Museum and Gallery Memberships - Money Saving or Money Draining?

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse is an exhibition on until 20^th April at the Royal Academy. It is a stunning exhibition that I caught a couple of weeks ago. Whilst the two artists mentioned are key features of the exhibition, particularly Monet it is so much more than that. There are works by a range of major names of late 19^th and early 20^th century art world on display.

The show features some of the documents involved in planning Monet’s garden at Giverny and so is much more than your standard exhibition of pictures. It also gives the some of the specific background to what you see.

If you can’t get to Paris to see the art there this is almost as good, particularly as there is one of three part giant murals on display.

I can highly recommend this exhibition to two distinct groups of people: those interested in art and those interested in horticulture.

The price for the exhibition is £17.60 with donation, £16 without. Whilst I can understand why these type of prices are necessary they always remind me of why, where possible, I get a year’s friends membership of somewhere and try to make the most of it if I am going to see one of the big exhibitions. And so it was I have become a friend of the Royal Academy for the year (having worked out I could just about afford it). Aside from the fact I may well (if in London again before it closes) want to see this exhibition again & with my husband I am aware I have never been to a Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and it’s something I fancy doing. Then there is the clinch factor for me…Two:23 has moved from a location near the Tate Modern to a location not too far from the Royal Academy. To me when looking at these things one has to be practical, and the reality is on a day when I am going for the soul food that the worship at Two:23 provides I do like to start at a gallery in order to chill and connect with God in that way first. For me wandering round a gallery getting lost in beauty or challenged by social comment is a spiritual experience. Taking into account the likelihood of going with Karl too it works out more economical over the year.

This is not the only reason I like having a membership though. In addition of allowing you to queue jump (which was a real asset for this exhibition) there is the member’s tea room. Now, these are interesting places where the yummy mummies meet with the genteelly old and artistic third agers who seem to have something of Peter Pan about them.  My favourite was the Tate Modern when you used to be able to lounge about and sun bathe on the terrace roof (going back to just after the millennium).

The Tate Britain realised the benefit of this and in a recent renovation opened a gorgeous one replacing the rather quaint one they used to have.

I was not prepared for the Royal Academy’s version though. They don’t have a friends room they have the Keepers Cottage which is a whole building on the other side of a door. There was something of a feel about Alice in Wonderland in this one.

Then there are the magazines you get as a friend/ member. The Royal Academy (RA) one arrived today and I have to say that whilst I like it I do prefer the typeset of the Tate Magazine. There is less of a coffee table feel to the RA one compared to the Tate but then again you do feel you are reading something very grown up rather than pretentious with the RA one. I have to say I love both because they both actually contain excellent articles which make art even more accessible to the enthusiastic yet untrained visitor (or at least that’s my experience) and widen my knowledge. One thing the RA magazine did have the edge on was the book reviews within it.

Finally you get a 10% discount on most items at the shop and whilst this may not seem to make much of a difference if you add up the odd bits that comes to (through buying things like fridge magnets) together with the exhibitions it makes you realise that this really is a cost effective way to do things.

It’s not just the London Galleries which make membership worthwhile though. As I have previously mentioned one of my first purchases in Birmingham was membership of the Birmingham Museums membership scheme.

This one does not give you a magazine but it does give access to all the main exhibitions at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery together with access to a range of other heritage sites. You also get 10% off in the Edwardian Tea Rooms. Four months in and I think this membership has already paid for itself through multiple visits to the main exhibition (some alone and some with Karl), a couple of meals at the Edwardian Tea Rooms and a visit to the Jewellery Museum for the two of us recently.

Whilst the visit to the Jewellery Museum was a spur of the moment thing and we missed a tour we know we can go and do that again and that to a certain extent we are sorted for the year on local trips out especially when the warmer weather comes and some of the heritage sites closed in winter open again.

So museum and gallery memberships are they worth it or are they a bit like gym memberships where you end up paying over the odds for each visit. Well, in my experienced definitely the former. They can end up providing excellent value for money is used well and provide an excellent form of escape for people who have limited spare time they need to use well. 

Le, Mendelsohn and Mark @ Ikon Galleries Reviewed

The Ikon currently has three new exhibitions: The Colony by Dinh Q. Le, Varna Road by Janet Mendelsohn and 108 Leyton Ave by Kelly Mark. The former takes up the first floor of the gallery and the latter two the second floor and Tower respectively. All three exhibitions run from today (27th Jan) to 3^rd April 2016.

