Pretty Shitty City

Tyron Francis is a freelance photographer based in Swansea, and as he’s just re-designed his website, I thought it was a good time to do a little profile on him.

Through exploring Swansea, music & people, Francis has built up a portfolio with varied work, and he gets the geek vote too, for publishing his work under a Creative Commons license.

The two main themes of his work seem to be community and music, both of which he his obviously passionate about. The photos have a gritty documentary feel, but still feel colourful and full of life, capturing moments of raw emotion and day-to-day life as if they were always the same thing.

In his own words, Tyron sees “… photography as a tool for social awareness and change, or rather MY tool for social awareness and change.”

http://www.tfrancis.co.uk/

All images © Tyron Francis and licensed under Creative Commons.

Carbon Made is a neat online portfolio made for designers who want to show off their work on the web but have no html knowledge.

Problems with MySpace aside, it’s a great tool for bands and musicians to network with fans, promoters, and other bands. But when it comes to visual artists, it just doesn’t cut it, and whilst Flickr is good for free image hosting, it’s not quite right for a design portfolio.

If your an illustrator, graphic designer or even animator then Carbon Made is perfect. It offers a simple, easy to use layout, a clean & elegant blank canvas for your images and some pretty nice technology such as RSS feeds and Google Analytics integration if that’s what turns you on.

There are limits though, the free plan only allows 5 projects and 35 images. If you want more space and video hosting you’ll need to pay, but its still a great place to start and so much better than MySpace for this sort of thing.

If you give it a go and like it, then feel free to send us a link to your portfolio

http://www.carbonmade.com/

The guys over at the Third Mind forum have updated their logo, so it seems like a perfect excuse to highlight what they’re about to those of you who haven’t sampled their website yet.

In their own words…

“Thirdmindmedia is a community based website, dedicated to all things urban, electronic in South Wales, whether it be drum’n'bass, hip hop, breaks, dub, grime, garage, djing, mcing, graff or raving…”

Its a great place to keep up to date with gigs in Swansea and the surrounding areas, especially if your interested Drum’n'Bass and Hip-Hop etc. The forum is pretty focused and is kept active by a small group of regulars, definitely worth checking out a few times a week.

Don’t pretend you didn’t know! …its Fairtrade Fortnight in Swansea from the 26th of Feb till 11th of March.

Get up to speed on the events at Fairtrade Swansea.

Spl.Ash Media are a group of individuals, passionate about the entertainment industry.

Through their new website, Splash Media Online, they’re offering support for musicians, bands and any artists in the entertainment industry, from design and brand image to business and legal support.

The website looks really smart, if a little image-heavy, and promises a regular podcast (damn, they beat me too it! )

Shared Creation has posted an article about Pretty Shitty City in their projects blog. The piece is very flattering and it’s great to see that the range of topics covered on this site is being appreciated, you can read the article here.

The Shared Creation site has some very similar aims to Pretty Shitty City; including creative collaboration, technology, community, art & film making etc. (check out Consumed: a zombie film project!)

The Environment Centre has published a Sustainable Living guide promoting events, like Local Produce Markets and training workshops.

You can download the guide and other resources from the Sustainable Swansea website.

“We need to collect all petitions and letters of support by the end of January.

If you have anything, let one of us know and we’ll arrange to pick it up, or you can drop it into Wheelies or Exist.

The response is getting better but it still isn’t great. There are definitely some people I would have expected to write but haven’t.

Please, please, please get as much done for this as possible – funding bodies don’t tend to hand over half a million pounds without some community support.

You can download the petition and letter of support at:
http://www.streetsportsswansea.co.uk/downloads.html

and you can contact us at:
jason@streetsportsswansea.co.uk
ric@streetsportsswansea.co.uk
main@streetsportsswansea.co.uk

C’mon Swansea, you can do it!

(feel free to copy to like minded souls)”

A coalition of local residents and climate action groups are actively opposing the construction of the South Wales LNG Pipeline in three separate locations. The National Grid project will eventually stretch from Milford Haven to Gloucestershire, cutting through the Brecon Beacons National Park, to meet rising demands for Gas in the UK.

Activists at Trebanos, Cilfrew and now Alltwen, argue that their protests are due to “lack of consulation, safety fears, environmental issues and climate change concerns”.

For regular updates on the situation check the Rising Tide website.

Street Sports Swansea (S3) are looking for support for their project to build a permanant concrete skatepark in Swansea.

You can download and print off petition forms and draft letters of support from their download section, plus their gallery is filling up with event flyers and photos of last year’s Outsider Festival in Singleton Park, to get you in the mood.