Entertainment News

The DESIblitz Literature Festival 2021 is the UK’s leading South Asian Literature Festival. Opening in Birmingham City Centre on September 18 with a string of leading British South Asian and South Asian literary stars, the festival, with a mix of in-person and digital events and runs until October 1. All tickets are free apart from three headline events at £2.99 per ticket with Sathnam Sanghera, Nikesh Shukla and a panel event on Cultural Representation in Literature. Live events will take place at the Rep Theatre and B Music (formerly Symphony Hall) in the city centre.

The festival is designed to encourage young and aspiring British Asian writers but is open to all. It provides a much-needed programme of author events, workshops, performances and panel discussions, showcasing the work of British South Asian authors and poets, and international writers with South Asian heritage. As well as aiming to inspire new creative writers, the festival provides an opportunity to highlight the way writers of South Asian descent have contributed to the literary canon across the world.

A West Midlands charity that specialises in engaging young people from Black and Ethnic Minority communities, has held an official launch event in the region.

First Class Foundation hosted an audience of employees, patrons and partner organisations at Spring Grove House, West Midlands Safari Park on 7 August 2021.

Legendary reggae band UB40 were the latest stars to visit Birmingham City University’s state of the art Curzon Street Studios, using one of the UK’s largest purpose-built TV studios for a photoshoot to unveil their new line-up. The eight-piece, who have achieved global success from recording and performing since forming in Birmingham in 1978, took over Studio A in the University’s Parkside building recently to capture images featuring new lead vocalist Matt Doyle alongside band members.

The new assets were unveiled to the band’s millions of followers on social media recently. Birmingham singer Matt joined the band following the announcement that Duncan Campbell was retiring from the band following ill health.

The eSkootr Championship (eSC) is pleased to announce Vinit Patel will join the series as Head of Technical. 

Patel brings a wealth of experience to eSC having helped deliver sustainable engineering solutions in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship.  He will oversee the technical aspects around the championship’s eSkootrs and charging infrastructure liaising and working with teams, partners and suppliers.

Sam Fender will be headlining Birmingham O2 Academy on Wednesday August 25. The show is part of his sold-out tour rescheduled from 2020.

He'll be undertaking the mammoth run of dates around the release of his second album, Seventeen Going Under on 8th October through Polydor Records. It was recorded in North Shields and produced with Bramwell Bronte. 

The hunt is on for Wolverhampton’s second Poet Laureate – to play a starring role in the sixth Wolverhampton Literature Festival early next year.

City of Wolverhampton Council is looking to appoint the next Poet Laureate who will be a champion of poetry for the city. They will write poems to commission during their tenure, as well as work on poetry events during the festival and throughout their time in the role.

God Knows is one of the founders of Ireland’s most prolific and exciting labels, narolane records. As a collective, narolane’s creative output conveys their ethos with surety, authenticity and unapologetic ambition.

That ethos is to be true to what is right, what is excellent and what is unexpected. This commitment to excellence has caught the attention of a range of influential media, with NME, The Guardian, BBC, The FADER, VICE, NPR, The Irish Times, RTÉ, The New York Times and France 24 all turning their attention to this revolutionary collective.

The Wandering Hearts have released their long-awaited self-titled second album, alongside a new video for ‘On Our Way’.

Rich with beautifully crafted vocal harmonies, rootsy rock reflection and folk-tinged songwriting, the album is the culmination of a long journey during which the entire world changed. The project started in 2019 with writing sessions in their studio in Hackney, before they headed to the Catskills for recording with producers Simone Felice (Jade Bird, The Lumineers) and David Baron.

After a year online, Birmingham Comedy Festival is back in the room for 2021.

Running from Friday 1 to Sunday 10 October 2021, the popular arts festival features over 40 shows, from big name acts, to emerging newcomers.

As well as announcing the full cast and creative team for the highly anticipated, brand new musical, What’s New Pussycat?, The REP has also released an exclusive first look video and images of the cast in rehearsals.

Inspired by the novel The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, this romantic musical comedy reimagines Fielding’s classic tale in London’s swinging sixties and sets the story to the iconic hit music of Sir Tom Jones. 

Multi-platinum pop/hip-hop maverick Bryce Vine shares a new single and music video entitled “Miss You A Little” [feat. lovelytheband]. Teaming up with platinum Los Angeles trio lovelytheband for the first time, the track glides atop a glitchy beat wrapped in airy guitars, fusing alternative, hip-hop, and pop seamlessly.

Meanwhile, Bryce’s confessional verses give way to a hypnotic high register hook, “I miss you a little—all of the time.” The accompanying visual takes a trippy Alice In Wonderland-style turn down a literal rabbit hole. After meeting up for a picnic, Bryce and his female co-star plunge into another world where everything may not be as it seems.

A Midlands-based businessman who inadvertently became a global mentor to furloughed recruiters during lockdown, has published a book aimed at helping people get ahead in their careers. Steve Guest, Managing Director of Walsall-based S Guest Consulting Services Ltd – a specialist recruitment business for the construction sector – spent almost 70 hours on Zoom calls, mentoring people in 28 countries.

He made the offer of providing one-to-one advice when parts of the sector almost ground to a halt due to the Covid-19 pandemic. During the calls, he discovered recruiters the world over felt fear and said their careers were at a dangerous precipice because they were furloughed, had lost their jobs or had no income because they were commission only.

Five Mile Films are making a new series of the popular Channel 4 programme, The Dog House, and are still searching for people who can offer a loving home to a rescue dog, and wondered if Phoenix readers might be able to help.

The series is made with Wood Green, The Animals Charity in Cambridgeshire who specialise in matching their rescue dogs with would-be owners. The Dog House follows this process, getting to know the characters and histories of the rescue dogs, an array of people from different walks of life and watching the beginnings of brand-new relationships between them.

Pioneering Caribbean Zouk musician, Jacob Desvarieux, has died after suffering with COVID-19 in Guadeloupe.

The co-founder of popular Zouk band Kassav’, he was in poor health after undergoing a kidney transplant and was taken to hospital in after catching the virus - before passing away at the University Hospital of Abymes in Pointe-a-Pitre.

Over 65,000 people across 92 countries watched the premiere of ‘Dream’ during the ten live performances in March. Created by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in collaboration with Manchester International Festival (MIF), Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) and Philharmonia Orchestra the performance used motion capture as the culmination of a major piece of cutting-edge research and development (R&D) exploring how audiences could experience live performance in the future.

A recorded version of ‘Dream’ is now available to view on the dream.online platform, which was created for the Audience of the Future project. Audiences explore the world of the virtual midsummer forest and the production harnesses live performance, virtual production and gaming technology.

The 2021 BCBF is taking place from 4 to 15 October. Between 50 and 100 events are expected to form part of the programme, covering a wide range of topics and themes from inclusivity and innovation to business growth and regeneration.

Events can be digital, physical or hybrid and the Festival is anticipated to put the strengths of the region in the spotlight on a national level. To be part of the Festival, Businesses need to apply to run an event and already, the programme is starting to fill up with some exciting events.