Where will you be sleeping this Friday?

This Friday 5th December I will be doing the St Basil’s Big SleepOut. I found out about the SleepOut and St Basil’s a few years ago when I was working on a documentary with a Big Issue Seller from Birmingham (Listen to that here) but have never been able to do the SleepOut until now.

For those who don’t know St Basils they work to support the 4000 homeless young people in the Midlands. When I saw that figure I was shocked because I had no idea it was that high. And so promptly signed myself (and my Boyfriend) up for a night of sleeping in a cardboard box on the St Basils car park in Allcock Street in Digbeth to help raise some money. Anyone interested in sponsoring us can email me at ClaireBurgess_1@hotmail.com. It’s so cold at the moment if I’m honest I’m dreading it. But I know we’re lucky, we’re only doing it for one night some people are doing it every night. Hopefully we can raise lots and lots of money and it will all be worth it.

UPDATE:
We survived the Sleepout with about 150 other people and thanks to the lovely people at The Spotted Dog in Digbeth, amongst other contantly hassled friends and family my boyfriend and I raised over £400. It was a really good laugh and not as cold as I thought it was going to be. The date for next years has been confirmed as Friday 4th December 2009. See you there!

Our Bed For The Night!

The First Gigbeth Fringe

I am working with John Mostyn on the very first Gigbeth Fringe event. It’s a free event on Friday 7th November at The Rainbow in Digbeth. The line up is a mixture of everything from Gypsy Punk to a live looper. There will be some great music from Laura Louise, Mama Matrix, Smileymic, Capital Letters and Marc Reck.

Gigbeth at Artsfest

I have just spent the weekend standing on New Street in Birmingham manning the Gigbeth stall at ArtsFest. This meant I had to tell lots of people that “Gigbeth is a music festival held in the Digbeth area of town on the 7th and 8th November.” I must have said that 1000 times over the course of the weekend whilst giving out 3000 flyers. I also gave away lots of free stuff in the shape of t-shirts, bags and cds. It is funny how much people love free stuff even if it’s not very good free stuff but just because they can’t belive you can actually get something for nothing.

The line up so far for this year’s festival looks very cool indeed. Including D:ream (of Things Can Only Get Better, Labour theme tune fame) Guillemots, The Young Knives, The Destroyers, Stanton Warriors and best of all The Sugarhill Gang. Now, there were two kinds of reactions people were giving to the fact they are playing. The first was:

“The who?”

“The Sugarhill Gang”

“I don’t know who they are.”

“Do you remember the song Rapper’s Delight?”

“Nope”

“I said a hip hop ….”

“Ahhhhh!”

The second kind of reaction was the most amusing. This was the I got from a man who took a flyer and walked about four paces. Turned around and came back.

“The Sugarhill Gang?”

“Yes”

“The REAL Sugarhill Gang?”

“Yes”

“From AMERICA?”

“YES”

“I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop…”

And the guy rapped the whole of Rapper’s Delight whilst dancing in the street. High fived me and went on with his day. I wonder if he knew he had just made my weekend? For all your Gigbeth info check out there website. Tickets are on sale now.