Heart and Soul at The Irish Centre, Digbeth – 20 June

Fans of soul take note: June will see the ever-popular Heart & Soul return to Digbeth’s Irish Centre for an all-out summer special.

After losing his son Ethan, aged three, following a corrective operation for TGA (transposition of the great arteries) in 2009, South Birmingham Scooter Club’s Andrew Marshall set up the event in the hope of making money for UK based charity, Heart Research UK.

West Midland Degree Shows 2015

It is a busy time for 3rd year undergrads at the moment as they work hard to present their final year degree shows and hope to get noticed. Always an excellent place to pick up and find new and exciting talent, here are a selection that are open to the public across the West Midlands…

Zombie Walk Birmingham 2015 – Saturday 8 August (new date)

Over two thousand ‘walking dead’ are expected to take to the city’s streets to raise money for Birmingham Children’s Hospital for the city’s seventh annual Zombie Walk (Saturday 8th August*).

The crowd will gather at Centenary Square before weaving in and out of the backstreets of Birmingham making eerie groans and showing off their best zombie slow walks.

Selfridges Says WORK IT

Selfridges Birmingham celebrates the first Anniversary of its new-look beauty hall with a host of events that help customers reclaim their lunch break and offer a little extra uplifting with a range of mini-treatments and super-short courses.

The fun lunch-time activities include the chance for people to learn Spanish, Laughing Yoga, Self Defence and Salsa Classes. The 30-minute sessions will be held from Monday, 18th May until Sunday, 31st May.

WIN TICKETS to the > BBC Good Food Show Summer

Be in with a chance to attend the culinary event of the season! The BBC Good Food Show Summer will take place from 11 -14 June at the NEC in Birmingham.

You’ll get to see great cooking demonstrations from top chefs such as Mary Berry, James Martin, Tom Kerridge and John Torode in the Supertheatre and get inspired. Learn something new at the Summer Kitchen Stage, with extra sessions from cooking experts and explore the art of baking. You can also discover new flavours whilst tasting dishes from the BBC Good Food Magazine.

WIN TICKETS to > BBC Gardener’s World Live Show

We’re giving you the chance to win tickets for the BBC Gardener’s World Live Show in association with The Royal Horticultural Society.

At the NEC in Birmingham from 11-14  June, you can visit the RHS Floral Marquee and view some new varieties in one of the largest floral marquees in the country. Gardening experts including Monty Don, Carol Klein and Joe Swift will be at the BBC Gardeners’ World Theatre to share their knowledge.

Not paying artists is bad for you…Discuss

A group of Birmingham artists have launched a campaign promoting fair pay from galleries exhibiting their work this month.

The group of artists led by Ruth Claxton, of Eastside Projects, and Cheryl Jones, of Grand Union, are hoping to encourage galleries to be more transparent about their policies of paying artists.

The campaign is part of a national Paying Artists initiative launched by a-n / AIR, the largest artist membership organisation in the UK, in the wake of a survey which showed that 71% of artists got no fee for exhibiting in publicly funded spaces in the UK over a three year period.

Pavel Büchler at Ikon Gallery, 13 May – 12 July

Ikon presents the most comprehensive UK exhibition to date by Pavel Büchler. Involving a wide range of media one of the central pieces is a large installation of loudspeakers (pictured) based on a 1920s design by Marconi.

The work proclaims a quotation from Kafka’s The Castle, mediated through a first-generation text-to-speech computer programme:  “You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren’t anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something, a stranger, a man who isn’t wanted and is in everybody’s way …”

New Art West Midlands 2016 – applications open now

If you a visual arts graduate from either; Birmingham City University, Coventry University, Staffordshire University, University of Wolverhampton or University of Worcester and graduated with a Fine Art or Visual Arts BA, MA or PhD in 2013, 2014 or 2015 you are eligible to make an application for the selected showcase exhibition New Art West Midlands 2016.

New Art West Midlands is a Turning Point West Midlands initiative and a partnership between Birmingham Museums, mac Birmingham, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

Deadline: Monday 29 June 2015.

More information and the application form can be found here.

Imagining a University – Fifty years of the University of Warwick Art Collection

In the scope of its fiftieth anniversary, the University of Warwick celebrates not just the history of the educational institution but also the anniversary of its broad art collection.

Imagining a University examines the development of the collection over the past fifty years, featuring artists such as Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Terry Frost and many more. Venue for the exhibition is the universities’ own Mead Gallery. The collection is organised chronologically, starting with the modernist utopia in the early 1970’s, when abstract colourfield paintings were used as flags, representing the new egalitarian generation of students.