Steve Gerrard is an enormously talented photographer from brum. This image caught my attention because of the very brummie words on the door glass. Thanks Antonio. See you both at the next brum bloggers meet?
Tag: Birmingham UK
Podnosh is based in Birmingham in the UK, so often we write about exciting things that are going on near us.
Grassroots Channel Spiked by the iPhone
13,587 programmes were downloaded from the Grassroots Channel Podcast in December 2007, 30% up on both November 2007 and the month just finished, January 2008. Would I be right to speculate that this mini spike is caused by Christmas playtime for people with the new iPhones and iPods?
No help from looking at the figures for the previous Christmas. December 2006 saw 3786 programmes downloaded, but in January 2007 you lot consumed 5219 programmes – an increase caused mostly by us putting 8 new programmes and a pdf on the channel in 1 rather bonkers month.
December 2007 was not only our best month for downloads, it was the moment when the total number of Grassroots Channel programmes delivered breached the 100,000 mark. (Smile to ones-self – punch air). The channel sets out to (mostly) tell the stories of active citizens in Birmingham’s neighbourhoods.
The most popular programmes since our first outing in October 2005 have been:
1.Soweto Kinch on life in B19. The award winning brummie Jazz star (Amazon here) on his remarkable album collaboration with Moira Stuart and why he still lives in B19.
2. It Shouldn’t be So Common. Simon Walker of Curio City talks about the murder of Alex Mendez, who visited Birmingham from his home city of Boston to support this project in Ladywood.
3. I am the Grass Now. The neighbours from Balsall Heath who volunteer to keep open Edward Road Police Station.
4. Does no Pay Make you Powerful? Linda Hines and Michelle Ashmore of Witton Lodge Community Association get tearful as they talk about how people power is transforming Perry Common.
5. Generating Market Forces. The story behind Kings Norton farmers market.
Podcast: The Saint of Street Racing?
Is there a solution to street racing in Birmingham? Masood Ajaib of the Washwood Heath based community enterprise Commpact thinks there is. He has signed up for an experiment to find a communal way of turning a dangerous Saturday night on Landor Street into a peaceful pastime somewhere safe. Listen here for the conversation or watch here for a sense of the problem:
Birmingham Community Safety Partnership
Digbeth Trust (dead link)
Commpact (dead link)
Hugely deserved and ironic win for Pete.
Congrats to Pete Ashton from Created in Birmingham for winning a beautiful big blogging award from the Media Guardian. CiB is a shared endeavour with Stef and justified a glowing lead story on the BBC Birmingham website which encouraged the beeb to throw out some links to other Birmingham bloggers including this one. Thanks.
Tis of course ironic because the Guardian recently overlooked Pete or any other brum blog in it’s survey of blogging outside the capital.