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Pioneering typographer, sleeve designer and artist Swifty will be setting up shop at the Sauce Gallery in Birmingham’s Custard Factory from Saturday 12th December. Everything from originals and one off prints to T-shirts, skateboards and stickers will be for sale in The Swifty Pop Shop.

The Pop Shop, which is being brought to Birmingham by Sauce Gallery and Punch Records, will feature Swifty’s Newsagents installation. This life size shop front was partly inspired by Peter Blake’s ‘Toy Shop’ and the artist’s fond memories of a local village newsagent in Lancashire. The Shop will also be home to the A-Z of Swifty Show, including pieces based around everything from Action Man to Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout.

The Pop Shop is the latest branch of Swifty’s expansive career. Having studied design at Manchester Polytechnic, at the age of 21 he trained under Neville Brody at The Face magazine. His work at The Face and later led him to be recognised as one of the top new talents in the specialist world of typography.

In 1989 he joined the team at Straight No Chaser, a publication aimed at the jazz, jive and soul community. As art editor he drove the creative style that went on to embody the magazine as a whole. At the same time he established his own font company, Swifty Typograpfix, and spread himself between the magazine and producing fonts, record sleeves, club flyer designs and many other sidelines. Swifty dominated the scene, being the designer of choice for nearly every acid jazz label.

Punch Director Ammo Talwar said:

“Swifty is a design legend whose work cuts across all typography boundaries. Bringing the Pop Shop to Birmingham is a real scoop for the city, and will give visitors a rare opportunity to see many of Swifty’s personal projects first hand.”

The Pop Shop will be open to the public at the Sauce Gallery, 5 The Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Digbeth from 11th December to 10th January 2009. For more information visit www.punch-records.co.uk

Inclusion Inspires – music making a difference a free conference delivered by MusicLeader West Midlands, Youth Music and Symphony Hall on Monday 16th November.

For teachers and musicians leading music with young people who have special needs, physical and learning disabilities.

Learn about the best techniques and technologies, share skills and stories and try out the Patrick Music and Multimedia Studio and its equipment. For anyone working with music in school, mainstream or special, youth clubs, health settings, support groups.

This event is free to attend.

For further information contact 0121 236 7978 or west-midlands@musicleader.net

Visit this site for more information… 

Here are a bunch of fireworks displays in and around Birmingham over the next few days. I suggest that you check the details yourself before heading out as some of the events are ticket only. Be careful with them sparklers too and although it may be fashionable to wear 80s clobber these days – please remember the danger of wearing man made fabrics, most especially ’shell suits’ around gun powder and naked flames. It may also be useful to remember the Swine Flu pandemic when bobbing for apples with strangers.

Pype Hayes Park, Birmingham / Fireworks Spectacular / Thursday 5 November

A traditional bonfire night including a spectacular fireworks display and a great fun fair. Visitors are advised not to bring their own fireworks / sparklers. More information

Tamworth Castle Grounds – Bonfire Night Celebrations / Saturday 7th November / More info

The firework show will be put together again by the award winning Dragon Fireworks who wowed the crowds last year, alongside the fireworks, the fair will be in town and there will be numerous entertainers walking around the crowd including jugglers and fire eaters as well as a treasure hunt for the kids.

Ironbridge Gorge Museums – Fireworks Night / Saturday 7th November / More info

Blists Hill Victorian Town will open its doors on the evening of Saturday 07 November for a spectacular Family Fireworks Extravaganza. Visitors will be able to enter Blists Hill at 6pm on the evening of the fireworks event to see the streets illuminated by gaslight as they would have been in the 19th century. The town’s shops, cottages and workshops will be open for visitors to enter and talk to the ‘resident’ Victorians, dressed in the costume of the day, who will answer questions about life in the late 1800s.

Kings Heath Sports Club – Fireworks Extravaganza  /  Sunday 8th November / More info

Gates open at 5pm at the cricket ground, located on Alcester Road South, with a fun fair, live music from Birmingham Conservatoire musicians, a licensed bar plus other refreshments and food and a variety of stalls to keep everyone occupied until the launch at 7pm.

The fireworks display is again being conducted by the West Midlands’ award-winning Jubilee Fireworks, who currently have two British titles to their name and were the first UK company to win the world championships.

We all know that the first rule of fight club is don’t talk about fight club but nobody said a girl can’t blog about it. Birmingham’s answer to fight club uses pens and poscas rather than bare knuckles and fists, but is just as underground and sometimes just as moody.

Secret Wars has been a revelation – A cultural movement that is spreading across the globe! Started in March 06’ (By Monorex kingpin, Terry Guy in London UK) as a testing ground for artists to show the public what they can do. The idea quickly evolved into a knockout cup style contest that now attracts huge crowds of people anywhere it is held.
Seeds, Slobz and Keefy run and maintain the Birmingham rounds.

Secret Wars is the world’s premier live art battle, and in Birmingham…. things get very live.. Illustrator vs graf writer vs comic book writer vs street artist vs toy maker vs animator vs graphic designer etc etc etc …

This dissident group of artists meet regularly at The Rainbow to battle one and other, the rules are simple:

- 90 MINS ON THE CLOCK
- BLACK PAINT ONLY – ON WHITE WALLS!
- NO SKETCHES / NO PENCILS
- INVISIBLE MIDDLE LINE WITH AN ARTIST EITHER SIDE

JUDGED USING A 3 POINT SYSTEM – 2 GUEST JUDGES AND A CROWD VOTE (USING A DECIBEL READER)

GO BIG OR GO HOME!

