Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

I have a favourite tree. It’s not so much the tree itself though, as its location: slap bang in the middle of the pavement. It’s quite an old tree, and clearly the footpath has been built around it: I often wonder why it’s there. The trees are otherwise in a deliberate line, equally distanced, along [...]

I spent the latter half of this afternoon looking for neutral patches of concrete near Birmingham city centre, that would be suitable for a team game. Finding such a place is no mean feat, even in the wastelands of Eastside and Digbeth. It wasn’t my idea. Nikki Pugh of BARG wants to run a ‘social game’ [...]

Yesterday morning I was up in the small hours to take photos of Birmingham for the 4am Project. Such is the power of networks and friendships that people like me are willing to sacrifice their night’s sleep for someone else’s harebrained idea. In this case it was for Karen Strunks, who has become so fascinated [...]

Professional and amateur photographers were yesterday given the opportunity to share their work and swap photos, at an event organised by Birmingham Photospace. The ‘Flash Swap’ was the group’s first publicity event, intended to raise the profile of their campaign for a dedicated photography gallery in Birmingham. Although hidden away in a dark corner of [...]

Is it possible to work full-time without an office, simply taking advantage of free wifi offerings? To find out, I intend to spend one week trying it. And I call on others to do the same. The dates are yet to be confirmed, but I hope to try and work for a full five days [...]

I’ve started a fledgling blog to help me make sense of Birmingham’s creative organisations; of the different names and acronymns that crop up when people talk about Birmingham’s various ‘creative’ and ‘social media’ groups (the two seem to overlap an awful lot). This started from a comment I posted on Paradise Circus months ago, and [...]

Producing a consultation document that the average member of the public can understand is easy, if you really care. Birmingham itself has plenty of top class graphic communicators, journalists, copywriters and sub-editors. The Big City Plan is such a massive undertaking that there are, presumably, the financial resources to make sure the public is consulted properly. It seems that it’s just the will that isn’t there.

I sincerely hope this story isn’t true: because if it is, it shows the degree of contempt that Council Leader Mike Whitby has for the people of Birmingham. Two weeks ago a bus of council employees was scheduled to visit the Highgate area of Birmingham. The purpose was to consult local people on the Big [...]

Eventually I shall write a fuller post about this, and about my perception of how it’s being managed and communicated. In the meantime though I just want to help publicise the bus that’s doing the rounds in Birmingham. The council is seeking people’s opinions on its Big City Plan (a massive development plan for Birmingham), [...]