Marc Reck

Throughout the last 10 years, i have organised, promoted and managed a whole range of music based events, and currently am proud to be involved with three of Birmingham’s finest.

(I’m also qualified in Events Management, Health & Safety, Stewarding, Web Design & Online Music Enterprise)

Mr Elephant Presents -  (Creative director, curator, performer, promoter) – www.mrelephant.com – (2007 to Present)

Also awarded Best Small Promotions Runner Up in the 2008 Night Times Awards.

“Mr Elephant Presents delivers interactive club and family events alongside facilitating various community workshops, through our established network and central website. Our events, workshops, and various strands of the website, all aim to increase awareness of the locality, create new opportunities and audiences for participants, and encourage community interaction and cultural exploration.”

I started Mr Elephant Presents at the beginning of 2007 with a small team of people to try and bring something new to Birmingham, inspired by the other two events i was involved with (Project X Presents & Rockfall), my own djing experiences, and the other events and people i was collaborating with in Birmingham, such as community arts organisation Dramask.

Each event has a real celebratory festival feel to it, and aims to encourage community interaction, whilst shining a light on the wealth of creative talent in the city, at both the carnival style underground club events, and the family style events.

We also invite local people to get involved in the now infamous Mr Elephant Midnight Mask Parade, encouraging people to make and decorate a mask, create and parade their poodle, perform as a tourist or old lady, play a djembe at midnight, or just jam on the free kazoos. We also open the doors to local creatives and food places to host their stalls, alongside offering a range of more in depth workshops to all ages where suitable.

The response has literally been staggering from day one, with each not for profit event filling each setting with a wide demograph of happy people, whilst also proving commercially successful for each of the venues, (in most cases generating highest bar takes to date), and bringing new audiences, promotion and opportunities for pretty much all participants.

As we pretty much have to work for free, alongside all the devising, organising and promotional work, i also carry out many other roles, from flyer and poster design (alongside the work of Aart Tanner), video editing and production, marketing and press releases, and website design and development. I’m lucky to know and work with a really great team of people, and we are now setting up community workshops as an extension of the drop in ones we offer at events.

We would like set up Mr Elephant Presents as a Not for Profit organisation, in order for it to be sustainable, and so we are working on a business plan and are very much open to mutually beneficial partnerships. We are also applying to 4ip and are in talks with various Birmingham based organisations in order to best launch our forthcoming community project called Share To Create. Share to Create is a website being built alongside Ant Ramm from open advantage, that enables local skill sharing and facilitates creative and community development through an intelligent rails system and a range of outreach projects. We’ve been working on the project for over 6 months now, and should be launching the beta stage early 2009.

if you’d like to see more, you can check out our club and family events from the direct links below -

Mr Elephant Events to date

Sat 11th July 2009 – Intermix @ Hare & Hounds with guest tbc

Sat 3rd July 2009 – Party Rockin Mammal Sessions # 7 with Dr Pepperspray

Thu 25th June 2009 – Back Bar Sessions @ Hare & Hounds with Vj Blendstate

Sat 20th June 2009 – Live & Free #3 with the Heels, Hidden Half, & Flame of Fervour

Sat 13th June 2009 – Cinephonic Dancefloor Sessions @ Hare & Hounds with Quantic

Fri 5th June 2009 – Party Rockin Mammal Sessions # 6 @ Bulls Head with Mark Smallman

Sat 30th May 2009 – Live @ The Adam @ Eve with Paper Tiger & Funkbox

Sat 23rd May 2009 – Mr Elephant’s 2nd Birthday @ Hare & Hounds with Dub Fx, Alphadrive, Jerome Hill, Rich Batsford, etc

Fri 1st May 2009 – Party Rockin Mammal Sessions # 5 @ Bulls Head with R Caine

Thu 30th April 2009 – Back Bar Sessions @ Hare & Hounds with Vj Blendstate

Fri 24th April 2009 – Live @ The Adam & Eve with Munchbreak, Playing Django, & Smiley Mic

Sat 11th April 2009 – Party Rockin’ Mammal Sessions # 4 @ Bulls Head with Badaboon

Thu 26th March 2009 – Back Bar Sessions @ Hare & Hounds

Sat 7th Feb 2009 – Party Rockin Mammal Sessions #3 @ Bulls Head with Olbi Iyah

Sat 6th Dec 2008 – Mr Elephant Presents “Party Rocking Mammal Sessions #2 @ The Bulls Head – Photos/Lineup, Review/Photos

Fri 7th Nov 2008 – Consider it Done in & Mr Elephant Presents “The Gigbeth Fringe Show” @ The Rainbow – Flyers/Lineup, Review/Photos

Sat 11th Oct 2008 – Mr Elephant Presents “Party Rocking Mammal Sessions #1 @ The Bulls Head – Poster/Line Up, Review/Photos/Video

Sat 20th Sep 2008 – The Night Times & Mr Elephant Presents “Celebrate Birmingham’s Underground” @ The Rainbow Beach & Rainbow Warehouse – , Posters/Line Up, Photos/Review 1, Photos/Review 2

Sat 21st June 2008 – Bazaar & Mr Elephant Presents “The Longest Day Festival” @ The Hare & Hounds – Flyer/Line Up, Review/Photos

Sat 24th May 2008 – Mr Elephant Presents “Bank Holiday Family Alldayer @ The Prince, Moseley, Poster/Line Up, Review/Photos

Fri 25th April 2008 – Mr Elephant’s Presents “1st Birthday Bash” @ Hare and Hounds – Flyers/Lineup, Review/Photos/Video

Sat 2nd June 2007 – Mr Elephant Presents “Rockfall vs Jibbering” @ Epic Skate Park Flyers/Line Ups, Review/Photos

Sat 2nd June 2007 – Dramask & Mr Elephant Presents “Family Mask Making” @ Epic Skate Park & The Prince

Sat 31 Mar 2007- Mr Elephant Presents “Rockfall Vs Jam Jah” @ Epic Skate Park – Flyers/Lineup, Photos/Review, Video

And here are a couple of videos to date. We have a lot more footage, which will be online in January 2009. While i’ve taught myself a lot, I’m by no means a skilled film maker, and the footage we had was very sparse and random! Nevertheless the goal was to show some of the things we had going on, so hopefully they give a fair idea.

