City Beat: Sidewalk Film Festival takes part in Sundance, BBA and BEF retaining local talent, micromobility returns

Birmingham’s Sidewalk Film Festival will take part in the prestigious 2021 Sundance Film Festival this month. The Birmingham Business Alliance and Birmingham Education Foundation are working to keep talented young people living and working in the Magic City. Micromobility options will be back on city streets early in the new year. Birmingham-Southern College is taking an innovative approach to helping students adapt to the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic.

SUNDANCE AT SIDEWALK

The Sidewalk Film Center + Cinema and Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham has been chosen to take part in the 2021 Sundance Film Festival from Jan. 28-Feb. 3.

Sidewalk will serve as one of only 30 sites in America to partner with Sundance as one of the world-famous festival’s Satellite Screens.

This will allow the Birmingham nonprofit to offer online premieres and special events.

“Our organization has a long history of providing unique content to the Birmingham community and building audiences for indie films from around the world and we see this exciting partnership with Sundance as an extension of those efforts,” Sidewalk Executive Director Chloe Cook said in a Dec. 2 news release.

The Sundance Institute, based in Park City, Utah, is changing its festival model for 2021 due to COVID-19.

The lineup of films at Sundance, including 70 feature films and 50 shorts, will be offered online.

Sundance will also present film talks, special events and works from emerging media in the New Frontier Gallery.

“Even under these impossible circumstances artists are still finding paths to make bold and vital work in whatever ways they can,” said Tabitha Jackson, Sundance festival director, in the news release. “So Sundance, as a festival of discovery, will bring that work to its first audiences in whatever ways we can.”

“We look forward to welcoming local audiences to our pop-up drive-in and cinema (with lots of health and safety precautions in place) as a satellite screen for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival,” Cook said.

Sidewalk was also forced to innovate when it presented its festival in Birmingham in August.

The annual festival was held outdoors at The Grand River Drive-In at The Backyard in Leeds.

At press time, a complete festival schedule had not been released.

For details go to festival.sundance.org.

For information about Sidewalk, call 205-324-0888 or go to sidewalkfest.com.

KEEP TALENT LOCAL

The Birmingham Business Alliance (BBA) and the Birmingham Education Foundation (BEF) have created “LaunchED,” a pilot program for talent retention designed to expose students to internship and job opportunities with local businesses.

LaunchED began in November, according to a BBA news release.

The program is looking for employers willing to provide internships and professional development opportunities this summer for Birmingham City Schools alumni with the goal of keeping these young people and their talents in the city.

LaunchED will also create a database of ongoing internship opportunities for students that will be found on OnBoard Birmingham, the BBA’s new talent attraction platform.

“Professional development is one of the great equalizers, and this program will establish a blueprint of equitable talent development in Birmingham,” said Karla Khodanian, manager of talent and higher education partnerships at the BBA, in the release.

“This program will teach students skill mobility and provide them with mentorship and guidance from seasoned professionals,” said Carolyn Williams, program manager for the Birmingham Education Foundation.

GOING MICRO-MOBILE

The Birmingham City Council recently approved the applications of two micromobility vendors to operate shared bikes and scooters downtown and in several neighborhoods.

The vendors — Gotcha, based in South Carolina, and Veo, based in Illinois — will begin operation in early 2021, according to a city news release.

Users will be able to download the apps from the vendors to identify available bikes and scooters and pay for rentals, the release states.

Each vendor will deploy 500 devices each in the first 90 days of operation.

Bikes will be available at any time, but scooters will be unavailable from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The vendors pay the city a fee of $20 per device as well as a fee to establish corrals throughout the service area. However, the vendors set the prices for rides.

The approvals for Gotcha and Veo follow the council’s approval earlier in 2020 of a new ordinance allowing the operation of motorized scooters in Birmingham.

It will be the first time a bike-sharing program has operated in Birmingham since the Zyp Bikeshare program, sponsored by REV Birmingham, ended in December 2019.

Zyp logged 43,690 users, 218,795 rides and 253,203 miles over five years, according to REV Birmingham.

For information about the vendors, go to ridegotcha.com or veoride.com.

MINDFUL ON THE HILLTOP

Birmingham-Southern College recently launched a campus mindfulness and meditation program using a $5,000 grant from the Trust for the Meditation Process, a charitable foundation, according to a BSC news release.

The grant will allow the school to create a meditation space on campus and provide mindfulness instruction and training there.

The space will be open to the entire BSC community, not just residential students.

“These last months have highlighted the need for resilience, and we believe this grant will help our campus community continue to adapt to the COVID crisis while building a long-term habit of collective mindfulness,” said Joe Chandler, associate professor of psychology and director of grants and special projects at BSC.

Chandler and Keely Sutton, an assistant professor of religion, will be the project’s principal investigators. They’ve partnered with meditation teacher Cathy Wright.

The first training was held virtually Nov. 13, and the first eight-week session in the spring will be virtual.

“We hope that this grant marks the beginning of a mindfulness program that will be developed through the combined efforts of students, staff, alumni and faculty,” Sutton said in the news release.