Suchergebnisse

Two paintings in a group exhibition of contemporary artists, all of whom have a connection to Birmingham. 'Birmingham Show' is an exhibition as history and not history, connecting gaps, distances and potentials of artists who have lived, worked or studied within the city. Three key questions underpin the exhibition making – 'What is the art of Birmingham?' 'Is there an accent to Birmingham's art making?' and 'How is Birmingham useful for the production of art?'. Eastside Projects' intention is not to create an authoritative survey, but to initiate conversations and to think again about our city as a place that produces and supports artists in many different ways. By displaying a set of works that wouldn't otherwise be experienced together, we hope to make visible co-existing and overlapping objects, processes, politics, relationships and scenes emanating from Birmingham.

Chiromancer - an installation comprising several clay elements, in a group exhibition of contemporary artists, all of whom have a connection to Birmingham. 'Birmingham Show' is an exhibition as history and not history, connecting gaps, distances and potentials of artists who have lived, worked or studied within the city. Three key questions underpin the exhibition making – 'What is the art of Birmingham?' 'Is there an accent to Birmingham's art making?' and 'How is Birmingham useful for the production of art?'. Eastside Projects' intention is not to create an authoritative survey, but to initiate conversations and to think again about our city as a place that produces and supports artists in many different ways. By displaying a set of works that wouldn't otherwise be experienced together, we hope to make visible co-existing and overlapping objects, processes, politics, relationships and scenes emanating from Birmingham.

The speakers here all live in Oak View, a hostel for people with mental problems, in Moseley, Birmingham. As the locally notorious Palm Court Hotel, it was one of many profitable private dumping grounds for ex-patients of the asylums closed down under the policy of Community Care. Some older residents have lived there nearly 30 years. With up to 70 residents, Oak View is now considered too big and institutional. Everyone, even the mentally ill, is thought better off living closer to the norm, the nuclear household. Oak View has its problems. But it works well for people too mentally frail to live alone, or not sociable enough to cope within a smaller group. Inside it, a person can both hide and have company. A fundamentally benign place, it tolerates eccentricity of all kinds. Mental illness is not romantic here. There are no suicidal poets. Most residents have wretched histories, feel social rejects; some not only look but smell odd. In a few cases they make no apparent sense. But the psychiatrist RD Laing pointed out that if you really listen to the so-called mad, sense always emerges. After seven weeks living in Oak View I can confirm that. Some told their stories coherently, if obsessively. Some did not. But the stories came across anyhow. Without exception they confirmed that being mentally ill is horrible — and not as far from the rest of us as we hope. This may be the reason why such voices are rarely, if ever, heard.

Derren Hayes meets Lord Warner, Birmingham children's commissioner

AbstractNick Martin was a doctoral student of mine at the University of Birmingham in the mid 1970s. In this review, I discuss two of Nick's earliest and most seminal contributions to the field of behavior genetics. First, Martin and Eaves' (1977) extension of the model-fitting approach to multivariate data, which laid the theoretical groundwork for a generation of multivariate behavior genetic studies. Second, the Martin et al.'s (1978) manuscript on the power of the classical twin design, which showed that thousands of twin pairs would be required in order to reliably estimate components of variance, and has served as impetus for the formation of large-scale twin registries across the world. I discuss these contributions against the historical backdrop of a time when we and others were struggling with the challenge of figuring out how to incorporate gene-by-environment interaction, gene–environment correlation, mate selection and cultural transmission into more complex genetic models of human behavior.