Event 1

Event 3

Project X Presents – www.projectxpresents.com – Core Member, Curator of celebration section, Performer and c0-promoter – (2005 to Present)

“Project X Presents is a Birmingham, UK based collective of creatives who produce one off multi-media interactive performance experiences. Using 3 stages allows a seamless flow of multi-genre entertainment including musicians, comedians, VJs, DJs, performers and installations. As one reviewer put it, Project X Presents events are “quite simply – like nothing else out there”.”

Project X Presents came about after 5 friends – (Rich Batsford, Ant Ramm, Anne Marie Pope, Steve Kelly & Myself) got together to throw a party for a friend of ours. It was an ecletic multi room affair and went so well, that we decided to do something similar but in a more jools holland style setup, as a way of showcasing more talented friends and creatives in brum.

Since then its got bigger and bigger, with around 100 participants all now working for 9 months each time to produce huge omni-media shows which have explored narrative, themes, and generated a huge buzz in Birmingham.

For me, i get to to perform alongside whole range of media and artforms in my resident dj role, and also curate the celebration (final) section of our 7 hour show. As a core member, I am also involved with many of the aspects of managing and developing the event, from the devising, organising, and promotion, to the performance, direction and full production setup week. This has given me a great deal of first hand experience in setting up and co-ordinating a huge multi media show and given me great insight into many artforms and working as a community.

I’ve blogged a lot about our events, but a lot more information is on our website, so here are the direct links.

Project X Presents Events to date

Sat 13th Sep 2008 – Project X Presents “Digital Distopia”@ B.U.S.K – Reviews & Photos

Fri 22nd Feb 2008 – Project X Presents – X Labs @ Concrete – Review/Photos

Sat 3rd Nov 2007 – Project X Presents “Journey to the Edge of Somewhere” @ Rainbow Warehouse -  Review 1/Links, Review 2/Photos/Video

Sat 8th Jul 2006 – Project X Presents “Like Fxck” @ Epic Skate Park – Review/Photos/Video

And here is a video of our debut event at Epic Skate Park (This one was made by a proper film company, as you can probably tell!)

Rockfall – www.myspace.com/rockfallbreaks – Curator, Performer, Promoter – (Jan 2006 – Jan 2008)

“Rockfall is one of Birmingham’s leading breaks nights, and since its launch in 2006 has packed out the biggest clubs like the Custard Factory, Air, & The Rainbow Warehouse in Birmingham and played host to some of the biggest names in the international breaks scene”

Me and Boogie Dave (Drop Beats Not Bombs) ran and promoted this event, and it was a huge success in terms of breaks, djing, and filling venues. Unfortunatly, Boogie would book so many big names, it ended up losing money, hence my decision to step out in Jan 2008. It was an amazing two years, and i learnt so much about promoting, and so much other skills, such as learning to edit and produce video (premiere), audio (wavelab) and image (photoshop), for various on and offline promotional purposes, alongside all the devising, organising, promotion and direction of our events as a whole.

I wasnt blogging when we started Rockfall, though there are videos so i’ll link to them.

Events

Sat Dec 2007- Rockfall 6 Xmas Special with Baobinga & I.D @ The Custard Factory- Lineup Flyers

Sat Oct 2007- Rockfall 5 (Mechanoise 10th Birthday) @ The Custard Factory – Flyers,  Review/Photos/Videos

Sat Jul 2007- Rockfall 4 vs City Breaks @ Custard Factory – Review/Photos/Video

Sat Jun 2007 – Rockfall vs Jibbering @ Epic Skatepark – See Mr Elephant events

Sat May 2007 – Rockfall vs Subvert F.O.E Fundraiser @ Epic Skate Park – A local Friends of the Earth fundraiser

Fri May 2007- Rockfall vs Sexual Allstars Dj Battle in the Pool @ Drop Beats Not Bombs – www.dropbeatsnotbombs.co.uk

Sat Mar 2007- Mr Elephant Presents – Rockfall Vs Jam Jah @ Epic Skate Park – See Mr Elephant events

Sat Dec 2006 – Rockfall 3 Xmas Party @ Sanctuary, Birmingham – Lineup/Photos

Fri April 2006 – Rockfall 2 @ The Custard Factory- Lineup/Photos Video

Fri Feb 2006 – Rockfall 1 @ The Custard Factory – Lineup/Photos Video

And finally this is a video i made for our Rockfall event taken from mine and Boogies footage. Took me a long time and was the first (and probably the best) video i’ve made thus far.

Before the big scale events – from 1999 to 2003 I also ran a successful weekly friday night called Headway at the Bar Academy with guests like Steve Gerrard & Brothers Bud, (before that a local thing at Pat Kavs), and following that was a monthly saturday night called Inter-Course at the Forme Bar with guest like 808 state & Future Funk Squad, and also (where me and Boogie joined forces)