This is a fantastic opportunity for someone who is great at talking, getting on with people and passionate about music and visual art to sell Punch’s work. Punch commissions and produces work in a range of art forms including; dance, music, visual arts and film and over the last five years Punch has expanded it’s range of touring exhibitions.

For more information about the role and how to apply please, click here.

Your port of call to apply would be a not for profit organisation like Punch. We would be delighted to support producers/composers of Black music.

Deadline for Punch proposals: Monday 20 September 2010, 5pm.

If you’re a producer/composer we need from you:

• A4 proposal for your idea with a plan on how to deal with engagement, youth, internationalism and legacy.
• Supported material should be included such as; Youtube/MySpace links or 4 CDs of your music.
• You may even wish to include a short sample of your proposed new work (although not essential).

If you are interested, please email your proposals to gurpreet (at) punch-records.co.uk and post any hard material to the Punch address below:

For more information, please click here.

Good luck!

Muzik Kinda Sweet will be released in October 2010 and will be available to buy online in our shop section.

The remarkable photographs selected from OOM Gallery Archive features evocative, nostalgic and largely unpublished images of musical legends like Stevie Wonder, Grace Jones and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.

Shot entirely in black and white on a Canon Sure Shot autofocus camera purchased in the 1980’s, the photographs offer a stark alternative to the digital performance photography of today. Most of Caesar’s photography is based around his home city of Birmingham, documenting a spectrum of well-known personalities and recording significant events including the; Handsworth riots, Birmingham tornado and the regeneration of the Bullring.

For more information on Muzik Kinda Sweet and images please, click here.

The search is now on to find Midlands Best Dance Crew 2010. After the success of Leicester’s first dance heat where crews went head to head to compete for the title of Leicester’s Best Dance Crew, it is now back and bigger promising to be one unmissable night.

The urban dance championships comes to Birmingham Town Hall on Friday 12 November 2010. Like MTV’s show ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’ where the hottest street dancers compete in the hope of winning the cash prize, 12 of the Midland’s best crews will battle it out to win the trophy, £1000 and claim the title of Midlands Best Dance Crew 2010.

Check out the clip below:

A great show for the whole family to see with a surprise guest artist performing on the night, plus a chance to win a £50 prize for the best dancer from the audience.

Register now and Step Up for the chance of your crew to go head to head and claim the title of Midlands Best Dance Crew 2010. For more information on how to register, please click on the link below:

Registration Form

Auditions: Saturday 2 October 2010, Birmingham

Closing date to register: Friday 17 September 2010

Tickets are now available online, click here or contact Box Office on 0121 780 3333.

For further information about this event please email, gurpreet (at) punch-records.co.uk

The units can be used for crafts and arts workshops, performances and a whole range of other activity including films and video editing; in fact any kind of arts project. They can be supplied stand alone for you to use as you want or we can help you find the right artists and /or work to have in the unit. All the artists we work with have the appropriate checks such as CRB.

They are very easy to book and use; the mobile unit is driven to your event and set up by an experienced technician to suit your needs whether it’s a workshop, mini cinema, performance stage or anything else.

For more information and images of how the unit works please follow this link Mobile Arts Unit setup

If you have an idea that you would like to discuss or have any questions, please get in touch with the Punch team on 0121 244 7444 or email info (at)punch-records.co.uk

Punch touring is proud to announce the UK tour by a real legend of African music. Tony Allen will be marking his 70th birthday and the 50th anniversary of Nigerian independence with a UK tour this autumn. Kicking off at the mac (Midlands Art Centre)  in Birmingham, the five date tour with his full afrobeat orchestra will play in Leeds, London, Edinburgh, Bristol and Glasgow. Tony Allen, who played at the WOMAD festival in Charlton Park on 23 July 2010, will be promoting his CD Secret Agent and playing a special showcase at London’s Barbican. This will be the third tour produced through Black Routes, the network for touring African and Caribbean music.

Full 2010 tour dates are:
30 September, Birmingham mac

1 October, Glasgow The Aches

2 October, Edinburgh HMV Picture House

3 October, Leeds Wardrobe

6 October, London Barbican Centre

7 October, Bristol Metropolis

Tony Allen’s track Asiko was heavily sampled by J Dilla. Check out the clip below:

Born in August 1940, and a self-taught musician, Tony Allen began to play at the age of eighteen, a fan of American jazz but also fascinated by traditional music and with the percussion work of Ghanaian Guy Warren, who mixed traditional rhythms with the new sounds of American bebop. Invited to audition for a jazz-highlife band by Fela Kuti in 1964, he became an original member of Kuti’s Koola Lobitos highlife-jazz band and started a decades-long musical relationship.

Allen is known as the man who put the beat in Afrobeat, Nigeria’s most influential musical export – a combination of the heavy groove and universal appeal of soul with jazz, highlife, and the polyrhythms of Yoruba music. Allen’s fusion of drum styles perfectly complemented Fela’s new African groove and he recorded over 30 albums with Fela and Africa ’70 – widely regarded as Fela’s best works. He has also worked with Manu Dibango, King Sunny Ade and Ray Lema. While often returning to the Afrobeat template that made his name, in the years since Allen has also worked with a broad range of rock acts, such as Jimi Tenor,  and, to general acclaim, with Damon Albarn, Paul Simonon as the group The Good, The Bad and the Queen.

Punch in partnership with Lozells Recreation Group have recently completed a young people’s participation project called Music is my Heritage and we are thrilled to announce that 9 young people have all achieved their Bronze Arts Award.

The 16 week project explored the rich and diverse musical history of North West Birmingham and each week participants worked with a professional, local musician to workshop different genres of music.

The group explored the genres of grime, hip hop, reggae, bashment, bhangra and MC and lyric writing. They have produced their own short film of the project and even created their own soundtrack! Check out the footage below:

The group worked towards achieving their Arts Award qualification by capturing the project through film. They used handheld FLIP cameras to film each other during the activities and then worked with a professional film-maker to edit the footage. This footage, along with their project folders, was shown to the Arts Award Assessor who passed all the group with flying colours. The assessor commented that “the young people worked enthusiastically and become really involved in the project. Very well done”.

This is a fantastic achievement for Punch and LRG but mostly for all the young people who worked so hard throughout the project – many congratulations to each of them, they are now the very proud owners of a Bronze Arts Award certificate.

Have a look at some of the pictures taken from the various sessions below:

This special event as part of BASS 2010 was presented in partnership with the mac, Edge 10, UK Vibe and Liquid Fusion.

There was a screening of the film The Jazz Room, followed by a Q and A and dancing workshops accompanied by DJ Bruce Q.

Below is a slideshow of photos from the event, taken by Damian Brown Photography.

We chose to open the festival with our Protest: Fight the Power exhibition at the newly opening Zellig building, Custard Factory.

If you have feedback or content to add to the exhibition then please join our Facebook page by clicking here.

The exhibition is open until the end of June, Monday – Saturday 10am – 5pm and it is FREE. 

Below are some of the highlights of the launch night:

Photographs by Damian Brown Photography.

Massive thanks to all those who showed support for the event.

Below is a slideshow of photographs from the day and you can also watch a video capturing some of the highlights of the event.

Check out the slideshow of the photographs from the Bhangra Flashmob taken by Jaskirt Dhaliwal.