At our 2nd birthday we hosted a programme of free drop in workshops to enable people (of all ages) to try some of the activities associated with members of the Mr Elephant collective.

One of the ideas was to provide a starting point for a proposed programme of more in depth workshops for anyone who wanted to develop the related activity. Another aim which we’ve had from the beginning was to enable people to get involved with Mr Elephant events on a more deeper level.

Its happened on the curation and the performance side from the start, but we weren’t expecting things to sprout so soon from the 2nd birthday taster workshops, but already three of the workshops have produced follow on …happenings!

The vj workshops hosted by Liam D’Authreau (Blendstate visuals) & Tony Coleman (The Lab) have gone on to participants performing live with legendary techno dj Billy Nasty, and a spark plug for the highly anticipated Lab dvd, which is set for the release in the Autum of this year.

The dj workshop hosted by Marc Reck have begun the participants starting fortnightly one-to-one sessions.

And the animation made by some of our younger guests in the workshop hosted by community artist Clare Evans , has been used by the vjs on the night at our 2nd birthday, and the recent live and free event while the Hidden Half were performing.

This kind of cross pollination happens regularly at lots of different levels in Mr Elephant, and there are some shining examples of it happening on larger scales in the city, such as the ever growing Project X Presents Events, and the cross pollination which happens either on a public levels, or within the collectives, makes the events such fertile breeding grounds for new creative collaboration, and grass roots platforms for cross artform learning. Some nice examples of this have happened recently , with both our guests and residents, such as our resident cameraman dropping some records at the last Party Rockin Mammals, our resident vj setting up and promotin his own event, and our resident dj getting to vj for the Heels after a quick hands on tutorial, and a member our guest band vjing to a dj set for the first time at a recent live and free.

We like things like this as they always produce interesting new directions, build shared interests, but ultimately the Mr Elephant workshops will be aimed at the public. Realising there are many levels to this idea, we are aiming to provide many levels of getting involved with Mr Elephant, and are trying not to limit to one age, or demograph. There’s the mask making, and poodle parades, through to the drumming and interactive performance art, and the aforementioned drop in taster workshops through to providing  a full programme of professional knowledge.

We hope to faciliate this happening all the way through to a regular mutually beneficial programme, and things are shaping up well. Like the events we aim to make this engaging, and accessible to all people, so they will always be done as grass roots as possible, as we believe that is what allows real mixes of people which has beneficial effects.

Here’s some animation made by kids who’d never done it before, facilitated by the very talented Clare Evans, and if  you want to get in touch feel free – mrelephantpresents@gmail.com

Our first professional produced video by super talented Jack Brabant. Along with Jules Hyland, we captured the footage, and he’s spent the last week creating the video below.

Suffice to say we are all somewhat blown away with the result!

Great to have you onboard Mr B

Mr Elephant’s Second Birthday Review by Dom Brotherton

A Large Slice of Birthday Cake – Mr Elephant is Putting on Weight!!

Since its inception in 2007, Mr Elephant has been on a steadily increasing diet of eclecticism, celebrating some of the best underground club nights, djs, vjs, live bands, dancers, performers and inhabitants that Birmingham has to offer. Now with 5 residencies all offering different slices of Birmingham’s nightlife, it seems appropriate to celebrate Mr Elephants success by sticking 2 candles in a cake to mark its second birthday, but on the 23rd May there was a whole lot more on the cards than our average birthday party…

Throughout the afternoon there were opportunities for all ages to learn an array of different skills in a series of grass-roots workshops, and in most cases enabling those involved to participate in the performances of the night. Drumming, vjing, djing, beatboxing, poi, animation, etc, all workshops were offered for free to anyone who wanted to try the various creative artforms, and were hosted by an excellent cast of contributors.

As the sun set, the herd moved in-doors to be entertained by a fine hour of acoustic music from two of Birmingham’s most modest stars, namely Richard Batsford and Laura Louise, who both delivered magical performances.

At 10pm the Osmosis hosted Dance Stage kicked off with phat breaks & banging techno, while the Live Stage commenced with the mighty Jam Jah reggae collective, who got people up and grooving, providing the perfect backdrop to those of the audience who were adding the finishing touches to their carnival masks.

As the crowd welled up, the 1st band of the night Circadia took to the stage with new changes to the line-up adding more seasoning to their tasty flavour of psychedelic ska.

Up next was a crowd pleasing half hour of monkey swing from Marc Reck,

followed by the now infamous mr elephant midnight parade, which invited all poodle creations out for their midnight dance-floor stroll, and offering two prizes for best in breed.

Following, was an unexpected drumming jam session with beat boxer and host of the Live Stage, Bass6, who as always, entertained and mediated with more energy than an army of Duracell bunnies.