The Colony is a set of films about the Chincha Islands which are based in the South China Sea and are rich in Guano, a bird manure of particular high quality. Upon first sight these films appear another twist on the theme of area of natural beauty which is blighted by now disused factories. The films are shot partly by drone and one gets the feeling that the artist is seeking to use the strategy of subversion in their work. You understand this when in some of the footage you see the drone at work.

It is a clever piece of art, but to me a distant piece. It had the feel of a documentary that you were removed from but one where you appreciated the work of the cameraman and editor. It has an associated event on 17^th March, (as part of the Arts and Science Festival 2016), when Dr. Frank Uekotter, Reader in Environmental Humanities at the University of Birmingham is going to be looking at The Legacy of Guano.

It was unfortunate as I started to make my way around the second floor of the exhibition that the fire alarm went off. It was preview night and the building was full. Whilst the staff were very professional and calm in dealing with the emergency it did take some time to empty. I must admit it left me slightly perturbed. If there had been a real fire and it had taken hold would I have made it out? Yet I know this level of activity in the gallery is not the norm. This was preview night and normally the Ikon is less packed.

When I made it back to the second floor I entered the Janet Mendelsohn Varna Road exhibition. This is a piece of social history made up of black and white photographs which is well curated and presented. In addition to the main Exhibition Guide there is a sheet outlining the title (and subject matter of each photo). It is an exhibition of works lent by the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham.

Wandering round one was struck by the images of the period. Images one would not have been surprised to see in films such as Cathy Come Home. That is perhaps not surprising as that film was produced in the mid-1960s and these photographs were taken between 1967 and 1969 when Mendelsohn was a student at the University of Birmingham. She was studying within the renowned Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) with its neo-Marxist focus on cultural analysis.

Her photo essay of this area of Balsall Heath and particularly the life of a sex worker she befriended are a clear exploration of the connections between ethnicity, class and location.  They do not seek to romanticise rather they seek to make the viewer question both their own assumptions and what they are seeing.

There is an associated People's Archive Event on 12th and 13th March where people are invited to come in and share their memories, stories, photos and memorabilia of this former red light district which was so much more than that as Mendelsohn shows us.

I really enjoyed this exhibition with its focus on social history and cultural studies. That of course is in a large part because it hit on my own area of interest, (in a way that the 1^st floor exhibition hadn’t). I also was interested to see how, again, the legacy of the late Stuart Hall lives on in the work of the Ikon. I hope at some point they may consider a full exhibition dedicated to him and his influence.

 

The third and smallest exhibition was more of a traditional piece of art and less of an inter-disciplinary exploration. It was a film which was very cleverly put together by the artist. This film by the Canadian Artist is built upon clichés which relate to the concepts of “everything” and “nothing”. Kelly Mark uses split screen projection to have a conversation with herself which looks like it might be twins bickering.

In addition to being very clever in production it is also clever in that it is based upon a deceiving simplicity. I found myself connecting with this film much more easily than the Dinh Q. Le films because whilst it challenged me to think it was easy to connect with.

So an exhibition with three parts over two floors. All are worth a look and this is an exhibition that is definitely worth giving time to. With the films making up a large percentage of the work on display you need to allow time to watch a good chunk of each.

This is not the only art in the building though. On the way out I noticed a glass ear trumpet which I had not seen there before.  This piece enabled one to listen to the outside world in a mediated way and was fascinating.

Then there was the temporary unintentional art left by people who had either left in a hurry or deposited glasses and guide during the fire alarm. I am a great believer in keeping your eyes open because you often find art in the everyday, not just in the work produced by great artists as are on display here.

Favourite Music, Books and Exhibitions from 2015 Revisited

So we’re coming to the end of 2015 and I am rounding off with a list of my “favourites” of 2015.

Best Live Act

Skinny Lister – saw them at Cambridge Folk Festival and absolutely loved them, as detailed in my review of the festival. Also really enjoyed their Down on Deptford Broadway album.

Best Album

This was a hard category. I was very tempted to go for a Skinny Lister double, but The Young ‘Uns Another Man’s Ground gets it primarily for the track “You Won’t Find Me on Benefits Street” but is overall a great album, which I reviewed here.

