Ten Years of Vivid Ink – a Look Back at 2011
Last week, it was ten years to the day since Vivid Ink Birmingham opened its doors and the tattooing machines began buzzing inside. While it is way quieter on this anniversary than anyone would have liked, it is still just a small part of ten marvellous years, during which Vivid Ink has grown to become one of the most recognized names in the Midlands tattooing community, delivering outstanding quality pieces to skin near you almost every single day.
The space, management, artists, and customers/canvases that make up Vivid Ink’s uniqueness are all interconnected. And taking part in tattooing and body modifications is sharing in a living tradition thousands of years old that keeps growing and evolving. This way, we all support and contribute to the art form.
And hey, keep your eyes peeled on Vivid Ink’s social media channels for a big upcoming tenth-anniversary competition as a way for the studio to say thank you!
2011 in review
With the risk of most of us feeling like it was yesterday, let’s take a trip down memory lane and see just what was going on in the world ten years ago.
The second year of the previous decade saw the beginning of the Arab Spring in earnest. England saw its own protests when thousands of people rioted over five days in August. Beginning in Tottenham over the shooting of Mark Duggan, they spread to cities like Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, and Wolverhampton.
Of course, there was the earthquake and subsequent nuclear disaster of Fukushima in Japan, and Usama bin Laden was caught and killed by American troops in Pakistan.
But let’s not dwell too much on such events. Let us take a look at some pop-cultural events from ten years ago, many of which have inspired hundreds of tattoos on fans around the world.
First Captain America, season one of GoT, and the final album from R.E.M
2011 was a good year for Marvel fans. The first Thor movie came out – and the first Captain America. The first season of Black Mirror began to air, and – let’s just remember how we loved it for seven seasons – Game of Thrones. For nearly an entire decade, it was one of the most beloved and talked-about shows on the planet.
Bringing George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire to the small screen was a wonderful idea – before D&D ran out of books and had to start coming up with their own material. Still, the Battle of the Bastards is probably the best episode of any show of all-time. And we have gotten some amazing tattoos inspired by the characters and events.
It was also the year when Frank Ocean’s debut mixtape ‘Nostalgia, Ultra’ was released on his Tumblr, Florence and the Machine and Adele both released second albums, R.E.M their last. PJ Harvey released her critically acclaimed but divisive Let England Shake.
In the world of gaming, we got Dark Souls, Batman: Arkham City, the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and multiplayer online Star Wars: The Old Republic.
What a decade it has been. What motive would you like to commemorate yours with? No better time than the present to get planning. So that we do not end up thinking ten years from now, ‘I should have gotten that tattoo…’