With the night in full swing, Bristol beat-boxer extraordinaire, Dub FX took control, complimented perfectly by talented female MC, Flower Fairy. There was a lot of buzz around Dub Fx, and he certainly didn’t disappoint! With just his mouth and a loop station with efx unit, he created phat beats, huge basslines and orchestral melodies that cranked up the atmosphere with each track.

With the crowd almost at fever pitch, the 3 piece live dub, breaks & drum & bass act Alphadrive, delivered a slick set of some of filthiest breaks I’ve ever heard come out of a live band, before handing over once again to Marc Reck who delivered a massive drum & bass finale ending with don’t worry be happy as a 2nd encore.

Over on the Dance Stage techno superstar Jerome Hill was rinsing it out with a hugely powerful set which sent the osmonauts into overdrive, in amongst big birthday sets from 32DM, Hijacker, and the mighty Dk Roon who finished things off with a big bang.

Massive applause is also necessary for visuals maestros Blendstate and The Lab for providing some truly awesome visuals; always interesting, innovative and apt for the occasion.

Mr Elephant comes off as a much more dynamic event than your usual club night, and feels closer to a festival than a club night. Always looking to broaden horizons, it off-sets different musical genres and strives to include much more than just DJs, visuals and a space to dance in the quest to create something groundbreaking, inclusive, and celebratory. Adding to the diverse range of musical styles and the conglomerate social strata that regularly appear at Mr Elephant events, even the barrier of age was broken by the scurry of little feet in the workshops that began early in the day, and it’s refreshing to see an event that appeals to such a huge range of tastes, and ages!

Mr Elephant doesn’t have punters; it has contributors; and the evolution of audience participation from an amusing quirk to a fully fledged feature is a wonderful thing to see, because it gives us all more ownership over the event, engaging us well beyond the boundaries of the venue. Even after the final curtain call, the place was rife with chit-chat and the exchange of phone-numbers, and it’s fantastic to experience such a collective engagement, rather than the typical race for an unoccupied taxi. (My own eventual exit was met by communal singing and a drum performance by an enthusiastic fellow whose flow was only ended after 15 minutes or so due to apparent complaints from the neighbours.)

The organisers of Mr Elephant turn clubbing into a real adventure and I love that they want to celebrate the fun of interaction and offer so many ways for everyone be part of the festivities whilst also having a real desire to make elephant noises about their home city of Birmingham. With the Party Rockin Mammal Sessions @ Bulls Head showcasing Birmingham djs, The Live & Free events @ Adam & Eve showcasing live bands, the new Cinephonic & Intermix events @ the Hare pushing dj & vj boundaries, and with the forthcoming grassroots workshop programme, elephant radio shows, elephant tv, and their large website – www.mrelephant.com, it seems that there are now plenty of large tasty elephant portions that we can feast on in between the big festival style events, and it only looks to be getting bigger and more inclusive! Mr Elephant clearly invites us all to join the conga, if not start our own, so let’s put on our dancing shoes, bang on the Brum, and celebrate!

By Dominik Kai Brotherton

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Massive thanks and respect to Dom for that review and to the Night Times for publishing it! Jack Brabant, and Jules Hyland were videoing the event and Jack is putting together the entire 12 hour footage into a 4 minute video, so that will be online hopefully by mid June. Also Tony from the Lab will be putting together the Elephant Tv dvd episodes which will should be online by July.

Feel free to subscribe to the Rss if you want automatic notification, and we look out for more photos and videos as they return, plus a special Jam Jah recording of their set on Mr Elephant Radio, when it finds a new time slot.

Tony from The Lab who hosted vj workshops, vjed all night, and is to be producing Mr Elephant T.v has wrote his review of the Mr Elephant 2nd Birthday, so until he has a log in on this site (big elephant things afoot with The Lab) i’ll post it. The link one of his many excellent sites is http://www.vurt.org.uk

After three hours sleep, I’m awake!  and running through the final kit checks for the train journey to Brum.  Not only the Mr Elephant birthday party, but also my first VJ workshop.  This will be seen as an introduction to hardware VJing using the Edirol kit I have now assembled.  With an early start to these preceeding scheduled for 3pm, it’s all hands on decks wilst myself and Liam setup the two rooms for the evenings mayhem and merriement. Anyway, the hardware tutorials went (I think) well, and the star pupil without a shadow of doubt was Charly.  Talk about getting it quickly or duck to water (or do feel free to enter your own analogy for that matter) anyhow, I digress ….

