Walk of Fame for King’s Heath

24 January 2012

"A Walk of Fame is to be created along York Road to celebrate King’s Heath’s musical and comic heritage that will include a specially commissioned floral display featuring a guitar and microphone. York Road has been chosen because it contains the Hare and Hounds where UB40 and Frank Skinner started their careers and the Cash Converters building which was previously the Ritz Ballroom – one of 4 ballrooms run in the 1960’s by Irish husband and wife team Mary (Ma) and Joe (Pa) Regan – where most of the famous groups and artists of the 1960’s played."

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Go Green week at Aston Uni

17 January 2012
Go Green week at Aston Uni

Please see press release below for information on Go Green, a week of sustainability-themed activities taking place at Aston University in early February. Further information, images and interviewees are available should the content be of interest to you.   Many thanks,   Kathy Hopkin   ***   PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   A SUSTAINABLE START TO THE YEAR AT ASTON UNIVERSITY   - 'Capitalism or a habitable planet' talk with comedian, author and environmental activist Robert Newman - Friends of Earth, Greenpeace and Digbeth-based walkit.com to feature in Eco-Marketplace - Second-hand bicycle sale from Birmingham-based social enterprise Cycle Chain - Aston University Chaplaincy faith and climate change debate, ‘Safeguarding the planet’ - The Co-operative’s highly acclaimed ‘Tarnished Earth’ exhibition on campus   Aston University Go Green Week Monday 6 February – Friday 10 February 2012 Aston University, Birmingham All events are free and open to the public   Website: www.aston.ac.uk/go-green-week Twitter: www.twitter.com/GreenAstonUni #AstonGGW Facebook: Green Aston Uni   Go Green Week, a five-day programme of inspiring free events, talks, activities and exhibitions open to the public and celebrating Aston University's commitment to sustainability, is to take place between Monday 6 and Friday 10 February around it’s Birmingham city...

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The Oasis Radio

17 January 2012

On Monday 16th January, students from Birmingham City University are launching The Oasis Radio, the official radio station for the legendary Oasis Market – Birmingham’s alternative lifestyle centre since 1971. The station will run until January 27th, broadcasting from Birmingham City University and being played out inside the market as well as online at theoasisradio.net. The station’s music has been selected to reflect the Market’s diverse range of store. Everything from rock, dance and urban will have their place on The Oasis Radio. The flagship shows, The Alternative Breakfast and Oasis Afternoons, will be live every week day, playing the best in against the curve music, as well as giving away prizes and providing up to the minute entertainment news and opinions. If that wasn’t enough, during the day there will be three different shows, tailor made to reflect some aspect of the Market. On a new theme every hour, the shows can range from specific genres of music, to ones dedicated to certain stores in the Market itself. The Oasis Radio is keeping things fresh by having a constantly revolving line up of presenters, so there will be something you like sooner rather than later. On top of...

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Today – Birmingham ‘beats space’ as tourist destination

9 January 2012

Little bit of vanity, this was me on the radio.

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Why contribute to the spread of ugliness?

20 December 2011

Alan Clawley reviews Stuart Whipps's new exhibition at the Ikon gallery.

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Libraries Petition And Campaign by Birmingham Against The Cuts

15 December 2011

Libraries are to open reduced hours, Birmingham Against The Cuts is organising protest.

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Birmingham music in the 60s… Untold Stories Part 1

9 December 2011

(by BMHMusic) from Brumblr, the scrapbook of Brum web ephemera:

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NUJ Public Meeting – "Crisis in Midlands Journalism"

6 December 2011

With the BBC cuts, and those at the Post and Mail, is it the end for journalism round this way?

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An old punk’s elegy for The Old Wharf

5 December 2011

Sad as another boozer bites the dust.

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Review: The Little Book Of Birmingham

5 December 2011
Review: The Little Book Of Birmingham

Books make ideal low-impact presents, they’re easy to wrap, they pretty much always describe their contents so you can be roughly sure that you’ve got something acceptable, and they are so portable that unthankful recipients can pop them down to the British Heart Foundation shop and say “yes, it was so good I’ve been lending it to people” to explain its absence from their bookshelves. Publishers know this and will knock out any old tat around Christmas, books aimed at becoming presents for people you know or care very little about. Why else would Jeremy Clarkson be a published author, why else would tedious collections of Shakespeare’s unfunniest jokes clog the tills at WH Smiths (when all you really want is to pay for your fountain pen cartridges and get out of there, and no I don’t want a slab of Dairy Milk the size of Belgium for 5p thanks)? But every so often there’s a book which, despite having the a title starting “The Little Book of…”, you can safely read without bemoaning the crass commercialisation of the spectacle. Such a book is my, as yet unpublished, Little Book of Cliff Richards’s Girlfriends, but another one is Norman...

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Beside the B-side: The Lilac Time: ‘Street Corner’

2 December 2011

Pete Paphides on a record that "is what it was like to grow up in the West Midlands in the 70s". mmmmmm

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Should Birmingham have a directly elected mayor? – Arguments for and against | a debate visualisation on Wrangl

25 November 2011

BiNS is firmly in the 'Yes' camp, but this is an interesting way to present the argument.

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