Sonia Boyce Wallpaper Live Art
Our pick of the free weekend highlight’s has to be international artist Sonia Boyce’s cutting edge live night of art featuring skateboards and ukuleles. If you can skate, bring your board along to be involved, the night will be filmed to create future artworks from this brilliant creative mind. See our full preview here.
Fri 17 Feb, 6.30pm – 8.30pm at Eastside Projects, 86 Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham B9 4AR

Verve Festival of Poetry & Spoken Word at Waterstones Birmingham
A shiny new venue, amazing line-ups of poets, spoken word artists & workshops from French rappers to a kids open mic session, it’s no wonder the weekend tickets have sold out but fear not, there are plenty of free events to attend, including the above Little Tyke Open Mic session Saturday as well as a ton of other brilliant adventures in wordplay for adults and kids alike. See our full preview here.

The Heels live at The Dark Horse
Another week another great free event at The Dark Horse. Moseley’s finest purveyor’s of gratis late night parties have laid on an evening of cool rock steady fabulousness, with local ska and soul maestro’s The Heels bringing their full brass sound to the upstairs room. Dust off the pork pie hat and get yourself heeled and soled for there will be dancing. DJ Eris will keep the good vibes ticking over into the early hours playing a mixture of ska, soul and rockabilly.
Fri 17 Feb 10pm at The Dark Horse, Alcester Road, Moseley, Birmingham B13 8JP events

The Real Junk Food Project vegan takeover at The Gunmakers Arms 
TRJFP is one of our favourite and most worthy concepts. Saving perfectly good food from an early journey to the dustbin and distributing it through ‘pay-as-you-feel’ Freegan boxes to happy punters to use at home or to be served at pop up cafes and street food events like this. Saturday they will be taking over the lovely Gunmakers Arms for the evening with delicious vegan food available from 6pm with the vegan Two Towers Ale on draught from 12pm. That’s six hours from ale to grub so you may want to pace yourselves. Read our feature for more information on TRJFP here.
Sat 18 Feb 6pm Gunmakers Arms, Bath Street, Birmingham B4 6HG events

Longbridge Art Project
Get lost in music – and art – at Longbridge’s public art exhibition by Sarah Silverwood complete with a Playlist featuring Led Zeppelin to Lionel Richie. See our full preview here.

DeBasement in the 6/8 Cafe Basement
After last month’s stunning DeBasement event at Cogs the gang have moved across the city to take over the basement of the 6/8 Cafe. One of the best coffee houses in Birmingham its multi award winning status is well earned. We like it so much it made our top ten cafe list here. Whilst filling up on the sweet black stuff, or maybe a craft beer or two, plug your ears into the incredible funky live sound of Shokunin, in addition to the sweet acoustic noodling of Luke Brougham. There will also be performances from local poets.
Sat 18 Feb 6pm at 6/8 Kafe 6/8 Temple Row, Birmingham B2 5HG events.

Sunday Leisure Ride with Cycle Birmingham
Come on, it’s time to stop staring at that bike or using it to hang the washing on and get back out there, your health will thank you. The Cycle Birmingham group organise some great rides that let you safely take in the city amongst a friendly rabble of pedal pushing peers. There’s bound to be a pint supping break in there somewhere too. This time be prepared for a 20 mile ride entirely on tarmac that promises to take in the Rea Valley. The pace will be sedate though there are a couple of hills to negotiate.
Sun 19 Feb 10.30am Meet at Kings Norton Railway Station Car Park, Birmingham B38 8SN events

Sunday Xpress 2017 at Centrala
Incredibly now in its eleventh year the all singing all dancing free arts extravaganza that is Sunday Xpress has landed at new venue Centrala. It really is a match made in counter culture heaven. Centrala has a reputation for hosting imaginative leftfield events and has established itself as a vital cultural hub, it’s in a really cool part of Digbeth too. Sunday Xpress will be bringing a finely honed mixture of open mic sessions and bands, but what we like best about SX is their attention to detail. Projectors will be beaming everything from Jim Bowen to Jan Svankmajer onto big screens and carefully curated playlists will fill any performance voids between acts. Headlining are The Day Ends, who make the biggest, tightest, metal, indie, jazz, rock noise you will ever hear. Taking hardened eclecticism to the outer reaches of musical reality the Smethwick based musicians are a blast live. Also appearing are Wolverhampton based noisy blues rabble The Suicide Chuggers and ADHD. Compere for the event is Big Brendan Higgins. That’s a lot of musical bang for no buck. You lucky people.
Sun 19 Feb 5pm at Centrala, Unit 4, Minerva Works, 158 Fazeley Street, Birmingham B5 5RT events