Birmingham Music Archive has been devised to recognise and celebrate the rich popular musical heritage that has been endemic in the city of Birmingham for over 50 years.

The archive will engender civic pride and tell the stories of musicians, bands, the venues, record shops, managers et al and the impact they have had on the local, national and international music industry. However the archive will encourage and allow the people of Birmingham to share their stories and memories so we build up a picture of how music has helped shape the city and what it is today.

Bluemilkshake Limited is Birmingham’s newest web design and build outfit, catering almost exclusively for the creative and voluntary sectors. Its founder, Mark Steadman has been building websites since 2001 and works with a variety of open source and commercial platforms.

Aswell as building websites, Bluemilkshake also helps clients build social media profiles and digital PR strategies. Whether you’re planning to showcase your work online or you have a great idea for a new web project, Bluemilkshake has a way of making its services affordable.

From November 2008: We extended funding for leadership and management training to businesses with five to ten employees, and freelancers now may access the training.

Starting from January 2009:You can access smaller, focused training programmes in subjects important to your business, including:
business improvement, team working and communications, sales and marketing, customer service, new product design, cash flow and profit management.

Cultivar is currently developing proposals for social media marketing campaigns with clients in a number of areas. To deliver these projects we now seek to develop relationships and alliances with potential production partners. The skills we seek are short documentary and promotional film production and web design/social media expertise to produce three to five minute films for marketing campaigns using web distribution platforms such as Vimeo, Youtube, iTunes, etc. This opportunity has the potential to develop into a stream of regular work over the coming year. If you are interested in collaborating then please get in touch with me for an exploratory conversation.

Jan Faull

Jan Faull

Land of Promise
BFI National Archive

Jan introduced her presentation by talking about the BFI’s desire to be pro-active about providing increased access to our documentary heritage and new opportunities for the content to be seen and re-evaluated by a wider audience.

She has spent the last five years working on collaborative projects with the BBC, such as a three part series ‘The Open Road’ that followed the 1924 journey of Claude Friese-Green, a pioneer of colour cinematography, from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

Most recently, the BFI and the BBC have co-produced ‘The Lost World of Tibet’ broadcast on BBC 4 last March. A rare treasure trove of amazing colour footage, preserved and restored by the BFI, the programme reveals the story of the Dalai Lama and his secret Himalayan kingdom in a way never told before.

The collection was founded in 1935 as part of the BFI’s remit to ‘maintain a national repository of films of permanent value’. The National Archive collects film of all kinds produced in the UK and is the official archive for the terrestrial Television channels of the UK.

The Archive comprises more than 100,000 non-fiction titles and is one of the largest and most diverse non-fiction moving image collections in the world. The BFI is rightly proud of its achievements and believes that film and television have the power to enhance all our lives. The digital age has the potential to offer access to the Archive by greater numbers of people than ever before.

The 2007 Centenary of the birth of several key U.K. Documentary Filmmakers has been marked with the release of ‘ Land of Promise’ – a four disc DVD set with 13 hours of re-mastered footage. A landmark BFI collection, and the first major retrospective of the documentary film movement during its period of greatest influence. These films - many of which are being made available here for the first time since their original release - capture the spirit and strength, concerns and resolve of Britain and its people before, during and after the Second World War.

These diverse and compelling films are fascinating historical documents, bearing witness to the social and industrial changes of the rapidly changing world. Yet they are also striking in their different approach to the form. Using poetry, dramatic reconstruction, the techniques of modernism and explicit propaganda, the filmmakers found fresh, new ways to get their message across.

The question of how these films from the 40s and 50s relate to modern society has been explored with the ‘Britain Recut’ series of short films made in association with Mosaic Films. Channel 4 hosted a competition challenging entrants to repurpose selections from public information films of fifty years ago. The four winning entries were transmitted in the Three Minute Wonder slot in May 2008. They form a fascinating look at life in contemporary Britain.

Jan showed us the films - demonstrating the creative potential of such archive material. Andy Glynne, Director of Mosaic Films and Executive Producer of the films, says: “What's really changed in Britain in the past 60 years? Was life really better in the good old days of Empire, dance halls and black and white films? The filmmakers re-think 'modern' issues and find out that perhaps they're not so modern after all. From asylum seekers and working mothers to how we have fun and the amount we consume, it seems some things never change."
The films were:
Anyway, Who Are You? (Dir. Meghan Horvath) Two refugees, fifty years apart, share their oddly similar experience of arriving in London.

A Welcome Return (Dir. Barry J Gibb) If the great British public can't watch their own weight, then perhaps it's time to bring back rationing?

Women Only (Dir. Valeria Coizza) A group of women compare their freedoms - and their constraints - with those of their grandmothers.

Grandpa William (Dir. Barnaby Lankester-Owen) Barnaby Lankester-Owen wants to find out about how people used to have fun. A conversation with his 91 year-old Grandpa William leads to some interesting surprises.

We were enthralled with everything we saw and it was striking to realise the parallels with what’s happening today. These re-workings of archive film combined with purpose shot new footage were incredibly effective in highlighting issues that still resonate with us today. The Director Barry J Gibb has gone on to direct a further series of Three Minute Wonder films for Channel 4.

There followed many questions from the audience and we heard much more about the BFI’s fascinating work and remit as guardians of our vast and growing national film heritage. Jan is a great ambassador for the Archive and the BFI is acutely aware of the responsibility to ensure its continued survival.

The evening was truly inspiring and we owe a big thank you to Jan for taking the time to visit Birmingham and delight Creative Networks with these new takes on our film legacy and demonstrating how the Archive can be used and be as relevant in the 21st Century as it ever was. We hope our applause was ringing in Jan’s ears as she made her way back home. We appreciated her generosity and hope she will visit us again in the not too distant future. www.bfi.org.uk