Best New Act

This year I have encountered loads of great new music. This has to go to Lady Sanity though. As this post on the Radio Six Music Introducing event at the Hare and Hounds says I was blown away by her. However, I have to say that Finch and the Moon were great too. Note I am not including Skinny Lister because whilst they were new to me Down on Deptford Broadway was their second album.

Best Festival

Cambridge Folk Festival was wonderful this year. Absolutely loved it. The Birmingham Literature Festival came in very close to this one and I was unsure whether to go for this one in first place. This post links to my review of my favourite Lit Festival Event.

Best Non-Religious Book

The Mistresses of Cliveden by Natalie Livingstone. This one was a bit of an impulse book and it really caught my imagination, as I made clear in my review.

Best Religious Book

Mission on the Road to Emmaus: Constants, Context and Prophetic Dialogue edited by Cathy Ross and Stephen Bevans. This was a deep book which is well worth more than one reading. This is my review from my other blog.

 

Best UK Exhibition

At Home with Vanley Burke at the Ikon Gallery. This was a full installation and it really caught my imagination, as the obligatory blog review shows. This category was a very close run thing with Provincial Punk by Grayson Perry which was on at the Turner Contemporary in Margate coming in as a close second. This was again reviewed on my other bin a post which also gives mention of Leonie Dawson's Life and Biz workbook which if it had a category would be my best self-improvement tool of the year.

Best International Exhibition

This has to go to the John Paul Gaultier Exhibition in Paris which was amazing. The post where I reviewed this is placed at the bottom of this page and again originally appeared on my other, personal, blog.

The Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition at the Grand Palais is both stylish and innovative, as one might expect from an exhibition this designer has a hand in. It mixes media involving photography and music as well as textiles.

It’s not your average exhibition, unlike the neighbouring American Icons. That exhibition which is on in another part of the same venue until 22nd June 2015 describes itself as “60 emblematic works from the SFMOMA and the Fisher collection (one of the world’s largest private modern and contemporary art collections, now curated by the museum).” To be fair it’s not bad containing some works by both Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein which I hadn’t come across in their retrospectives at the Tate Modern but it is distinctly underwhelming compared to the Gaultier exhibition which is an experience designed to draw the visitor into an experience.

There are photos and artifacts which reference Gaultier’s early life and influences but this is minimal because the focus is on his haute couture.

The sailor suit stripes are part of the designers own trademark look and are shown in a variety of ways, most strikingly by a manikin in a  jumper and neckerchief. This was no standard manikin though, as with several others it was an android programmed to speak to you as it displayed Gaultier’s face.

There was a Dr. Who feel to these manikins which, on occasion, were ready to make eye contact with you which Karl found unsettling.

As I said the clothes were the central focus of this exhibition and you were reminded of this as you moved into a room with a revolving catwalk. On one side sat a range of guests he’d dressed including Nana Mouskouri and Conchita Wurst. On the other stood a range of London Punks alongside Bowie and Boy George. This was pure beautiful art.

Wedding dresses, corsets and Madonna cones mixed with bondage style wear and more as you worked your way through an array of beautiful and challenging style.

The architecture of the building housing the exhibition was also used to maximum affect as you made your way up a sweeping stone staircase which was lit and had pumping music to a space where you could watch a film illustrating the sheer diversity of the models Gaultier used.

My one criticism was that on the whole the manikins did not reflect the diversity and inclusion the designer is famous for.

Would I recommend a trip to this exhibition? Certainly, indeed whilst we discovered this quite by accident whilst wandering through the city towards the Champs Elysees and Arc de Triumph I would say that for the true love of fashion and spectacle it may worth a trip to the French capital. This was one of the best curated exhibitions and certainly one of the most innovative I’ve encountered. Also in France you get the benefit of being able to take photos of these exhibitions if you wish, although this wasn’t the case for the David Bowie Is exhibition on at the Philharmonie De Paris  until the 31st May 2015.

