narzipan: Birmingham August and September Highlights

Willard Wigan

The Tailor of Gloucester

You have until the 28th October to see the fantastic In The Eye of The Needle exhibition at the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter.

Willard Wigan

Willard Wigan's art really is so small you need to look through a microscope to see the wonderful creations inside the eye of a needle. He even uses an eyelash to paint these miniature beauties.

Willard began doing miniature work as a child when he disturbed some ants in the ground and decided to make some furniture for them. If you are reading this on your phone zoom in on the photos below to get a better look.

Check out the Ascent of Man and remember that apes did not start this war but apes will finish it.

Christ The Redeemer.

Hummingbird

Mammy from Gone With The Wind

The Pieta. Brought back a nice memory from the one in St Peter's in Rome.

What big teeth you have Granny!

To See or Not To See.

Willard spends 18 hours a day on his art and holds his breath whilst working to get the absolute stillness needed to work on the art. He is even visiting Oxford University who want to study his hand control whilst manipulating stem cells.

BMAG Thresholds

Busting makes me feel good

I headed to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for their VR photography exhibition Thresholds as part of the Developed in Birmingham season. It featured VR replicas of some photo prints from 1839 originally displayed at King Edward's School.

You looked into the cabinets and then used your hands to magnify and move the photos. It was really kwl and I loved it. You could look out the windows to see a Chartist protest, there was a mouse running around on the floor and moths buzzing around the lights.

School of Code at Google Digital Garage

School of Code ran a beginners guide to coding inside Google's Digital Garage on New Street. School of Code has just started a coding boot camp that lasts for 16 weeks and is absolutely free to the lucky 20 participants who will go from beginners to fully-fledged programmers.

You should check out all the free classes being offered by the Digital Garage as they cover everything from social media to spreadsheets.
Below School of Code explained the difference between HTML, CSS and Javascipt by getting you to design and animate a little character. This was my Batgirl attempt.

Birmingham Social Media Cafe July

Birmingham Social Media Cafe headed over to the classy Opus restaurant on Cornwall Street. It was great to catch up with social media whizzes such as My Jewellery Quarter Twitter account which does an amazing job, Gleeson Recruitment and Biddle and Webb Auctions who use Periscope to market forthcoming events.

Birmingham Social Media Cafe August

A lively meet-up at Tilt included LinkedIn guru Ian J Preston (below 2nd left) who runs the Coffee and Natter networking club giving everyone a pep talk on nailing marketing of yourself on LinkedIn. David Glenwright of JC Social Media was also nearby hosting a free social media clinic for small businesses. He is full of wonderful advice and expertise.

Brum Bloggers Co-working

Thanks to The Ting Thing and Laura Creaven Brum Bloggers arranged a co-working evening at the AC Hotel to get everyone to stop procrastinating and catch up with their social media activities. Interesting bloggers included One Tech Traveller who is off to Hong Kong and the Far East for 6 months amazing travel blogging and Galina Thomas who has an incredible 19,000 Instagram followers.

Birmingham Heritage Week Lazarica

Finally I was one of the many people that swarmed over to the Lazarica Church on Griffin's Brook Lane for its Birmingham Heritage open day. The church is breathtaking and truly a hidden gem. The first purpose built Sebian Orthodox Church in the UK dedicated to the Holy Prince Lazar.