Here’s wishing you all the best for 2009 – let’s all keep making things happen!

We had our first dinners at the newly ‘upgraded’ Edge just before Christmas – and they were great. Just before Shannon left we held a dinner for our first interviewees and allies for our Echoes from the Edge project. Over 20 of us sat down to a delicious pot luck feast and had a really fantastic evening of food and chat – see the pic below:

inaugral EFTE dinner

Following this we held another meal for old friends from the Curio City Shop, which was also wonderful and gave us a chance to catch up and keep in contact with the very special people from Five Ways and beyond. We are also well on the way to making the work for ‘Iland Life’ – we’ll be hosting an exhibition of the work at the Edge during late January/early February – watch this space or go over to ‘Iland Life’ for details.

Shannon and Tim from Boston’s Touchable Stories are currently visiting to help work on our ‘Echoes From The Edge’ project.  The project is developing nicely and we’ve begun the long process of interviewing a whole range of residents in Highgate and Digbeth and are having our first community dinner with the initial interviewees and artists in our partially refurbished space. We’re looking for more residents, community groups and workers from Digbeth, Highgate and Deritend who would like to join in with the project as it develops, particularly interviewees, resident artists and cooks, if you are interested in getting involved, get in touch.

Stage one of the refurb at The Edge is complete, with Dave Walker and his team beavering away over the last couple of weeks on renovating the space. So we’ve now got new, downstairs ‘facilities’ and disability access, double glazing, insulation and, best of all, extremely efficient (and toasty) new heating system.  We’re now working on stage 2, putting in a kitchen for all those dinners, new lighting and a nice lick of paint – any volunteers appreciated!

Last night we had our first ‘make and do’ party at the Edge.  About 20 artists, musicians, performers and others met and ‘jammed’ the night away.  Highlights included John McQueens portraits of people sitting in half of a boat we have in the studio at the moment (don’t ask), with a massive projection screen showing photographic backdrops – we’ll post some of the results in a couple of days, Sandra improvising screwed up country songs with the musicians, including live slide guitar and Rob Hewitt the artist’s stencilling workshops.  A fantastic night was had by all and established ‘Make and Do’ as a regular feature from now on at the Edge, get in touch for details of how to get involved.

Don’t forget that next Saturday night, December 6th, is the next ‘Outersight’ psynema night, ‘Rise of the Robots’ science fiction spectacular featuring the usual mix of bizarre shorts, with a feature film, some live theremin if we’re lucky and futuristic cocktails to sip.

‘Heard and Not Seen’ has just finished the first exhibition outing at the Mailbox.  A wonderful response, with over a thousand vistors to the show, and a great series of group discussions with a huge range of people.  The project continues over at the website, before a series of further exhibitions next year, at community venues, galleries and museums.  Keep checking in at the website, leave your comments, stories or questions and help us continue to develop this important project, and the dialogue it creates.

Hello everyone.

We’ve all been a tad busy over the last week or so, putting the final touches to the Heard and Not Seen show at the Mailbox, Birmingham. It looks absolutely stunning and we had over 200 people crammed into the space during the launch on November 7th.  Don’t despair if you couldn’t make it, the show will run daily (including Sundays) until the 28th, so get yourself along and spend a bit of time with the work, I guarantee that it will be worth it (and I’ll make you a cuppa if I’m on invigilation rota, if you ask nicely). I’ll post some pics here as soon as we’ve got them, but head over to the project site for more goodies. I’ll be taking advantage of the free wifi to update regularly, so keep checking back for more info.

Last week we hosted ‘Outersight 3′ the Halloween special, where we all chilled out to Scott and the gang’s usual eclectic mix of shorts, clips and a feature showing of the excellent ‘Phantasm’.  Outersight 4 – the Rise of the Robots Sci-Fi spectacular is planned for Saturday December 6th, we’ll keep you posted.  See you at the Edge…