The Bowie exhibition was what had initially prompted our trip, having missed it at the V & A but having been memorized it via event cinema. It was a good exhibition with a number of original song lyrics and videos of Bowie’s classics as well as costumes and other memorabilia but after the Gaultier exhibition it had neither the impact or wow factor it may otherwise have done. Indeed whilst technologically advanced in many ways it seemed dated compared to the manikins at the Grand Palais. The venue for the Bowie exhibition in an outlying part of Paris was interesting, yet it required a specific visit. Unlike the Gaultier this was never going to be one of those wonders you unexpectedly come across. 

Soul Food: More Art and Music in Birmingham

Pre-Raphaelite art, nativity trails, Martyn Joseph and soul boats have all featured in my most recent travels around Birmingham. I’ve been enjoying the soul food all of these have provided.

To give you a taste of this menu for the senses I start with a taster of what you can find just wandering around the city at the moment. The German Market is taking over most of the city centre and the stalls provide a picturesque walk down between Symphony Hall and Grand Central (New Street Station). At the far end by the Rep and the Library it stands under the shadow of a giant observation wheel and next to a seasonal skating rink. This all provides a picturesque wander around the city, particularly at night. Looking in the windows you can also find wonders such as the Teddy Nativity in the Cancer Research Shop. Then there is also the Bull in the Bullring which has been festively dressed.

The Nativity can also be found through art in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. This trail through the free areas of the museum begins with a beautiful stained glass window Peace and Goodwill by Henry Payne. It was originally in the Methodist Chapel in Cradley Heath and as that place closed has since ended up in the museum. The sheet you use to guide you then takes you on to the work of Edward Burne-Jones, Arthur Hughes, Giovanni Bellini, Orazio Gentileschi and Adrien Isenbrandt amongst others. The Burne-Jones painting The Star of Bethlehem was particularly striking as was The Nativity by Arthur Hughes. The latter was the painting that most got me to stop and reflect on what insight the painting could give me into the bible passages which were familiar. Mary is very young in this picture and whilst not Mediterranean or middle-eastern in appearance there was something more earthy about her than in many other pictures.

Hughes nephew E.R. Hughes is the subject of the current headline exhibition at the gallery Enchanted Dreams. It focuses on his Pre-Raphaelite work and has a mixture of conventional portraits and more imaginative work which seems to mix the colour influences of the impressionists with the style of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Amongst his portraits of children one of Bell and Dorothy Freeman was particularly striking in its beauty. Another one of the portraits which was particularly beautiful was “Study of a Female Head”.  

The central part of the exhibition was Blue Phantasies, a series of paintings he made during the earliest twentieth century. There were three of these paintings which I found particularly beautiful. The first was “The Valkyrie’s Vigil” which was a wonderful mixture of purples and blues. The second was Wings of the Morning which was a beautiful woman flying in the nature of an angel. She represented the light which comes with dawn.  The final one which I loved was “Midsummer Eve” where a mixture of magical folk surround a fairy princess. This exhibition does cost if you don’t have a museums and galleries membership card, but as I have said before it is well worth the cost if you can get one. This was my second visit to the exhibition and no doubt not my last. It is a beautiful piece of calm amid a very busy city at the moment.

St. Phillip's Cathedral has completed their renovation work and has a great piece of community art by Jake Lever called Soul Boats in there. It is a piece which hangs from the ceiling and is well worth a look if you are in the area, and of course it is free to view.

Moving out of the city centre itself I have discovered the suburb of Kings Heath and the Hare and Hounds pub which is one of the significant smaller venues in the city. Tonight it hosts a BBC 6 Music BBC Introducing night, which we have tickets to – having been successful in a free ticket ballot – last night we paid to go and see Martyn Joseph.

This is not the first time I have seen this talented Welsh singer-songwriter (as detailed in my previous review of a gig of his) but there was something palpably different about this one. The anger and angst of the past was gone and seemed to have been replaced by an acceptance of himself. He was clearly aware of this change and at the end of the gig explained to the audience it is because he has moved into a new chapter of his personal life.

The importance of his Welsh identity continued to be central to his set. It was good to hear Please Sir as well as Cardiff Bay and Dic Penderyn (The Ballad of Richard Lewis) – that latter of which kicked off his set.

These older numbers were not the only ones which audience members were familiar with. He went back to the early days with Friday but Sunday’s Coming. There was debate amongst our group of when we first heard it. Having looked back at the sleeve notes in Don’t Talk about Love: Martyn Joseph Live ’92-02 it seems that that track goes back at least to the early ‘90’s.

