2nd Birthday Blog

www.2ndbirthday.co.uk has some lovely old wooden pub chairs that need a new home. There's approx 50 of various shapes and sizes, slightly rough around the edges but brilliant for sitting on. Think pub, 15 years ago and you should be able to picture them. There's also a couple of nice sturdy desks up for grabs and a few other bits and bobs, including two homemade semi-circular bars (the serving drinks kind).

All needs a new home, are for collection only from Bournemouth/Poole, and need to be claimed before 23rd July.

 Drop us an email if you'd like them.

Last year the fabulous Lee Nevitt volunteered throughout the summer on the 2nd Birthday SideShow Festival, capturing an amazing set of images from all parts of the event.

Watch a new short film by Lee called  'My life with Diabetes From a different angle' here:

 

then have a look here > http://ibtoy.blogspot.com/

2nd Birthday have been invited to enter for this years Dorset Business Awards - www.dorsetbusinessawards.co.uk. What a great invitation! If you were one of the people who helped out by volunteering, supporting, making, promoting, pledging, 2nd Birthdaying or generally getting stuck in to making the Side Show Festival such a success, that invitation includes you. So thank you!

Weekend number 2 of the SideShow festival is just about here. If you've not already, why not use it to have peek at the amazing shop windows down at St Peter's Quarter, Bournemouth (under TK Maxx). Over 20 local and regional artists exhibiting their work. They're open 7 days a week through to the end of the month, so take a look.

 There's some very special beach hut installations lined up for this weekend too. Work includes 2 brilliant installations by the one and only Paul Hearn (that's right, Paul's first one went down so well we asked him to make another!), a hut by the 2nd Birthday team, 2 pledgee 2nd Birthday events from Bisi and Lorna, some fab digital photography by Mark and some treats from the Bournemouth Creatives. It just keeps on getting better!

And make sure you're saving the 21st and 22nd Aug for the big ones - Showroom (12-6pm) and Showroom LIVE (8 til late), both days.

 See you soon at the shops, on the beach or in the showroom - even better, all three!

The day has come and SideShow goes live...

The lights of the empty Shop Windows at St Peter's Quarter get switched back on to reveal the fantastic work of over 20 artists from Bournemouth and beyond.

The Beach Huts go live today as well, bringing you a mix of installation, visual arts, performance and interactivity down on Bournemouth Seafront.

Then we have Showroom and Showroom LIVE getting set for the 21st and 22nd August. More on this to come... it's going to be a very special one.

August is going to be a great month for the arts in Bournemouth - make sure you're a part of it. And enjoy.

So the first few pieces of work are in and looking amazing. Ed Jones has made a stunning shop window video installation called 'Buskers', Inez Schrader and Krishula Aukland are up in their windows too with some beautiful and brutal photography, prints and paintings. Paul Hearn has completely transformed one of the Beach Huts but I won't give away his surprises!

 Oh, and I did a count up and over 60 artists are exhibiting, making or performing work for Side Show 09. Pretty amazing!

And the pledgees help is kicking in too for which we are enormously grateful. Inez Schrader gave us a hand prepping the shop windows,  Seb [just nipping off to hospital now] Pape and Dave [stepped in at the last minute] Walker have done a stunning job on the brochure design which will be out and about in the next few days. Dan [1/3 of a Baker Brother] Baker will be looking after all things sound for the Showroom LIVE events. Other pledgees are lined up to help over the next few weeks, but we could certainly still do with a hand. If you can help out, give us a shout...

SideShow is really starting to take shape. There is some truly inspiring work on its way. We've been amazed by the response that we had from such an open call out and the huge range of ideas that came back in. SideShow is going to be a good one.  We've got agreat mix of artists showing existing work alongside some very special brand new 2nd Birthday comissions! I am getting excited...

Thanks to all of the people who have submitted ideas for SideShow. We've been really pleased with hundreds of submissions that have come in. So what happens now? Well we've spent two full evenings looking, listening, thinking, watching, smelling and thinking some more. We're getting close to those final programming decisions and we will be in touch with everyone who submitted proposals later on this week. It's looking set to be a good one!