Business News


Celebration marks return of jazz festival


By John Lamb


The curtain will rise on this year’s Birmingham, Solihull and Sandwell Jazz and Blues Festival at a celebration dinner next month. It takes place on 26 April at the


Birmingham Conference & Events Centre at the Holiday Inn in Hill Street and will feature King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys, the Birmingham- based “kings of swing”. The prolific recording artists are


internationally renowned and were described as “the hardest act to follow since the parting of the Red Sea” on BBC Radio 2 by Paul Jones, the former Manfred Man star. The night will be presented by


the multi-talented Tom Clarke-Hill, himself a fine double and electric bass player and actor. He is also a stand-up comic and the anonymous voice behind Tony the Tiger in the Kellogg’s Frosties commercial with the words: “They’re GRRRRREAT!” The dinner will be hosted by


Jazz Festival patron Digby Fairweather, the cornetist, author and broadcaster as well as featuring the Classmates Barbershop Quartet. Jim Simpson, managing director


Presenter: Tom Clarke-Hill


‘We estimate that the economic benefit we have brought to the region over 34 years is about £72m with a total audience of more than 2.7 million’


of Birmingham-based agency and record label Big Bear Music, is director of Birmingham International Jazz & Blues Festival and was the first manager of Black Sabbath. The festival is in its 34th year


and the visitor spend during last year’s festival was £4.39m. It takes


place this year between 20 and 29 July featuring 210 performances, 198 with free admission, across 86 venues. Last year’s festival attracted


70,900 people and featured 411 musicians in 75 bands from the UK, Australia, France, Greece, Holland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Spain and the US.


Jim said: “Thirty-five per cent of


attendees came from outside Birmingham, Solihull and Sandwell and included visitors from the rest of the UK, all over Europe, China and the US. “We aim to beat that this year


and we have many sponsorship opportunities for what has become an internationally-renowned live music festival. “We estimate that the economic


benefit we have brought to the region over 34 years is about £72m with a total audience of more than 2.7 million. “With cuts in public spending,


it’s vital that we get as much support for self-funding events like the dinner.”


For more details call 0121 454 7020 or email festival@bigbearmusic.com


Vélo goes back to Brum’s streets


Vélo Birmingham - the 100- mile closed-road cycling event – is to return on a new route in Spring 2019. The inaugural event in


September 2017 was the second biggest closed road cycling event to take place in the UK. It proved to be a huge


success, selling out more than 15,000 entries in one weekend. Vélo Birmingham riders also


raised £2m for a number of different charities, including Cure Leukaemia, NSPCC, Alzheimer’s Society and Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.


Birmingham invests in major data centre


Birmingham has undergone its largest ever data centre investment with a £25m project to build its first state-of-the-art Uptime Institute- accredited Tier III Data Centre on a five-acre inner-city site. This major IT initiative sees Birmingham compete as a data centre for


the first time with the likes of London and Manchester. The data centre has been built with a world-class engineering design


with an extremely energy-efficient operating performance and is additionally protected to UK Critical National Infrastructure grade security standards. It is not only diversely connected by low-latency Tier I network carriers, but it is also connected directly with all major UK digital hubs including London Docklands, Slough, Manchester and all major Cloud platforms. As the only Uptime Institute-accredited Tier III data centre in the


region, it assures its prospective customers that in an era of growing concern over data integrity and security, there has been investment in ensuring that it meets all compliance regulations and global standards for multi-national corporations and public sector. The project is chaired by well-known city business figure and former


Chamber of Commerce president Bridget Blow, delivering 5,800 square metres of highly-powered colocation space with considerable further expansion space available. This will assist the city in attracting companies requiring secure and power-efficient hosting for communications and IT equipment on a large scale.


Local knowledge: Bridget Blow Please direct all enquiries or requests for a tour to sales@puredc.global March 2018 CHAMBERLINK 23


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