Amongst the older stuff there was also Kiss the World Beautiful which was resurrected on last year’s album of the same name which was put together to support the Let Yourself Trust, which Martyn has founded to support small grass roots projects in the UK and abroad.

The Luxury of Despair was also a song on the Kiss the World Beautiful CD. This track has also made it on to the new CD Sanctuary. Much of the rest of the set was material from this new album. There was a moving track called Her Name is Rose which was about his mum and celebrating her 80^th birthday and Girl Soldier was also very moving.

His current single off Sanctuary is called I Searched for You which had a catchy sing along chorus.

The venue was quite intimate and suited this type of folk gig well. That combined with there was a bit more music and less chat than in some gigs meant this was one of the best gigs I have seen him play over the last 29 years, and there’s been a few. 

New Art in Birmingham

Birmingham is great, you can find yourself encountering new and interesting art without too much effort. Today we did it by popping into the Waterhall Gallery, which is part of the main Museum and Art Gallery in Birmingham and discovering their Salon 2015 exhibition which is on until the 23^rd December. The other day it was done by going for a bit of a wander and encountering the street art in the Digbeth area, around the Custard Factory.

The Salon exhibition is a selling exhibition organised by New Art West Midlands. It features work by a number of artists including well respected ones such as Vanley Burke and Boyd and Evans.

The range of styles is wide but the exhibition hangs together well and does not appear too overcrowded.

One can certainly enjoy without buying. Although if you are seriously interested in collecting interesting new art which may rise in value this is probably a good way to do it.

There were some really interesting pieces in the exhibition, but unfortunately I did not take a note of their numbers and artists. So apologies for those I cannot credit for their work as I describe it.

The first piece to catch my husband’s eye was of an Afro-Caribbean child surrounded by white dolls. It was one of the deeper pieces of the exhibition.

There was a film of a train journey taken from the cab of a train at various points in the year. This captured my husband’s attention too.

We were both enthralled by a swing which stood as a sculpture. The seat had somehow been suspended in mid swing and it was interesting to think about how that might have been achieved.

One of my favourite pieces was a small picture of Malala which was in paint and had three blocks of colour within it. The reason that I loved this was that unlike many pictures and photographs of this amazing young woman the artist had captured her youth. There was something within this which captured the teenager rather than the stateswoman.

There were also a couple of play houses where the entrances had been boarded up and windows blocked, but this was done in the same kind of plastic the houses had been made of. It was really effective and fun.

Finally there were a couple of limited edition fabric bags – costing far less than the main art. Buying one of these, which captured my sense of humour, as a part of my Christmas present was as far as our budget would go. Yet even that is still art, we are intending to hang it in our lounge.

This really was an art fair which catered for a wide range of interests and budgets and is well worth a look. Another way to buy art in Brum is to support the City of Colours Winter Jam which is a fundraiser happening on the 5^th  December.

There is a great deal of street art around especially in Digbeth. A couple of weeks ago after going to see the Punk Rock!! So What? exhibition at Birmingham City University’s Millennium Point Campus Parkside Gallery. I went on a wander round looking at some. I went wandering on my own but I am aware that there are Birmingham Street Art tours available. (The Mockingbird Theatre within the Custard Factory is where I think I picked up a flyer about it them).

This varied from the strange to the very moving; the small to the massive and the amateur to the professional. Some of them worked well because of their location, some seemed out of place being placed in the midst of urban decline. Some reflected the way the arts are regenerating the area others didn’t.

There were a couple of pieces which really struck me as I wandered round, including the image at the top of this post. As is the nature of street art I don’t know the artists and so cannot acknowledge them but as I say they really moved me. with the depth of what their work was saying. 

 

The angel particularly resonated with me and I regard it as one of the most spiritual images I have been able to engage with. In the unlikely event the artist ever reads this all I can say is thank you for your work. You are incredibly talented and I hope it is ok with you that I will be using this as a worship resource in coming months and probably years.

 

Gadding about on a Budget in Brum

As regular readers will know I have recently found myself living in Birmingham on a somewhat limited budget. My husband is a student presbyter which means we are now living in a vicar factory. He is becoming trained whilst I am learning to be a “clergy spouse”.

