Creative Midlands Articles

Creative Midlands Articles

Marketing Birmingham moves to Baskerville House

Posted: 10 Nov 2011 03:28 AM PST

Marketing Birmingham, the city's strategic marketing partnership, has moved to new office premises in the city centre. The deal sees 52 staff move from the organisation's base at Millennium Point to new premises at Baskerville House, where it has taken 8,128 sq ft on the ground floor.

Marketing Birmingham operates the city's leisure and business tourism programmes Visit and Meet Birmingham as well as its inward investment programme, Business Birmingham. The organisation's work with a number of the city's business organisations to promote Birmingham nationally and internationally as an investment destination, as well as to support new and potential investors, has also fuelled the move.

Council-funded SME loan provider Finance Birmingham, and business and professional services lobby group Birmingham Forward, are also planning to co-locate with Marketing Birmingham at Baskerville House.

Neil Rami, Chief Executive, Marketing Birmingham, said:

"Relocating to Baskerville House is a cost-effective move for us and places us in an easily accessible, central location. This is also an important strategic move for Marketing Birmingham. In recent months we have worked with the city's leading business organisations to position Business Birmingham as a central resource and point of contact for potential and existing investors in the city. By moving Business Birmingham, Birmingham Forward and Finance Birmingham under the same roof, we are able to continue this work."

Peter Rees-Steer, Chief Executive, Birmingham Forward, said:

"The opportunity to work even more closely with our partners on driving Birmingham's inward investment strategy is really too good to miss. With a location next to the new Library of Birmingham; the synergies created by working alongside colleagues attracting and supporting businesses and the changes we have made to our organisation over the last year make this move both timely and exciting."

Sue Summers, Chief Executive of Finance Birmingham, added:

"The move to Baskerville House ensures we retain a central location and, importantly, offers a greater degree of integration with businesses that share common business objectives."

Marketing Birmingham has operated from Millennium Point since 2002. The organisation's existing office space in Millennium Point is to be taken by Birmingham City University – in line with the area's positioning as the city's 'Learning Quarter'.

Drivers Jonas Deloitte in Birmingham advised Marketing Birmingham on the office move, which included project management of the new fit out, with legal advice from Anthony Collins. CBRE acted for the Landlord.

Philippa Pickavance, Head of Agency Midlands at Drivers Jonas Deloitte, said:

"We were very pleased to be chosen to act on behalf of Marketing Birmingham in their relocation and to be able to negotiate competitive terms which made it possible for them to be able to move."

Theo Holmes, senior surveyor in the office agency team at CBRE in Birmingham, said:

"It was important for Marketing Birmingham to find a building and location that would not only create the right image and impression of the organisation, but reflect positively on Birmingham as a business destination. Baskerville House ticked all these boxes. 

"Furthermore, its location next to the new Library of Birmingham – set to be the city's new iconic building – added to the appeal of Baskerville House."

 

06CH0207_215

 

Review: The Importance of Being Earnest @ The Old Joint Stock

Posted: 18 Nov 2011 01:30 AM PST

theatre-tickets

I can never resist seeing Wilde's perfect comedy again despite the fact that it's almost impossible to get a new take on this much-performed work.

Kaos Theatre Company did startlingly take the play to its physical theatre limits in the eighties, but most productions tend to play safe, generally camping it up and letting Wilde's immortal lines speak for themselves.

I seem to have seen everybody do it like this, including Dames Judy and Maggie, uttering the famous epithets like some ancient incantation that have never made any sense to anyone. And it always works, although I did see a production where Merriman the Footman upstaged everybody with a funny walk, which just couldn't be right.

But Director Jennifer Rigby and New Century Theatre have managed the seemingly impossible – a new take on this world classic, in which the lines are uttered as if they'd just occurred to their speakers, real words uttered by real people and spoken from what passes, even in this idle society, from their very hearts. And so they should. This is sophisticated realism, not just high camp, and on the first night Wilde's audience recognised themselves.

The result was an evening of pure delight. One inspired wizard wheeze alone made the whole thing zing. Lesser directors would have cast the posh upper class-type John-Robert Partridge as Algernon and the more hearty Samuel Lesser as Jack, but here Ms Rigby goes against type. So instead of being a mere decadent fop spouting almost meaningless absurdities, Mr Lesser's Algy Moncrieff comes over as the realistic and practical one who simply knows how society works and robustly employs his own methods to get his way.

By contrast Jack, so often portrayed as an unimaginative and deadly dull hypocrite was given to the superb Mr Partridge who played him as a slightly wet toff, a veritable Brideshead teddy bear with an uncanny resemblance to Prince Charles in his Cambridge Footlights days. This imaginative coup brought a freshness that sparked through the rest of the cast.

Hannah McCormack was the quintessence of quivering lust as the ultimate dithering old maid Miss Prism, while Jim Kelly was unforgettable as the long-suffering footman with the bad leg. The Director herself was a delightfully pert and knowing Cecily, while Ms McCormack, doubling as Gwendolen, Jack's intended, was hilarious as Cecily's worthy opponent in tea-table fencing.

But the Palme D'Or must go to Bill Bowen as Lady Bracknell, brought in at three days notice to play this role of a lifetime. Lady B has always been a class drag act, but here unusually the famous lines were delivered not by rote but as if they were arising from a genuine thought process, each new outrage being uttered as if freshly conceived.

In the last act Mr Bowen gave a master-class in comic timing. I have never seen this play so well acted, and I would dearly love to this fresh-as-a-daisy production all over again to savour its nuances afresh.

New Century's production of The Importance Of Being Earnest is currently touring nationwide.

Copyright © 2008
This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only.
The use of this feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it makes the page you are viewing an infringement of the copyright. (Digital Fingerprint: a5650e6311df2ed3528d810b37022bf8 (209.85.224.91) )

Lichfield PR Consultancy serves up new account win

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 01:00 AM PST

21st Nov 2011 ⁄ West Midlands ⁄ Lichfield PR consultancy Townhouse Communications has been appointed by Lichfield based cutlery and gift manufacturer, Arthur Price, to raise its regional profile, launch a series of new colourful and...

Barques PR steps on the property ladder with Halls

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 12:00 AM PST

21st Nov 2011 ⁄ West Midlands ⁄ A Birmingham PR agency has put another foot on the property ladder after being appointed by Halls, a firm of chartered surveyors specialising in commercial, residential and rural property, to raise th...

Nusic #15

Posted: 19 Nov 2011 04:00 PM PST

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

filtermeuk: Hope the opening went well @OrtCafe Its great to see a new creative space opening up.

Posted: 18 Nov 2011 07:06 AM PST

filtermeuk: Hope the opening went well @OrtCafe Its great to see a new creative space opening up.

New website post: : Arts Development UK Professional Fellowship Programme http://t.co/0u8AOfCD

Posted: 20 Nov 2011 03:45 AM PST

New website post: : Arts Development UK Professional Fellowship Programme http://t.co/0u8AOfCD

writingwestmids: http://t.co/TCI8nJT4

Posted: 20 Nov 2011 12:09 AM PST

writingwestmids: http://t.co/TCI8nJT4

artsdevuk: New website post: : Arts Development UK Professional Fellowship Programme http://t.co/0u8AOfCD

Posted: 20 Nov 2011 03:45 AM PST

artsdevuk: New website post: : Arts Development UK Professional Fellowship Programme http://t.co/0u8AOfCD
Posted by Creative Midlands at 11/21/2011 11:05:00 am
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)