7EYA - Beautiful Birmingham

We approached this project with great enthusiasm for how it would affect the local musical industry in Birmingham, how it would benefit all the artists involved and also how it would benefit the arts and culture within Birmingham as a whole.We approached this project with great enthusiasm for how it would affect the local musical industry in Birmingham, how it would benefit all the artists involved and also how it would benefit the arts and culture within Birmingham as a whole.

During this project we achieved:

We managed to engaged a total of 34 professional individual and groups of artists to produce 34 songs of new recorded music.
We had 11 workshops to advise the artists about how to function within the music industry, marketing techniques, performance techniques and self management techniques.
We held successful reception where music industry personalities, movers and shakers were invited to meet the artists involved in the project giving the artists a chance to network and meet people who help them in their career.
We held a successful concert where an audience of 550 people watched 4 hours of performances of new music by professional local musicians and artists.
We were able to get artists of many different musical genres involved in the project including: local grime and rap artists, rock bands, Bhangra artists, reggae artists, a South African singer and Afghanistan rapper now resident in Birmingham, classical musicians, a funk band and singers of many different genres.
We were able to attract key members of the local and national media including bloggers, print media, Music TV channels and producers of podcast and radio shows. So the artists involved in the project got fantastic links and coverage from the project.
We have a CD available which is actively getting local and national airplay and media attention which is helping to increase the awareness of all the artists involved in the project.

Artist Allysa Rochelle performing at Beautiful Birmingham Concert 9th November 2012.

During this project we learned:

There are literally 100’s of artists and musicians within Birmingham who want to develop their skills and networks even though we able to work with 334 artists the project needs to be bigger to help more artists.
The “Beautiful Birmingham” brand is one which chimes with the local public. They understand the need for the concept and while we were promoting the feedback we had from the local public was this was a much needed project.
The feedback we had from the concert was that the event was good but could maybe held earlier, outside or on a Sunday to make it more accessible for younger people and people with families.
There is a need for a Beautiful Birmingham 2 project as he numbers of artists that we attracted but were not able to involve in the project is quite large.
A project of this size needs significantly more time to organise than ordinary music projects. A project of this sort needs 6-9 months of preparation and planning. The event was successful butt it would e even more so with a greater lead in time we could invite more media. Involve more artists and increase the audience even further.
The City of Birmingham needs more projects like this because the enthusiasm with which the project has been greeted has been enormous.