I’m discovering there are a range of strategies one can engage for surviving this.  Mine is to escape the environment as much as possible and to enjoy this city fate, God or the Methodist Church (take your pick) has landed us in – on a budget.

This involves looking for a mix of free events, cheap events and ways to save money over the year. Birmingham is the sort of city which enables this. Here are some of my tips of what is coming up and what you might be able to enjoy as well as good ways to find things.

Visual Art and Galleries

In Birmingham many of these are free. You can look round the main Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for free as you can the Barber Institute of Fine Arts and the Ikon Gallery.

The Ikon’s current exhibition Fiona Banner’s Scroll Down and Keep Scrolling is free to access and is one of the things you can enjoy on October 30^th if you take advantage of the Art Bus between 5 and 9pm. It will be going between the three galleries already mentioned and the mac Birmingham. There will be introductory talks and refreshments at each gallery. The Art Bus is part of Galleries Night where a range of galleries up and down the country will be opening their doors late. In Birmingham visitors can also visit the Parkside Gallery which will be hosting Punk Rock So What. It is on until 13^th November. Really looking forward to this exhibition and the art within it. Not sure if it will have any textiles or not, but Punk produced some great art.

There are also various bits of public art you can find in the city. For example outside Snow Hill Station there was a range of photographs I saw when wandering about last Saturday.

The Custard Factory is also worth discovering to see what they have going on, at the moment it includes a giant mural I believe.

Whilst much of this is free, encouraging you to give the donation you can afford and so allowing all to enjoy there are some things going on which make a charge.

The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery currently has Enchanted Dreams: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of E.R. Hughes. This beautiful exhibition which has a range of late Victorian and Edwardian art is on until the 21^st February 2016. The entry charge for this is £7 for adults (full price and free for children), but if you are going to visit the gallery regularly you can get membership for £25. This gets you into everything for the year, and £42 for a joint membership. You also get 10% off in the Edwardian Tea Room within this as well as entry to a range of other galleries owned by Birmingham Council including the Museum of theJewellery Quarter which has a £6 adult entry.

This means that you can find the money to pay out for the pass you are going to get a number of good days out from it.

Music and Laughter

There is so much going on in the city from big venues to small pubs that there is something for everybody, whatever the budget.

If you are on a budget look out for open mic nights, which there are now web sites specifically advertising. The Crescent Theatre has a range of affordable shows on offer and on November 2^nd they have a free night offering a range of music. You are advised to book in advance for this one.

The Glee Club in Birmingham has a range of music and comedy acts for a range of budgets. On November 1^st they have a Rough Works showcase of local comics which is £4 entry.

If you are into classical music then it is possible to see some really high class stuff on a regular basis if you can get to the Friday lunchtime concerts at the Barber Institute.

The Birmingham Conservatoire also has a range of affordable high quality jazz and classical events including Monday lunchtime show cases.

Festivals

I am learning to keep my eyes open for festivals in Birmingham. Some like the Birmingham Weekender are free whilst others like theBirmingham Literature Festival involve a cost.

Now, this is where you have to make a judgement call about what you can afford and what you are likely to want to attend. I invested the £60+ in a ticket for the literature festival because there was lots I wanted to see and I knew with my limited budget I could just about manage this outlay and for it I could see far more of the festival than I would have been otherwise done. I know not everybody has this option, but if you can it is one worth considering.

The upcoming festival in November I am looking forward to is Shout: The festival of queer arts and culture which goes on from 12^th – 22^nd November. Some events are free whilst others have a cost involved.

Amongst the free events is an afternoon at the mac on 14^th November between noon and 5pm. There will be music, film and more going on. The thing about these festivals is they have a range of stuff going on and you pick what meets your budget.

Other Stuff

Birmingham Cathedral has been celebrating its 300^th anniversary this year. As part of this they have been putting on a range of lectures. We attended one on Saturday where Dr. Kate Isles was talking on Women in Birmingham during the 18^th century. These lectures cost £4 but are of a really high standard. Again the Cathedral also has odds and ends of free stuff if you want to keep your eye open.

If you are a film buff on a tightish (but not really low) budget I really recommend the Cineworld Unlimited Card to you. For £16.90 you get the chance to go and see any standard 2D film and get 10% off food and drink. After the first year you are upgraded to Premier membership and get a higher discount off food and drink. This means if you go for the £1.50 flavour of the month of the ice-cream (which you still get a discount on) things become a lot more affordable, especially if you take your own drinks, etc.

