It’s been a rocky five years for many of us. It’s definitely been a rocky five years for the arts. And if you are an artist based in Coventry, it’s been a right rocky rollercoaster of a five – well actually probably more like ten – years.
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Guest blog by Chris Rolls of 64 Million Artists reflecting on the Community Changemaker training he led for a cohort of our Citizens’ Assembly participants
Creative dialogue leads to good things. And Creative Citizen Changemakers, the result of conversations between Coventry-based Talking Birds and 64 Million Artists, is a fine testament to this.
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Guest blog from the Creative Accounting research team, reflecting on their recent collaboration with Talking Birds
On 18 May 2023, an unusual event took place at the recently restored Draper’s Hall, a historic building on Bayley Lane in the Cathedral Quarter of Coventry, built in 1832. Eleven professional accountants gathered for a business-style dinner with canapes, drinks and a three-course meal. However, the aim of the event was not to engage in normal accounting business and networking, in fact quite the opposite.
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Let us accept, for a moment, that the idea of a title like City of Culture, that passes from city to city and gives permission for the title-holder to freely play and experiment – to find out what it can achieve through a concentrated period of arts and cultural activity – is a good one.
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Notes taken at the Meeting of the Finance and Corporate Services Scrutiny Board of Coventry City Council – March 29th 2023 for circulation to F13 and other artists in the city. Please note that these are not the official minutes – those will become available via the City Council’s website in due course.
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Losing the City of Culture legacy programme feels like a bereavement, but what the sector is mourning is not the Trust, but the glittering story of a city lifted up and made forever better by arts, culture and creativity. Not because this story didn’t happen, but because it is currently overshadowed and in danger of being drowned out by the story of the failure of the City of Culture Trust.
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Co-AD Janet reflects on today’s NPO (National Portfolio Organisation) announcement from Arts Council England.
The short version of today’s news is that Talking Birds remains in ACE’s portfolio at standstill funding which is, of course, both welcome and a huge relief.
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Co-Artistic Director Janet reflects on the 5G Explorer programme (2/2).
When Coventry University approached Talking Birds about taking part in the 5G Explorer project, we decided to open the opportunity out to some of our ‘freelance family’ to take part with us. We knew that both Steph Ridings (who has worked with us in both a writing and producing capacity) and film maker Rachel Bunce had been developing projects that might benefit from the use of this kind of technology and so the three of us worked together as ‘Team TBs’ for the duration of the project.
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Co-Artistic Director Janet reflects on the 5G Explorer programme.
In 2005, I gave one of the ‘Hothaus Papers’ talks at Vivid. My talk was entitled ‘Are theatre-makers natural net artists?’ and explored some of the crossover techniques that Talking Birds and others were adapting from our experimental theatre practice to the – then relatively new – practice of making natively digital artworks that existed purely on the internet, arguing (spoiler alert) that it was a pretty good fit.
Today marks 2 years since the death of George Floyd. And today the More Than A Moment working group has put out this statement asking organisations that have signed up to the Pledge to publish our action plans so that we can (rightly) be held accountable.
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Co-AD Janet on why we have decided to pause a recruitment process part way through.
Last week we held interviews for the role of Nest Community Connector. We met five really interesting, amazing and unique humans, all of whom would have brought something really interesting to the role and to Talking Birds.
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Twin Song was created in 2014 to mark 70 years since a bond of friendship was formalised between the people of Soviet city Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and the people of Coventry, UK. This pioneering twinning of two cities far apart was instigated by collectives of women in both cities, who exchanged potent symbols of solidarity while WW2 was still raging – the women of Stalingrad sent a book of 30,000 signatures to Coventry; women in Coventry signed and stitched a tablecloth which was sent back along with medical aid for a people emerging from one of the worst sieges in history.
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Words from the Birds 