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A new litterpicking group in Hall Green are looking for an Artist to create a sign or mural to welcome people to part of The Shire Country Park. There is a budget of around £300. If interested contact hello@artworkshallgreen.co.uk.

Unlimited, a disability-led arts commissioning programme, are currently transitioning to being an independent organisation.

We are recruiting for a full-time Artist Support role who will help support Unlimited artists and coordinate, deliver, and evaluate Unlimited activities, alongside the team, helping develop and working within the new organisation’s guidelines and policies. The position is open for applicants based anywhere in the UK.

The salary for this role is between £23,000 and £25,000 depending on experience. 
Deadline to apply is 12 noon Friday 12 March 2021.

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We are also recruiting a Visual Identity brief. We are looking for someone/a team who will work with us on a freelance basis to create a visual identity which: 

• Can be used to launch the new organisation, signify its evolution into a new organisation, and to mark this next stage in Unlimited’s development 
• Reflects Unlimited’s new mission and values 
• Is designed with accessibility at its heart, meeting the highest accessibility standards and created for and with the involvement of disabled artists 

The fee for this contract is£5000 including VAT. Deadline to apply is5pm on Friday 26 February 2021.

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We encourage people from any background to apply to either roles. We are committed to creating a team which is representative of our society, and to bringing together those with a variety of skills and experiences to help shape what we do and how we work.

Full information on the roles, including job description and how to apply, can be found here: https://weareunlimited.org.uk/new-roles-want-to-work-for-advise-support-unlimited/

An interesting paper by Professor Eleonora Belfiore on how Artists involved in community based work should/could be supported.

We really welcome an open discussion about how Artists in our area can be supported to do their best work and engage with local residents in a meaningful way. Often that means that Artists themselves need to be supported with plenty of opportunities for development and nurture. Professor Belfiore’s paper is a really welcome contribution to this discussion.

If you wish to direct people to papers, articles, websites, organisations, courses or conferences then please share generously – we’re very happy to publish contributions here!

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1367549420982863

Hall Green Families, as part of Accord Housing, have been awarded NHS England funding to recruit young people to co-design covid, winter & mental health messages.

Our young people are age 11 to 18 who live, study and work in Hall Green locality, which includes Sparkbrook, Sparkhill, Moseley, Kings Heath, Balsall Heath and Hall Green. We work in subgroups, which enable us to make the most of our time, resources and skills.

We are looking for schools and colleges to collaborate with. Ideally this will be within your school curriculum as part of, not limited to, art, ICT or design.

The aim is for your learners to produce something  that can be exhibited or interacted with, hopefully in the public, to showcase their work and achievements. We want young people to set the agenda, hence why we haven’t outlined what will be created.

We will work together to map out the right questions for your young people, as everyone as different needs.

We would love for this exhibition to highlight the voice of young people and their Covid experiences in 2020.

We are also looking for venues within Hall Green to exhibit the final work.

If your school would like to be involved, or if you are interested in showcasing the project, please contact Project Manager Simarjeet.Kaur@accordgroup.org.uk.

Public Health are seeking to work with a series of creative arts providers to develop arts based COVID-19 messaging, particularly through different cultural mediums, to engage with different ethnic communities. This work will support the COVID champion programme which currently has 523 members across the 69 wards in the City. 

We are looking for Arts based programmes that will engage residents in activities which contribute to the protection and health and wellbeing of Birmingham residents. Arts and Health interventions capture the public’s attention, meet them where they consume information and convey reliable messages in ways that are accessible across languages, ages, cultural affiliations and education levels. The Arts have been shown to be an effective and efficient means for communicating health information to larger audiences. This method enhances emotional engagement with messages and optimises social learning patterns and motivation to change behaviours. Arts in Health Education is used to create memorable messages with outcomes which will be enhanced by strategic approaches of multiple modes of communication.

The provider(s) will be required to have relevant track record of delivering Creative and/or Art’s based projects.

A Contemporary Music with under 25’s
B African and Caribbean Music
C Central and Eastern European Music
D Asian Music
E Visual Arts with 30 to 50 year old’s
F Spoken Word and Poetry with 60+
G Spoken Word and Poetry with the under 18’s
H Theatre with intergenerational families

Please note that Bidders may express an interest in one, multiple or all Lots under this tender.

The Council will be using its free to use e-tendering system (in-tend) for the administration of this procurement process and potential suppliers must register with the system to be able to express an interest. If you wish to express an interest in this opportunity please click on the following link to access https://in-tendhost.co.uk/birminghamcc/ and submit your details to register. You will then be sent details on how to log on which will enable you to download all relevant quotation documentation. 

If you are unable to register with In-tend or have any questions or problems on how to use this web site please either email us at: cps@birmingham.gov.uk or call CPS Helpdesk on 0121 464 8000.

Your completed quotation submission should be returned by noon on 5th February 2021 via the ‘in-tend’ system https://in-tendhost.co.uk/birminghamcc

Are you an Artist or Creative Practitioner, living or working in the Balsall Heath area?

Celebrating Sanctuary (CSB) is working in partnership with Gap Arts, Ort Gallery and Craftspace to plan and design a project and event for 2022 as part of the Commonwealth Cultural Festival.

As local artists we would like your views and input in its design. This process will influence how we approach an inclusive, community focussed project & event in the Moseley Rd and surrounding areas of Balsall Heath. We want to identify emerging and established artists in the area, especially those from refugee and migrant backgrounds who could be involved in artist development, performance & exhibition opportunities, or delivering creative workshops.