Then there are public spaces like the Library of Birmingham you can go and enjoy, as well as borrowing books in. These provide spaces you can sit and chill in which get you out of home. There are also loads of parks and public spaces to enjoy in Brum.

Travel wise work out what your travel will be per week to sort out the cheapest forms of travel for you. For me, because of my job, it is a zone 1 and 2 West Midland travel card. This enables me to get in and out of town from where we are but it also enables me to pay £1 for my husband to get in and out of town with me because we have a travel card.

A final idea is join a reading group and if there is not one nearby start one. I have been one as part of the last few churches I have been part of and have started one up for my neighbours in the vicar factory. If you choose books which have been out a while and which libraries will have too you can make these affordable.

 

 

 

There are loads of other things which people could tell me about and I hope they do. These are just a flavour of the things I've found out about whilst I've been here through keeping my eyes and ears open. I've really found out how the internet is your friend when you move to a new town.

As you can tell I am enjoying myself in Brum. My advice on how to survive becoming a “(trainee) clergy spouse” is to go and enjoy yourself. A new location is the gate way to a new adventure and getting out by yourself doesn’t mean being by yourself. 

#LoveBrum Review 2

Another weekend exploring Birmingham on a budget – this time with the benefits of the Birmingham Weekender Festival as we wandered around.

First stop after a beautiful stroll down the canal into the city was the IKON gallery, as I introduced Karl to the Vanley Burke exhibition (which I have previously reviewed) before it disappeared. I love this space which is free to enter and it was great revisiting the Burke exhibition and getting to notice some of the detail I missed the first time round.

The gallery is providing one of the venues for the forthcoming Birmingham Literature Festival. This weekend the space outside provided one of the venues for the Birmingham Weekender events. One of the acts on there we enjoyed was The Choir With No Name. Looking at this choir it was obvious this was a scratch choir with a purpose for the participants. They gave a great performance of a range of songs from the sixties to the present. Whilst there were aspects of the performance which could have been a bit more polished they were very good and any odd (and they were very few and far between) deficiencies in quality were certainly made up by passion.

From there we wandered through to the new Library of Birmingham via the Birmingham Rep where Karl played dressing up. Like Manchester’s redesigned library this is a building which is intended very much to be a community destination. It has a very contemporary design but is also quite classic. As we went exploring we saw signs to “The Secret Garden”. This got us interested and so we headed up to the seventh floor, (squeezing in to lifts which are a tad too small, and listening to random Shakespeare quotes within said elevator). The secret garden was more than we expected. It really is a beautiful space where plants and seating provide a place to chill and be whilst looking out over the ever changing city. On a fine day like we had it was a wonderful place to be….and being a public library it is free. As somebody who used to enjoy sitting and reading up on the Tate Modern members room rooftop terrace when I was in the south I was excited to discover this space. There is a Coke machine in the nearby corridor if you want to pick up a drink whilst you’re up there. One of the things I loved about this though was it was a non-commercial area.

Then it was off to the Museum and Art Gallery to have a wander round and pick up a snack. One of the things we wanted to do was visit the Edwardian Tea Rooms. Now, we were a bit worried about what the price would be and were ready to be really careful. Yet, we were surprised. For under £14 we were able to get a great lunch. Karl got a big bacon butty with door steps of bread and a tasty, healthy, fresh salad together with a drink whilst I got one of the best tea and scone combo’s I’ve ever had. The tea came out in a huge metal tea-pot and I was worried how I was going to get through it, but in reality it was enough for two large cups. There was a lovely tea strainer to use and the tea was not bad. It was the scones, cream and jam which got me though. I was completely bowled over.

There were four small scones who came out on a log tray with a small glass jar with strawberry jam in and another with clotted cream. The scones were still warm and were just the right consistency, so they weren’t dry or too crumbly. The one drawback was our cutlery holder was out of knives so we had to go and raid a nearby cutlery tin.

