Last month saw Birmingham Hippodrome host its first ever Instameet in partnership with Visit Birmingham and IGersBirmingham welcoming 35 of the city’s most innovative and influential photographers to the theatre for a tour of the backstage and front of house facilities.

In our latest guest blog, Beth Astington, who heads up IGersBirmingham with Fraser McGee, fills us in on their their adventures behind-the-curtain of the iconic Hippodrome stage…

Recently we were lucky enough to be invited to hold an event for our community going on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Birmingham Hippodrome.

IGersBirmingham, short for Instagramers of Birmingham, is a community centred around the photo-sharing social media platform Instagram. We are not the only IGers community – it’s actually a global network with over 600 communities worldwide. The first IGers community was set up in Madrid with the aim of enabling people with an interest in photography to connect and develop their skills amongst like-minded people.

IGersBirmingham is no different. Our community is comprised of people of all ages, skill levels and types of camera (phones, compact cameras, DSLRs, film and so on).

There are two key elements to any IGers community: firstly social media pages where great photos of the city or area are shared. These are photos that have been taken by members of the community and posted on Instagram using the community’s hashtag. IGersBirmingham have social media accounts on Instagram (obviously!), as well as Twitter and Facebook and in 2016 we launched our website (www.igersbirmingham.co.uk).

The second element to an IGers community is that typically it is active offline as well, so each community will hold events where members get together to visit a location to take photos and socialise. These events are known as instameets. IGersBirmingham have held instameets in a wide range of locations, such as Digbeth, Sutton Park, Soho House, Spaghetti Junction, Symphony Hall, the BMI, and the Jewellery Quarter to name but a few.

https://twitter.com/igersbirmingham/status/853203559285915648

As an IGersBirmingham co-organisers, Fraser and I are always looking for new and interesting locations to hold instameets so when Visit Birmingham offered the opportunity to collaborate on an instameet at the Birmingham Hippodrome we jumped at the chance. Being able to give our community the chance to go somewhere that they wouldn’t normally be able to visit is always really popular. As soon as we advertised the event the response was overwhelming. The 30 spaces sold out in less than 10 minutes – we could have probably filled 5 or 6 instameets, such was the demand.