News
Announcement: Friction Arts is Shortlisted for Civic Arts Award
We are thrilled to have been shortlisted for Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Award for Civic Arts Organisations. The Award ‘highlights and celebrates civic arts organisations and their response to the pandemic’ and will ‘shine a spotlight on the vital role that arts organisations play in sustaining a thrilling, creative, and connected society, particularly during challenging times.’ […]
Announcement: Culture Club and New Partner, Sarah Kaur
We’re adding a new community club for young people: Culture Club. It will celebrate and share the cultural identities of Birmingham’s diverse young people using a wide range of arts techniques, artists and art from around the world. What makes Culture Club different is that the curriculum will be co-designed by the participants themselves, shaped […]
It Gets Lighter from Here: Friction Arts Joins Other Arts Organisations to Bring Hope for 2021
We’re joining up with Culture Central to celebrate the Winter Solstice. But this year’s shortest day is like no other: the hope it symbolically represents has been overshadowed by strict lockdown measures with dancing naked at Stonehenge being ruled out altogether. In response, and alongside lots of arts organisations across the region, we’ve worked with […]
Art Club Halloween event
The virus has meant that we have had to suspend our in-person clubs. While this was a necessary step to take to protect the health of Friction Arts’ staff and our clubs’ parents, carers, and participants, we realise that it’s nobody’s first choice. As a reprieve, we’ve decided to host a special, one-off event for […]
Quiet Carnival
Performance and art 29th August 2020 At the Edge 79-81 Cheapside Deritend B12 0QH Is it safe? As we emerge into a new paradigm, how do artists and audiences get to engage? How do we make ourselves feel safe in a time when going to the shops feels like a game of Russian Roulette? Quiet […]
Covid artist support
During lockdown we’ve been reaching out to artists, some on our Walking Over Coals programme, and in our wider networks, to see if we can lend a hand. When the Emergency Funding support from Arts Council England came out we offered to lend a hand with people writing applications – we only heard back from […]
Super Covid Newsletter

Dear People Hello from us and hope you’re keeping safe in body and sound in mind during this weird glitch in our timelines. We’re keeping busy, as ever. Details on how follow below. Look after yourself and those around you, chill out, you don’t need to write a novel. Eat well, go for a walk – […]
In-Donesia
We’re here in Jogjakarta on a British Council funded exchange with our friends at Lifepatch. They’ve a ‘citizen’s initiative for art, science and technology’ based at their own space here in the city. Jogjakarta is known as an ‘arty’ kind of place with lots of art collectives and individual artists from all kinds of disciplines […]
Forge

Forge Saturday 19th October 10-5pm – Free Forge is a social building event in which people come together to build a colourful semi-permanent structure for the benefit of the area, made entirely using hands-on sustainable compressed-earth building processes. All day on Saturday 19th October we will be testing with participants the brickmaking process at The Edge, and over […]
Women Who Wank
Women Who Wank is a quite remarkable one-woman show about love, life and the other stuff. At times hilarious, at times tender and heart-warming, the improvised show has been a huge touring hit, including several sell-out stints at Edinburgh Fringe. Joanne Tremarco’s wonderful performance skills produce exceptional moments of performance in what is a […]