Tag Archives: brumphotospace

Photo swap raises profile for Birmingham photography gallery campaign

Professional and amateur photographers were yesterday given the opportunity to share their work and swap photos, at an event organised by Birmingham Photospace.

'Luminarium', by Julia Gilbert

'Mondrian was here' by BB B

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 the Custard Factory, it was well attended. All the walls of the spacious gallery were adorned with photographs brought along by the visitors.

The exhibition grew throughout the day as people brought along their photographs. Then at five-thirty Patrick Wilcox, founder of Birmingham Photospace, gave an introduction and started the swap.

We had all been given one sticker for each photo that we’d brought, and could use these to claim photos of a similar size and quality from someone else. Although there were reports of people removing stickers or covering someone else’ with their own, most people behaved themselves.

I came away with three photographs: ‘Luminarium‘ by Julia Gilbert, which was taken inside an exhibition at Birmingham’s ArtsFest; ‘Mondrian was here‘ by George Daley, taken behind Five Ways shopping centre in Birmingham; ‘Crazy Paving’, also by George Daley, taken outside The Public in West Bromich. (The former two are displayed on this page.)

Pepper on the window ledgePepper on the window ledge, this time looking quite evil'Deck chairs' by Michael Grimes

I took a few for swapping. I know the two of my cat Pepper were claimed, and I think the one of the deck chairs may have been too (all three are displayed on this page).

Birmingham photography: is the university planning a gallery in Eastside?

One last quick post about this bloomin’ photography space before I go to sleep.

I was chatting to a bloke at Tuesday’s Birmingham bloggers meet who seemed to be suggesting that the university is opening up a photography gallery in Eastside (I think he even said Curzon Street Station).

If this is true, should we:

  • leave it to them;
  • try to influence it;
  • keep going regardless?

I’ll try to find out more, but if anyone can shed more light on this please let me know.

Recent Image Central Posts

The frame below displays the most recent post about Birmingham’s Image Central project, gathered from the web. (It can appear a little temperamental; if it claims there is nothing to display try again later.) Or view the whole lot here.

Finding information about the Birmingham photo space (Image Central) project

As yet there is no central blog or website, and even when there is I suspect there will be various people blogging in different places. In an attempt to make my contributions as easy to find as possible I have:

  • started tagging/labeling/categorising all my relevant posts with both brumphotospace and brumimagecentral (I’m adding ‘brum’ to the beginning to minimise the danger of duplicate, unrelated tags elsewhere on the web);
  • created a Yahoo! Pipe to pull the various feeds (eg Flickr discussion, this blog, the calendar) into one place; if you know of more let me know and i’ll add them. (RSS)
    • this is a very simple mashup, all it does is pull in the feeds and spit them back out as one (in alphabetical order); please re-use it if it’s of any use to you.

Setting up a charity for a Birmingham photography gallery

There’s a move afoot to campaign for a dedicated photography gallery in Birmingham. I’ve agreed to do some initial research into how best to set up an organisation to raise funds for such a campaign

A quick look at the Charity Commission website suggests that we don’t need to register as a charity if our annual income is under £5,000. I think that means we can start gathering donations straight away, and start the process of registering while we build up momentum.

As for holding money, I’ve discovered the Co-op bank’s ‘Community Directplus‘ account:

  • we can hold up to £1m, at which point(!) the bank would help us decide how to move forward;
  • there is no minimun deposit;
  • we would need to provide:
    • a written constitution (half A4 is enough), signed by
    • at least two members, by whom the account would be held (they don’t all need to be signatories).

Birmingham photo space

I went to a meeting this evening about setting up a lobbying group for a dedicated photography gallery in Birmingham.

As a result I prgmised to do a couple of things, forgetting that my broadband is down. Doh. So I’m writing this VERY SLOWLY on my phone, with very low signal. Oh well.

There were only three of us at the meeting so it was short and productive. I agreed to:

  • Explore feasibility of setting up a charity, and alternative routes for raising capital;
  • Contact existing photography galleries for informal advice.

I shall post my findings on this blog and a link to them on the flickr page.