The snows have melted and all around we will start to see the newness of Spring.  Fierce has been about “the new” ever since it began, if that’s not a contradiction in terms:  it has celebrated the contemporary, the fresh and the novel.

So it’s only natural that we should celebrate the new blog:  it’s the first green shoot of the “new” Fierce – new direction, new artistic vision, new Artistic Directors (and direction) and a fresh approach.

So what’s been going on when there has been no festival?  Well – to extend the gardening metaphor (possibly to death) – we’ve been preparing the soil. 

We had a quiet year in terms of performance in Birmingham – our partners at University of Warwick had a “Fierce” season and there was a wonderful sunny afternoon in May when the Reverend Billy converted all of us to the Church of Stop Shopping outside the Ikon.  The honoured guests at Ringside (hosted with the Birmingham Rep) wowed audiences at the Town Hall – exceptionally altered for the event.

So it might feel like we’ve not been around much:  if it’s any consolation we missed the Fierce Festival in 2009 as much as we hope you did!

But elsewhere we’ve been busy:  the Wunderbar festival is what happens when you take 11 years of festivals experience and distill it, in 18 months, into a brand new region.  The result was a quirky and action packed 10 days in the North East that felt like an event that had always been there.  Kevin has written about that below so I won’t go on about it here save to say that it had a wonderful atmosphere and discovering Newcastle and the North East has been a real privilege.

We’ve continued our training work:  we took 11 arts organisations of varying size and complexity on a journey into the social internet.  We’ve made new friends and learned a lot ourselves about the value of sharing your thinking online.  This blog will show us thinking out loud and welcoming your input.

We won a big scary national, EU-procurement style tender from Business Link, and now I’m delighted to say that we are approved suppliers of business training alongside the likes of the University of Warwick Business School.  We’re working with creative industries to support business growth that has a creative vision at its heart.

We found out lots more about Street and Circus arts when we organised a series of events under the title “elemental” in each of the English Arts Council regions – if you ever want to know more about that world check out our record of the intiative at www.elementalexchange.org.uk.

But that was all last year – and 2010 and all its’ new challenges beckon.  While Laura and Harun share their impressions of a new city – I’m off to do the same.  As part of the Clore Fellowship programme I get the opportunity to go on secondment.  So I’m off to New York – to Brooklyn’s St Ann’s Warehouse – to find out how performance gets made and produced in a country with no statutory arts funding which is increasingly reliant on donations from wealthy individuals.  If it sounds familiar it’s because that ’s what the Tories are proposing if they are elected.

So it will be a Fierce Spring for me too:  I hope to be able to share some of the work I see or the things I think are cool along the way.  I’ll be back in the Summer, I don’t know if the rain will fall or the sun will shine, but it will be a Fierce one.

• names and places I’ve never been or heard of
• Kingsheath or Moseley?
• Too much shopping
• beautiful-ugly
• mistaken for a woman by blokes outside the British Legion pub while walking with Laura
• what’s the front door you imagine when asked to imagine home?
• Eagle-tattooed front man: head-crashing, ear-pulsing, knee-jerking, gentle-whispering
• Looking for Auden and Tolkien in the landscape
• Recognized by staff of London Midlands trains
• Wild speculation that the flat beneath us was occupied by Banksy on hide out. Clues: recycled box of New Balance trainers, empty graffiti cans, in and out at odd hours of the night.
• Berlin or Birmingham? Berlinham
• Kira O’Reilly lives in Birmingham
• A beautiful eighteenth century dovecote
• AE Harris building singing with potential
• A flat transforming into a home parallel to the establishment of a collection of household items destroyed by guests
• ‘M.S.’ melted our kettle and burnt the oven gloves
• Nicholas made soup
• Inspiration walks
• And what about my per diems? It all over – It all over!?
• Stan’s Cafe live in Birmingham
• Met the occupant of the flat beneath us. He is a graf artist, not Bansky. Disappointed.
• Baskerville is currently my favorite font
• Staggering towards the terrifyingly named ‘Bear Grease’ – actually a Wetherspoons called The Pear Tree
• The coming insurrection
• ducks and swans cracking ice on the water in front of the MAC
• a drawing of a giant snowman in the car park
• “We are now approaching Birmingham New St. our final destination”

We took a walk along the frozen canals, marvelling at the geometric slabs of ice and enjoying the extra layer of silence that snow brings. 