We will be holding some online consultation sessions this month which will be advertised soon. But in the meantime, we have created this short online survey to find out who the local artists are, what they do and what their views and needs are. The survey is very short, so we ask you to please take 5 minutes to give us your feedback.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to hearing from you.

Wellbeing Messages written by local primary school children are being sent to the elderly in the Balsall Heath and Sparkbrook community spreading festive joy and support during the ongoing hardships caused by the pandemic.

Ort Gallery worked with artist Sabba Khan, whose work is an exploration of first world city life as a second generation Azad Kashmiri Muslim migrant. She explores themes of belonging, memory and identity underpinned by philosophical and psychotherapy concepts that explore the nature of self within and outside of the collective.

Sabba created 6 postcards in co-design with local women that are being shared with our community as part of the recovery period mid/post-lockdown. The idea is to spread a positive message and remind people that they are not alone. Moreover they also encourage people to look after their mental health.

The elderly in the community are receiving the messages through foodbank parcels and through the delivery service of hot means by the Muath Trust who reach up to 90 elderly people each week.

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Pupils from two local primary schools – Ark Tindal Academy and Nelson Mandela Primary wrote personalised messages to the elderly in the community to spread festive joy this December and to send hope and solidarity to those in the community cut off from family and friends. The project will support the elderly to write back to their young penpals.

The Wellbeing Messages project was supported by The Community Fund.

The Arab British Centre, in partnership with the British Council, is pleased to announce that applications are now open for the Winter edition of their Connect ME digital residency programme.

Connect ME pairs creatives based in the GCC (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) and the United Kingdom to create collaborative digital work over a 4-week programme of online mentoring.

The Connect ME programme was devised earlier in 2020 as a response to the Covid 19 pandemic, and as a digital continuation of the Arab British Centre’s creative exchange programme Making Marks, which promotes creative exchange and international collaboration between the UK and Gulf countries. Connect ME thus focuses on connecting creatives aged 18-30 based in the GCC countries and the United Kingdom to create new collaborative work that considers how digital tools can encourage connectivity across borders.

The outcomes are completely up to the pairs, and we welcome applications from all creative backgrounds – writers, musicians, visual artists, performers, and everything in between! – the only stipulations are the work must be delivered to the public through digital channels and it must be in collaboration. The four selected participants will benefit from a residency fee of £1000, guidance and support from The Arab British Centre and a dedicated mentor from a cultural organisation. The works created will be featured on the Making Marks website, the digital home of all artworks created under the programme, and participants will benefit from a social media campaign promoting their work globally across both the Arab British Centre and British Council channels.

You can explore the work created by Rawan AlMahrouqi and Alexis Maxwell, and Alaa Tarabzouni and Ellie Niblock as part of the Summer Residency which ran from July-August 2020.

Eligible Participants

• Are creative practitioners/artists of any discipline aged 18-30 and based in the United Kingdom or in the GCC (countries include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates).
• Have an interest in collaborative working and in digital creative production. This project will rely on the participants being comfortable and excited about creating new digital work and incorporating technology into their practices – a good base level understanding of social platforms and digital technologies is therefore desirable.
• Must be available to participate in the project during the dates specified in the Open Call.
• Participants will also be encouraged to document their experiences of the collaboration through their and the Centre’s social media channels.
• Creative possibilities of digital technologies and collaboration across borders are at the core of this project, so a good sense of teamwork, curiosity for exploring new ideas, and strong and open communication skills are essential qualities.
• The programme will be run in English. A conversational level of English is desirable. Written work can be submitted in Arabic for translation by the Arab British Centre. Please do get in touch if you wish to discuss this and think that there may be ways we can support you.
• A pair cannot be changed once the project has commenced, and it is each pair’s responsibility to ensure that they work well together to produce the project outcomes.
• Participants must have internet access to take part in this residency

Committed by the Participant

We are looking for responses that will explore the connectivity and capacity of current digital tools and social platforms. Participants commit to:

• Take part in weekly mentoring sessions and delivery of artist response throughout the month of the programme (from mid-January to mid-February)
• Artists must be able to commit to a minimum of 2 hours of contact time with the Arab British Centre and/or lead mentor per week of the programme, and dedicate sufficient time to deliver their project over the month. Please note: time management will be the responsibility of the collaborating pairs.
• Submit final work by the agreed date.
• Share their progress and participation through social media channels
• Deliver participatory activities in line with project and agreed with the Arab British Centre (talk, workshop, Insta-live, etc).

Offered by The Arab British Centre

• £1000 artist fee (per participant). This includes development and delivery
• £500 material budget available per paired group (upon budget submission and approval by the Arab British Centre)
• Note: Material budgets will be paid upfront upon submission and approval of proposal and budget. 40% of participation fee will be paid up-front, 60% of participation fee will be paid on completion of the project.
• Weekly mentoring/crit sessions with Arab British Centre, lead mentor and visiting artists and curators (Delivered via Zoom)
• The Arab British Centre will actively support participants to build professional networks and connections.
• Communications support and dissemination of work online

How to Apply

Fill out the online application form on the Making Marks website in English or Arabic and remember to include/send:

• A 90 second video of you telling us about yourself and your work in English. Production value is not important – a selfie video is fine! – we just want to hear you talk about your work in your own words.
• An artist CV, portfolio or link to your current website and social media channels

Note: Applicants who applied for the previous ConnectME residency are welcome to apply again.