determine the extent of a city’s “green canopy” of trees, at least those visible along the roads. The website currently has a demo for 10 cities, but it seems that Green View Index comparison between a great many of the world’s cities is planned… “we will continue to […]
Museum of Science Fiction
03 Dec 2016 at 23:27
David Haden
Birmingham, Creative industries, Entertainment
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There’s a Museum of Science Fiction, near Worcester (UK).
Birmingham Mail website makeover
New website for the Birmingham Mail newspaper. In design terms it’s quite pleasing. Nice clean layout, although I run AdBlockPlus so my first glimpse of it was without adverts. An eight second load-time for the front page, for me. Photos not too ‘shouty’ or ‘grim’, but I still blocked all news story images on it […]
Birmingham City University – research repository
24 Nov 2016 at 17:15
David Haden
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Birmingham City University has just launched a public research repository. Currently it’s too new to be indexed by Google, which would enable one to discover if there’s actually any full-text open access PDFs in there. Most record pages I tried were “full-text not available”, even when one went back a year or two. Which seems […]
Dull Brum
24 Nov 2016 at 08:09
David Haden
Artist(s), Birmingham, Creative industries, Stoke-on-Trent
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A stunning level of boring uniformity and dullness was on show to the press yesterday, as Birmingham’s bosses officially backed the Coventry bid for City of Culture. Expect better odds on the gritty bid from Stoke-on-Trent as the winner of City of Culture, from today.
A Midlands Engine mis-fire
18 Nov 2016 at 06:28
David Haden
Birmingham, Creative industries, Stoke-on-Trent
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Midlands Engine chairman Sir John Peace appears to favour Coventry for City of Culture, while forgetting about the equally major bid by the West Midlands city of Stoke-on-Trent… “Sir John said the Midlands is readying itself for a “golden decade” which will include the arrival of HS2 in 2026. Birmingham has also put its name […]
Middle Earth, a major Tolkien biopic
15 Nov 2016 at 23:57
David Haden
Birmingham, Entertainment, Stoke-on-Trent
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I’m pleased to hear that a very major Birmingham / Staffordshire movie is going ahead. Directed by James Strong (Downton Abbey), Middle Earth will explore Tolkien’s early life and his romance with Edith Bratt. The screenwriter will be Angus Fletcher, and The Lord of the Rings producers Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are both on […]