Creative Midlands Events |
| Posted: 09 May 2013 09:46 AM PDT crafts and music in the Middle East and South and Central Asia 24 May 13 This post has been generated by Page2RSS %7Cutmcsr%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Erma%2Eac%2Euk%2Fconferences%2Flistings%2Easp%7Cutmcmd%3Datom%3B%2B){kind=small}  |
| Planning for a new look festival and being a latecomer to the Gone With The Wind party… Posted: 09 May 2013 02:59 AM PDT By Sara Beadle  Germaine Greer features at this year's Birmingham Literature Festival. It's one of the most creative and tense times in my year, and whilst staring for long hours at a detailed spreadsheet I have to be careful not to take leave of my senses and get giddy at the first sight of sunshine in the quad below our Birmingham office (which was, incidentally, yesterday). This year's festival, our 15th, is special in several ways. I'm sure every programmer says that about their offspring, but it's certainly true for us. You might have caught the whispers of a new name, a new library, a new look. We will be releasing some confirmed details formally on 4 June, but I can give you the highlights. The festival, long known as Birmingham Book Festival, is being reimagined as Birmingham Literature Festival, a name much more in keeping with our ethos. We've never been solely about books, and now we can fully embrace the range of platforms available to writers and to literature. To go with our new name, we have teamed up with designers Empty Creative to generate a new look for the festival. It's a delicate challenge – finding an identity that visualises our future whilst carefully capturing our past. We look forward to showing you the end result. In addition to a new name, we are moving many of our festival events into the new Library of Birmingham. You can't have failed to see it growing out of the ground in Centenary Square – and what a splendid building it is. You can find out more, and see inside it here. This new space is presenting us with all sorts of interesting opportunities and challenges – and we're enjoying creating a programme that uses more hours of the day and is built to match the spaces we have within the library. We will still be working with some of our other longstanding venue partners, including the beautiful Ikon Gallery and Birmingham Cathedral.
So what can you expect? The festival you know and love, with a few noticeable improvements. A programme of headline events including Will Self, Germaine Greer, Lionel Shriver, Catherine O'Flynn, Benjamin Zephaniah and many others; special interest events including a lecture on liberty from campaigner Shami Chakrabarti and a Victorian sideshow with novelist and performer Rosie Garland, and creative writing workshops including poetry in translation and dramatic writing. Full details will be released in August. Before then, however, you will be able to book for some events online, and we will be able to tell you more about our plans. Incidentally, this is a great time to become a Friend of Writing West Midlands – you'll receive discounts on festival tickets, as well as other benefits, with your membership.
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While you wait for those full details to be released, you may be in the market for some light reading? If you aren't busily reading your way through the latest from all the writers named above, I can heartily recommend reading or re-reading Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind. Whilst I hang my head for not having read it before now, I find myself unashamedly pushing it onto friends, neighbours and colleagues. There's nothing like losing yourself in deep red Georgian fields and civil war battles on a quiet spring evening. A truly epic read which may take over your life temporarily, but will certainly be worth it.| You are subscribed to email updates from Creative Midlands Events To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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