Much like the 1984 comic Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars the key players from the scene, both evil and good get summoned to the planet “battleworld” in a distant galaxy (The Rainbow in our case) to duel to the death. I wouldn’t like to speculate on who the heroes and their opposing villains are in the Secret Wars Birmingham series but just like in the comics, world domination is getting to look quite attractive. The boys in charge have decided to put together a crack team of artists that can compete in battles throughout the UK and Europe.

Representing our city will be a squad of 5 artists, made up of previous winners Phill Blake and Newso with all round heavy weights in the field of graffiti illustration; Chu & Agent.

With four already in the crew the hunt is on to find the 5^th member, this place will be given to the overall winner of the mini series that kicks off at The Rainbow on Sunday 4th October at 4pm, then on every Sunday through October and November. The official draw was pulled on the Secret Wars radio show on Rhubarb Radio and is as follows: AS-ONE / MIKEY BRAINS / POSH-ONE / ROO / SOL1R / SYLPH / TITLE / TX

For all the info on round one check the facebook page …Let the battle commence!

With London Fashion Week celebrating it’s 25th year    Best Believe has enrolled a super stylish London Fashion Week correspondent Roxanne Tierney.  Originally from Birmingham and now residing in the capital, here in her own words Rox tells you a bit about her fabulous self and what she has been up to during LFW…

So firstly, I was born and brought up in the fabulous Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield, in the glorious West Midlands. I studied Fashion and Clothing at UCE Birmingham, straight after school then went on to a degree in Footwear design at London College of Fashion, in 2004. After a year out to gain relevant work experience I fell in love with the wonderful world of PR and started a 6-month placement at Escada. I then went on to intern at YSL, Stella McCartney and Burberry before going back to uni to get my degree.
I am proud of the fact I remained ‘unemployed’ for approximately 26 hours after leaving university – and was offered my job as a Junior Account Executive at Bryan Morel PR. It’s mostly a Fashion PR agency, run by the women who Absolutely Fabulous was based on (no, really…!) but we also look after two artists and an art gallery.
(My clients include; Debenhams Menswear, John Rocha Menswear, John Smedley menswear, Mango menswear, Thomas Sabo, Oliver Peoples, Mosley Tribes, Ede and Ravenscroft and Energie – others we represent but I don’t work on specifically are John Rocha, Osman Yousefzada, Miss Sixty, Killah, Jeannie McQueenie, John Smedley women’s and kids, Designer shoes from Spain and Mango).

*JOHN ROCHA AND OSMAN YOUSEFZADA ARE SHOWING AT FASHION WEEK AT SOMERSET HOUSE TOMORROW*

It’s basically my job to get the press (everyone from the nationals, Sunday Times Style, Telegraph, Guardian etc and consumer, Vogue, Harpers, GQ, i-D, Dazed, to Regional, Birmingham Style etc) to write about and shoot my clients products. There’s a lot of phone calls, stress about our samples and deadlines – but it’s fun overall.

I’ve actually just got back from my first fashion week party of this season – the Beyond the Catwalk Exhibition at Somerset House (everything is going on here this year – its the new venue to celebrate 25yrs of fashion week). Friend and colleague Kimbo organised the event and sent us tickets yesterday – and although we’re all knackered after working late stuffing press releases into John Rocha folders -we’re all up for some champagne. My colleague Shel, and intern Jenn and I make our way to Somerset House on the tube, ready for a chill out before our mammoth day tomorrow.
It’s all pretty cool – Caryn Franklin was hosting, and apparently Sarah Brown (but I didn’t manage to spot her in the crowd), loads of really beautiful models and stylist press types. Oh and us…

Leave at 10pm and wander to the tube for home time.

Up at an unreasonable hour tomorrow for the 11am John Rocha show. I’m at the office at 9am with colleagues Shel and Seren to collect the press releases. All 4 boxes of them. Thankfully I’ve booked us a car, as we’d die otherwise.
Then at about 1pm when it is all over and John has done his backstage interviews, we’re off for a team lunch and a quick rest before the Osman Yousefzada show at 3.15pm.
Osman is a central St Martins graduate who was born and raised in MOSELEY – (YES REALLY).

I’ll mostly be wearing a black jersey dress with Balmain style exaggerated shoulders from good ol’ Topshop. Its always safer to wear black and as the shows are relatively close together this year – means I probably can get away with changing a necklace or shoes to look different for each.
Shoes at this moment are undecided. Maybe some purple Marc by Marc Jacobs heeled brogues from a few seasons ago – not sure yet!

At 8pm we’ve got Osman’s after show party at Disco 24 in Soho. My director Andre (who I’m assistant to) has done the guest list, so Ill be there at 8pm so he (and Osman) don’t have heart attacks.
Should be fun as there’s some DJ’s from Boombox (Mmmelanie) and a drinks sponsor (hurraaahh!)

Rox will be filling us in with LFW news and reviews with stylish precision all week….Can’t wait!