ARTS
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WHO WE ARE Millennium Point is an internationally renowned centre for innovation, where science and technology come to life. Home to The Giant Screen, Thinktank, Birmingham City University and Birmingham Metropolitan College, it is a hive of learning activity enlivened by the student community. It is also an independent charitable trust.
Positioned at the heart of Eastside, Birmingham’s cultural playground and the largest physical redevelopment project in Birmingham, Millennium Point offers a striking alternative to the traditional civic core of the city. The scale and scope of its spaces are unique within the city region.
Millennium Point is inviting the city into its incredible spaces, to amaze audiences with spectacular projects and events.
Philip Singleton CEO, Millennium Point
ARTS
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“ Millennium Point is now about injecting art and design into science and technology. I am convinced our new Arts Strategy will create exciting, unexpected collisions in thinking and seeing.”
Moving into its second decade, Millennium Point Trust is investing in its future and the cultural landscape of Birmingham. In 2013 four themes have been established as a framework to transform public spaces into destinations. Core to this programme is a bold new arts strategy, developed through dialogue with regional arts organisations. There is an appetite and enthusiasm for collaborating with Millennium Point on a diverse range of cultural activity.
Partnership working presents new opportunities for Millennium Point’s public spaces to become super-collaborative, creating new relationships between cultural organisations, our charitable partners and business.
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Universities Colleges
Giant Screen
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Schools
Thinktank Eastside City Park
Creative Industries Manufacturing Gaming
THE ARTS INTERFACE
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BU
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PLAY MOVE WORK LIVE
SPECTACULAR SPACES
Millennium Point consists of a series of interconnecting interior and exterior spaces of significant scale. The Atrium is the vast heart of Millennium Point, with the potential for unexpected encounters and vivid sensory experiences on a breathtaking scale. Suspended dramatically over the Atrium is a newly installed 13.5m wide screen, giving artists the scope to create a powerful accompaniment to a performance, an alternative viewpoint, or a digital window into another world. Additionally, the cutting edge digital technology behind The Giant Screen cinema offers possibilities beyond a multiplex experience, from live streaming of performances happening thousands of miles away to live events, talks and seminars. Moving outside, the newly opened Eastside City Park has transformed Millennium Point’s setting on
the south side. A bold vision of green space in a dramatic post-industrial landscape and a striking setting for performances, site-specific installations and architectural interventions. Millennium Point itself is not a static building; it is an everevolving place of possibility for both temporary and permanent works. It demands artworks that are unique, participatory and engage the public with the science and technology of the present and future, in both concept and execution. To give a sense of the exciting possibilities presented by Millennium Point’s spaces, June 2013 saw the Atrium as home to Birmingham Made Me – a huge interactive design expo showcasing top Midlands brands. In the same month, TEDxBrum brought their “ideas worth spreading” to The Giant Screen: a Birmingham-focused event with international visibility.
PROPOSITION, POSITION, PACE The Arts Strategy will position Millennium Point where art and culture intersects with science, technology, design and innovation. It will collaborate with artists and organisations whose work is provocative, participatory and encourages critical debate across sectors. While Millennium Point does not currently have a proven track record of engagement with the arts, this will be developed through partnership working with cultural organisations in 2014, culminating in an ambitious pilot project at the
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end of the year. This will establish Millennium Point’s four themes in an arts context and work to position the organisation at the vanguard of audience engagement with art and digital media in the region. It will inform ongoing engagement by Millennium Point with the arts. The appointment of a dedicated Arts Coordinator working directly with the Chief Executive gives Millennium Point the capacity to work with cultural organisations, artists, curators and funding bodies to realise this vision.
Millennium Point Curzon St, Birmingham B4 7XG Tel: +44 121 202 2222 Email: info@millenniumpoint.org.uk
www.millenniumpoint.org.uk