Even when I cheekily stepped away from the mixer for a bit and watched, I was bloody impressed!  Hopefully though, the participants of the said workshop enjoyed themselves and have a smidge of a better understanding of what a hardware VJ actually does (apart from getting asked to put on some abba or R n bloody bee).  Throughout the workshop, Mr Elephants two superb guest camera ops (Jack Braybant and Julie Hyland) were running around the event capturing loads of footage from the setup, the workshops and into the night.  I can’t wait to see the footage and begin the editing for Mr E TV!

The night kicked off with a superb loop set from Laura Louise in which I had the oppertunity to play with the mixer and get in some nice feedback effects for her entire set with additional content coming from Liam (Blendstate).   Caught up with Mike Freear of Alphadrive before his gig too, absolute top bloke !!!  I loved the music! (I danced the whole set!), the energy (did I mention I danced the whole set?), and the reaction of all those sweaty, jumping about bods that were at the front of the stage!  and then the finalae from Marc Reck himself was a joy to VJ to.   This gentle reader then led to an early morning unwind back at the hostess of the night’s abode.  Thanks must go to Laura for the music, hospitality and tea.

As per usual though, there were so many people that came together to macke this an absolute blinder of an event, and I’d like to thank Marc and Pyn for encouraging me to actually begin with the workshops that have been on a drawing board for so long, Liam for lights, visuals and his siter workshop on software vjing, Rich batsford for an amazing set, the osmosis boys for a storming night of techno and heavy breaks (class work!), Charley for participating and playing!, Laura for a storming opening set and hospitality, and Mr Mike Freear and Alphadrive!  Hope to catch ya when you visit these lands further south.

Sleep however, never came … and around half nine I was off on my train travels again back to Leicester for the finale of my weekend!

It’s something else to actually see some of the energy and preparation that goes into creating such a mammal and Marc and Pyn have it down to a tee.  The revellers were taken on an ecletic evening of sound and light that puts all of the Leicester events to shame.  I look forwards to working closer with Marc and Pyn over the coming months and can wholeheartedly recommend that everyone has to experiance a Mr Elephant party at least three times in their life.

All these have come from one of the core members of Mr Elephant – Pyn Stockman. No stranger to running workshops and having been trained by the best in business Pyn has over 20 years experience, a committed passion for masks, theatre and community arts, and runs leading arts organisation Dramask

In between her own workshops in schools and community settings Pyn has been one of the backbones of Mr Elephant, bringing many of the interactive elements, and mucking in with many sides of the events on the evening. Despite possessing a glimmering cv, and with her own masks appearing in venues from Cbso to the Town Hall, and at events from Project X Presents to Shambhala Festival, Pyn still found the time to organise and curate the mr elephant workshops, with them growing from the mask making at Epic Skate Park, to a full programme of tasters and drop ins at our 2nd Birthday.

Pyn will be showing us all how to make those poodles, alongside our other community arts resident, Jenny Commins, who ran the mask decorating at our family day back in 2007.

Poodles and Masks will be judged in the midnight parade, and the workshops in the day will be open to all ages.

Beatboxing sounds really cool if you can do it. A quick google and a few beardy man or dub fx videos provide plenty of inspiration but a quick attempt leaves us sounding somewhere between a spitting dog, and a discontent business man.

Never fear though because the host with the most, Mr Bass6 will be coming down especially early to share some of the basics (pardon the pun) of the beatboxing artform.

Then maybe one day you’ll be able to do this > ?

Get yourself ready for the midnight mask parade with live drumming workshops from Circadia’s very own Jon Elliot.  He’s beaten the drum at many a mr elephant event, and at our 2nd birthday on Sat May 23rd, he’ll be showing us all how he does it.

“Drumming: Learn the basics of hand percussion: about the drums and instruments, their origins and uses, how to play some basic drum and percussion rhythms – e.g. African, Indian, Cuban & Brazilian, and play together as a group.”

Jon Elliot is part of the luvvit arts based co-operative, who provide music, performance, media and education services through a network of pleasant, talented and reliable people.

Also from the Luvvit co-operative is the talented Poi spinning and Juggling maestro Alice Branson, who will be offering a drop in workshop also open to all ages to learn the skills for juggling and poi

“Children of all ages, come along and learn a new skill. Learning poi increases your flexibility and spatial awareness, as well as looking cool! Juggling improves hand eye coordination and means you will never be lost for a party trick! Provided you want to learn, I will teach you to perform at least one amazing trick with these disciplines”

Claire, a local animator who helped to run the poodle parlour at our last big event is also a very talented animator. She has years of experience in educational and community workshops of all ages, and will be offering a chance to get an insight into how she does it at our 2nd birthday on Sat 23rd May 2009 @ Hare & Hounds.

The theme will be Mr Elephant’s travels, and participant’s creations will be used as part of the footage on the visuals for the event on the evening. The workshop is a drop in, and open to all ages.