Flashswap event
24th March 2009
Birmingham Photospace is a bunch of people volunteering their time because they want to establish a space for photography in the city. Earlier in the year they organised the Anything but Selfridges competition to find an image that “best represents the Birmingham we live and work in”. So long as it wasn’t of Selfridges.
On Saturday just gone they held their first public event, a Flashswap at the Vaad Gallery in the Custard Factory down in Digbeth. The premise of the event was that you brought some prints along that you were happy to swap and “hung” them in the gallery (there was Blu-Tak provided). In the early evening we went back and viewed the exhibition, then on the word we all went and placed a sticker against the prints that we wanted to take home with us.
The day was a huge success with nearly 100 people showing their photography. I managed to get a great street tango shot from Buenos Aires, a tilt-shifted shot of the canal and a marvellously arty flower. But more exciting than that I had some people sticker and take home some of my holiday snaps.
Naturally, the group have got a blog and a Facebook group for organising their campaign around and have done a lot of their promotional work there and on Twitter. Jenny Drew from the group said
“When planning flash swap we had hoped that all types of photographers from the city would want to bring their work along and that is exactly what happened. We are overwhelmed by the turnout for the event and show of support for our project especially from Birmingham Twitter users.”
It was fantastic to be a part of yet another event which has been organised through digital technologies and shows what a vibrant city it is we live in.