As we sat in the comfortable arm chairs looking at the art on the wall and the museum gallery above we reflected on whether this was value for money or not. Now, it was a little more expensive than you would normally pay for lunch but not that much more. We sat and reflected how much you would spend in Starbucks for a drink and sandwich or cake and the difference was not as much as you would think. Additionally, the butty was much larger than you would get and the scones were something you would not pick up in an average coffee shop. Yes, this is a treat not an every weekend thing but in an otherwise free day it was well worth the investment.

After eating we wandered round the museum which gave an enlightening insight into Birmingham’s past. The thing I found most interesting was reflecting on the reason why migration has been so central to the city…..the fact it was not given a royal charter and so had more freedoms to offer religious dissenters and others who may have been viewed as undesirable at various points of our history as well as being a manufacturing centre.

The history’s past wealth does have the shadow of slavery hanging over it and this was acknowledged in an appropriate way without dwelling on it.

Overall, I enjoyed wandering round and feeling that this museum was rooted in the same kind of values as those in Liverpool and Glasgow. Social history has been important and remains so.
 

After we left this magnificent building we headed round the corner to Victoria Square where we picked up some more of the festival. We found seats on artificial grass and were able to enjoy the Hackney CollieryBand playing their contemporary brass. The band had a new Sax player who was particularly talented. The sound quality wasn’t always great, as is often the case with such events where the PA can be a bit dodgy but the music was great and the mixed age crowd had fun.

So far loving exploring this new city which has so much to offer in terms of history, culture and art.

At Home With Vanley Burke @ IKON Reviewed

As the leaves turn and Starbucks start selling their Pumpkin Spice latte I am hitting the galleries at the end of their summer exhibitions.

Today I found my way to the IKON gallery which has At Homewith Vanley Burke on its First Floor Galleries until 27th September.

This is an installation which contains the entire contents of Burke’s flat in Nechells, north east Birmingham according to the accompanying blurb. It was interesting to hear one of the gallery staff explain they did get him stuff from Ikea to use whilst the exhibition is going on.

I found this approach and installation fascinating and really interesting.

Readers of the work of Stuart Hall the late cultural studies theorist will be unsurprised to find overlaps with what Hall talked about and what is represented in this exhibition. It is a collection which showcases not only Burke’s photography but also an extensive archive of objects relating to black culture in Britain.

There were a range of things within the collection which caught my interest. The first was a collection of news stand sheets (i.e. the sort advertising that days headlines) relating to Handsworth which were in the hallway. These were a visual representation of how moral panic works and the scare stories which have been put forward about black men particularly.

This installation, particularly many of the photographs of the early 1980’s, explained why the neo-Marxist interpretation of the treatment of Afro-Caribbean youth, particularly men, is valid. It showed the way in which the police have sometimes treated minority ethnic groups in this country and the way they have had to organise themselves as a result.

The exhibition also contained a number of posters and so on relating to the anti-apartheid struggle which was occurring when South Africa was under white minority rule. These clearly explained what the purpose of the struggle was and how the campaign was certainly not just white liberals in this country.

Amongst the traditional African art which also hung on the walls were some Victorian Christian images of the sort that the UK church now tends to be embarrassed of. This was interesting to me because I know it illustrates a Christian view which still persists in the mind of some minority ethnic groups. It is the image given to them by the missionaries which was last seen reflected in the 1933 Methodist Hymn Book, a hymn book which is still the preferred one for use in Ghana for example.  

As a white liberal I found the persistence of these images cringe worthy, yet I knew they had a place and when we seek to say they no longer have worth we are denying part of somebody else’s culture somehow. I have not explained this well but their inclusion in the installation was challenging to me.

I liked the pile of tapes which were in one room because they held nostalgia for an England that used to be when I was a teenager.

There were also numerous other pieces around which caught my imagination but the most important thing was the whole of this piece. There was an authenticity about it which one so rarely finds, particularly in a gallery.

Social history and art are often one, but somehow iconic images which are part of the social history become sanitised in a gallery space. This exhibition avoided that sanitation and the fact it was a whole flat made it feel. It also had a very comfortable feel to it.

For me a good gallery can be a sacred space and a place to connect with God as you wander through it encountering the images which often vary between the erotic, disturbing and distorted, and the amazingly beautiful. There is also space to breathe in a gallery. As I wandered through IKON I could feel that connection with the spiritual as I encounter it. I have a feeling this will be that place I go when I just need to breathe in large breaths of the sacred just as the Tate Modern was when I lived in the South.