What a brilliant time we had at Funny Things this year.

Returning next month for a week-long celebration of rib-tickling stand-up, theatre, workshops, street performance, film and family events, Funny Things, produced by Creative Black Country is back from the 26th October to the 2nd November.

The independent cafe, fashion and grocery store, hairdresser and beauty salon, tailor, market stall, and takeaway are regular sights in Black Country towns and this September they are being celebrated and used as inspiration for a new set of performances.

Places of Welcome is a network of grassroots community and faith groups offering welcome, hospitality and friendship. November 2019 marks the 5th anniversary and they are looking for an artist to develop a new piece of work.

Writer Sophie Haydock has written a piece for Arts Council England’s website on what she found after a road trip around the country’s watering holes.

Emma Purshouse and Steve Pottinger of Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists do their first performance of their Heritage Tribute Act for the 050 Wolverhampton Friendship Centre Camcorder Club. This performance is part of Creative Black Country's National Heritage Lottery Funded project Finding Our Funny Roots.

Creative Black Country has been awarded £1,403,154 of National Lottery funding through Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places programme (CPP) to expand its current CPP activity to include Dudley, in partnership with Black Country Living Museum and Dudley Council for Voluntary Service.

We’re looking for people to share their stories and memorabilia of seeing comedians in an effort to find out just what is so unique about Black Country humour.

Dave Pitt of Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists attends the first oral history training session for Creative Black Country's National Heritage Lottery Funded project Finding Our Funny Roots and meets oral historian Siobhán Stevenson.

Our biggest Arts Village to date took over a section of Victoria Park at last weekend’s Ola Sandwell & Birmingham Mela and we had a great time in Smethwick.

For the fourth year Creative Black Country is partnering with the annual Ola Sandwell & Birmingham Mela in association with Lidl, to bring its biggest Art Village to date to the event, which returns to Victoria Park, Smethwick this weekend (20-21st July).

The Ola Sandwell & Birmingham Mela returns on the 20-21st July and CBC is delighted to be the creative partner for the fourth year in a row.

Dave Pitt of Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists meets Rosalind Argo of Creative Black Country to talk about the start of our new National Heritage Lottery Funded project Finding Our Funny Roots.

With phase 2 of our Creative People and Places project well underway we’ve been busy with some great projects over the last 18 months. Here’s a few headline highlights from our work…

Disorder Live Art acts as an ‘open, itinerant network based on collaborative research whose primary goal is to develop a sustainable model for producing and presenting live art and performance’.

Visual artists are being asked to take part in Wolverhampton’s ultimate art & photography challenge as Paint the Day returns for 2019.

Saturday 25th May saw the launch of the Black Country leg of Girl Gaze at the British Muslim School in West Bromwich as part of the new BLAST! Photo Festival by Multistory.

To accompany the forthcoming UK leg of the Girl Gaze exhibition at Blast Photo Festival in West Bromwich we have updated the catalogue which will be available at the exhibition.

‘Magnifying Mushrooms’ is a new creative project exploring the importance of and beauty of fungi.

Suki Chumber is an Artist from Wolverhampton who has been awarded an Open Access Award to create an photographic exhibition showcasing owners and their private car registrations.