Another nail in London’s coffin:Short-let afforable housing for low-earning creatives evaporates in London. Your taxes at work:The AHRB has given out a new round of funding. Among a lot of historical & theory-driven projects, the University of Sunderland gets £222,897 to study the Curating of new-media art; The London Institute gets £137,500 to study Interactive […]
Archive for June, 2003
New photos
New photos: (large version, 36kb) (large version, 117kb)
Location, location, location
New photos: (large version, 36kb) (large version, 117kb) Location, location, location: I had a chat today with someone in the Black County (it’s that big lump of industrial towns to the west of Birmingham). “Many of the local net/games/software businesses have relocated” he said, having rung around most of them to try to find a […]
The rising tide of blandness
The rising tide of blandness:Many English country towns are at risk of becoming identikit ‘generica’ clones, says the CPRE. This trend potentially has an enormous knock-on effect on one of our biggest and most vital industries; tourism. And suggests that the first town to do something radical (like compulsory purchasing all its empty shops and […]
Staffs snaps
Staffs snaps:Last night I went to the private view for the 2003 Art & Design graduate show at Staffordshire University. An above-average level of interesting work, and the quality of the finish was top-notch on almost everything. With some object-oriented Javascript tutorials (hat tip: chunkysoup) and a bit of DHTML kludging, I made a quick […]
Cheese and whine
Cheese and whine:Sad to say; I recently missed my own opening night. Ok, it was only as part of a three-man show at a local art gallery, but a large number of my pics were at least on the wall. The curator had told me vaguely when the opening was likely to be, so I […]
BrainClip
BrainClip:The first D’log BrainClip page is online. It simply gives a quick overview of some ongoing D’log topics over the last 18 months, and offers links to selected postings. Typographer designed travel inventory:Idea: why do print-outs of travel inventories have to look like DOS code? When you finalise a customised travel plan via an online […]
Relate to your garden
Relate to your garden:Not a link about how to talk, Prince Charles style, to your flowers. Rather, an interesting article on converting an 1890s terrace house (scroll down to the very bottom of the page) so that it has a relationship with the garden/yard. It’s on the sharply frank and eclectic Small Practice Architects UK […]
Motorway monotone
Motorway monotone:The Observer, on the dead sense of the English landscape induced by motorway travel. It’s a very different perspective by train and/or bicycle. Brain Clip v2:Last week I had the idea of coding a page which would list D’log’s themes (creative industries, Midlands, artists, housing & renegeration, photography, me) and some key postings on […]
Witty centre
Witty centre:A rather nice interactive Flash map of the public art in Birmingham city centre. It takes a few minutes to load, but it’s worth a look.
Retro-fitting terraced houses
Retro-fitting terraced houses:Way back last summer I suggested the need to devise imaginative strategies to retro-fit terraced houses. Voila! Well, as imaginative as developers can get, anyway. Not sure about those “communal gardens”, though.
Lovely
Lovely:From the photo-shoot last Thursday… (large version, 92kb)
The power of blogs, redux
BrainClip: In the next few weeks I think I am going to link up many of my blog postings on cultural change, creative industries and the like, into a single categorised page for ease of access. Grapes, sour-ish: The dust is settling on the City of Culture decision. Birmingham spent £2-million on the bid. Compared […]
Geezers
“GeeeezzzeRR!”:Those young professional graduates that so many regeneration hopes are pinned on, the one’s who’ll bring lots of disposable cash to the cafes and shops nestling below their new city & town-centre apartments? They don’t have disposable cash; they’ve crippled themselves to scrape a deposit together for the flat, and have to service huge student […]
West Midlands Life
West Midlands Life (but not as we know it, Jim):Well, that’s an improvement. Rhubarb Rhubarb:The Midlands’ favorite fruity international photography festival launches the new 2003 site. Martin Parr will be heading up one of the seminars -strikes adoring fan-boy pose-. And, yeah-hey! there are bursaries this year!. New York Times defeated:Web logs 1 : Newspapers: […]
Not so super bike
Creativity works:Spiked reviews John Tusa’s new book of interviews with artists and poets, talking with them about the creative process. It’s all done with smoke & mirrors, and it always will be. New photos:(large version, 70kb)(large version, 120kb) Not so super bike:My ‘super bike’ is in the local repair shop, the back-axle bar having snapped. […]
Super Bike
Super Bike:I got new brake pads for the bike, after nearly very running into a dog this afternoon. A very big & very dim darting-this-way-that-way dog. Thankfully he wasn’t a biter or a chaser. The brake-pads are twice as long as normal pads, and claim super-effectiveness in wet weather. Twice as expensive too, at twelve […]
Gentrification
Super Bike: I purchased new brake pads for the bike, after very nearly running into a dog this afternoon. A very big / very dim darting-this-way-that-way dog. Thankfully he wasn’t a biter or a chaser. The brake-pads are twice as long as normal pads, and claim super-effectiveness in wet weather. Twice as expensive too, at […]
Call of nature
Call of nature:It’s wildlife time again at D’log Mansions. Last year only a few bemused creatures ventured into my bare yard. This spring I’ve spruced it up into more of a garden. Toads look so much more attractive when their colouring blends almost perfectly against beach pebbles (which now cover up the yard). Magpies hop […]