Marc Reck

This copied from our Mr Elephant Website

Project X Presents was, and continues to be a huge inspiration to Mr Elephant. Some of us have been involved with Project X from the start, and Mr Elephant was born out of the experience of the first Project X Presents Event, the early Rockfall events, and a lot of what was going on in Birmingham at the time.

One of those things that was going on in brum was the noise abatement orders Our first home for the first Project X Event, and the first Mr Elephant festival style events – Epic Skate Park, ended up being shut down due to one obsessive complainer. Then followed the first home for the Mr Elephant Family Events – The Prince of Wales, which Keith & Diane were again really keen to use for arty and community events, but yet again they are facing more and more restrictive legislation, which pretty much stops them doing anything.

All of the above events were very safe, full of lovely people, incorporated both family events in the day and music events on the evening and generated a wealth of positive response from all ages, yet both events were not able to continue at the venues, because of the restrictions imposed upon them by the council. Its worth noting that our 6th event host – the fabulous the Rainbow Beach for Celebrate Birmingham’s Underground was also under scrutiny, and it seems that all these venue owners, (promoters and collectives) are all just trying to do great stuff for Birmingham, always at great financial risk, but seem to be constantly limited by the very council who is looking to put Birmingham on the map with the big city plan!?

Following some initial conversations with John Tigue and John Mostyn, the stirrer and created in birmingham was the first time we read about all this online, and it inspired 3 investigative reports from Ruth Robinson on Digbeth (who herself has a deep interest and experience in the development of areas). They raised an interesting question of whether the complaints were also linked in with the developers plans, and whether the intention to close venues down was not because of any real problems or issues, but to develop the vision of splitting Digbeth in quarters, as part of the Big City Plan, regardless of the impact on business and the city.

We’re not sure, but it leads really nicely onto this insightful Project X Presents video – Music Is Not Pollution, with interviews from John (Spotted Dog), Keith (Epic/Prince), Kent (Rainbow), and an abacus resident, all of which raise some very interesting points. One of which being why would the council want to stop such venues when there is such a huge support for them and only a handful of complaints, and when they are wanting to put Birmingham on the map in such a big way.

If you have anything to say, please feel free to comment. Now we’ve got the website going again, this video has inspired us to follow up some interviews we did in 2007. We’ll post links to any further debate from the Project X Presents collective, and anything else we can find, and feel free to add links yourself in comments