We saw the spray from a duck’s landing on the canal water frozen in time.  Nicolas (from EXYZT) spoke about the canals as Birmingham’s romantic hidden world.  We navigated home in a left-hand drive car covered in flowers with an abstract but accurate hand-drawn map (turn right at the mosque).  We still don’t know our way round but being strangers with our senses still prickling feels like a good thing.  It helps us have more ideas about this place.  We’ve been inviting artists to stay with us in our flat.  This is helping us turn our flat into our home.  Nicolas cooks a very good soup teeming with root vegetables, cabbage and leeks.  This is how we want to work with people.

Looking from the window of the Fierce offices on a Monday evening in February I find myself wondering why and how I find myself here in Birmingham, but more specifically the West Midlands.

For a little context, I was born and raised in Stoke-on-Trent and I went away to study Drama and Theatre Studies in Chester and then back to Stoke-on-Trent. I didn’t think I’d stay for five years, but then I didn’t plan when I’d leave – but I don’t think of myself as local to a city but local to a region and I’m proud that it’s the West Midlands.

So what do I love?

I love the fact that everywhere feels like home, and that we embrace the diverse cultures that surround us – we can create something from nothing and that we built our region on creativity of individuals that consumes the residents.

To help me find the reasons why I ♥ the West Midlands I jotted down words that I found summarised the creatives I have worked with, met and the general ethos of the region. Here is the result – we are resourceful, determined, supportive, optimistic, inclusive, innovative and collaborative. We always look for new ways to make work and work together.

The region has an exciting, diverse range of creativity and talent in its midst and by working together, and making our own opportunities in the region we can really make a difference to the cultural landscape locally, nationally and internationally.

On Monday Helga’s most recent column for the Birmingham Post went to print, you can find it here.

“Fierce Earth recently announced the exciting arrival of its new joint Artistic Directors, Laura McDermott and Harun Morrison. Hailing from London, most recently from Battersea Arts Centre, relocating to Birmingham later in the year…

So how best to introduce Laura and Harun to the city and its creative and cultural life? In particular, what hidden gems could they find in the region beyond the usual suspects.

To find out, I did what is now called “crowdsourcing”, but in my day was known as “asking around”. What follows is a selection of my creative colleagues’ brilliant ideas. I don’t have space to name-check them here but, thank you, you know who you are!

From our office in the Jewellery Quarter, they could nip into the Pen Museum and make their own steel pen using Victorian presses. Or the button factory at Toye, Kenning & Spencer. In addition to the world-class Pre-Raphaelite paintings at the Museum and Art Gallery, they could enjoy the Burne-Jones stained glass windows at St Phillips Cathedral, then the Pugin architecture of St Chad’s.

You encounter the creative city where it socialises. The Rainbow on Digbeth High St, coffee and patisseries at Maison Mayçi, Kings Heath, fabulous Thai food and architecture at Bartons Arms, Newtown.

My personal hidden gem, Russells on Lozells Road, for a feast of mutton soup, chicken and dumplings, rice and peas washed down with tropical “Sexy”.

Perhaps you only truly know Birmingham once you’ve travelled the entire Outer Circle bus route. Perhaps Laura and Harun could join the psychogeographers of www.birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk. Every 11 November, they board the 11C for eleven hours, disembarking at ten that night, having documented the experience (and taking breaks of up to 30 minutes wherever they fancy).

Probably because our suburbs are essentially a network of connecting villages, they are a fund of under-appreciated treasures, including Moseley private park, home of Moseley Folk Festival, Perrot’s Folly in Edgbaston and Saint Nicolas Place at Kings Norton Green (one of the oldest collection of Tudor buildings in the UK). One is never far from a green space, be it Cofton Park, Cannon Hill or the Waseley and Lickey Hills.

At this rate, Laura and Harun will have an unusually pleasant induction process! Discovering Birmingham’s treasures can take a lifetime. By showing our city off to newcomers, we discover it ourselves.”

Can you suggest any more of Birmingham’s hidden treasures?