MediaCamp and Digital Britain Unconference Nottingham 9th May 2009: Collective Memory

Saturday was Nottingham’s first MediaCamp (and certainly the first media-related Unconference I’ve known in the city), and I only feel like I’ve just recovered!

This post attempts to pool together everyone’s impressions and online experiences I can gather into a Collective Memory, taking the model suggested by Chris Unitt from Birmingham who attended to talk about the phenomenal success (and jealously, in the case of The Spectator’s Melanie Phillips) of Created in Birmingham.

It’s a work in progress – if you want to add more thoughts or links please do so on the MediaCampNottingham wiki collective memory page or in the comments below and I’ll update this post in a few weeks.

What was MediaCampNottingham?

A semi-structured unconference that lets disparate people from the business and community come together to talk about using media for commercial or social gain.  Spanning the themes of Technology, Media, and Culture – we saw in total about 40 people attend throughout the day from a happy mix of backgrounds – a city councillor, a lecturers, theatre practitioners, an Arts Council rep mixed with video bloggers, web developers, brand consultants and a whole range of geek – and non-geek – from the city’s diggerati, plus a few out-of-town guest blogging celebs like Jo Geary from The Times and legendary citizen journalistic Documentally.  Georgian micro-complex Lace Market House provided a lovely atmosphere for the, ususally, productive exchanges and a good atmosphere that wasn’t too ‘tech-brow’, where people could share a lively debate.

Anyone could sign up for a session – some were carefully structured presentation of research (like my session on online music for independent music entrepreneurs based on 6 months of academic research.  Presentation here, though doesn’t make too much sense with the text!), others more a spontaneous round table coffee and a chat.

Digital Britain Unconference

We were also lucky enough to time our event with the Digital Britain Unconference week, where a whole load of citizen groups from around the UK got together to (largely) challenge and re-shape Lord Carter’s Interim Report.  I ran this epic 3 hour session, which ranged from absurd and lively debate (like @documentally’s vision of no longer needing the BBC for Wimbledon as in the future we will install micro-cameras in the tennis balls to direct your own coverage), to some serious gauntlet laying in terms of what we could do to make Nottingham a better city for digital connectivity, and the digital industries.

Interestingly, Nottingham raised many of the same issues as West Midlands Unconference – namely the report should be addressing needs of smaller business and the community, not just corporates, and we need a more ambitious target for both up and download speed connectivity nationally for Britain to stay competitiive.

Here’s a PDF of the response submitted: digital britain unconference mediacamp nottingham
And you can view it online on the Digital Britain Unconference wiki.

Your responses to MediaCampNottingham:

The Twitter Stream for the day was of course lively, from both attendees and virtual onlookers, my favs: @NeilRostance is euphoric, and @Gillogs fears the ‘Geeklter’

Plenty of video responses – here Caron wraps up the day with everyone’s verbal ‘Tweet’ summarising the day, then Drew Davies’ Fear of Projection in complete – a fatanstic one man theatre piece where a junior lecturer realises his projector is talking back to him, before all manner of strangeness ensues…definitely CHECK.THIS. OUT.  @documentally and @philcampbell meet the lady of the church for lunch.

Blogs write-ups:

Camilla from Green Light Copywriting writes about Applied Creativity – finding some inspiration surrounded by a strange and interesting collection of techno fanatics.

Jed from Rock Star PR blogs mid-morning on the day (but doh! we need to re-do that Kubla Khan-esque video interview!)

Final thoughts

The day got me seriously thinking again about the power of collaborative innovation to get things moving – particularly in these times with cash shrinking everywhere.  We were able to get everyone here and do the event on the basis of goodwill, and keep it free.  And, thanks to the debate stemming form Chris Unitt’s session on Created in Birmingham, I’ve now found other collaborators to revive an old idea of setting up some kind of blog based network for creative Nottingham – more on this in a month or so.

Do we need cash to change things in Nottingham?  It helps, but not necessarily.  Do we need to connect more?  Definitely yes, but a face-to-face is better than a social networked way sometimes. Structure and purpose are good.  The challenge for me, particularly post Digital Britain, will be seeing how our ideas can filter up to the relevant big businesses and public bodies and get them to listen and talk with us, not TO us, a little more.

Thanks to:

Nick from Lace Market House for the free loan of the beautiful bulding, great serviced office (with exciting co-work space plans afoot I eagerly look forward to hearing more about), Excell Solutions for providing sponsorship for creche and other stuff,  Caron from PCM Creative for setting it in motion, and pretty much organising everything!  BIG thanks! Lucy, Ged, Babu, Edward and anyone else I’m forgetting on the steering group and volunteers on the day. THAAANKs.

What have I missed?

Add your blogs/links/thought in comments or MediaCampNottingham wiki collective memory page- I will update this post in a few weeks.

What next?

Who’s game for MediaCamp 10 or possibly late 2009?  What should we do differently?  How can we get more people (and more diverse people) along (to speak and attend?)   How can we raise some sponsorship cash (if we need it?)
Questions/answers in comments please!

Redefining innovation at iFestival and Nott Tuesday

Innovation has been the big buzzword of this decade – apparently, start-ups to international corporations will thrive or fail based on how much they innovate – yet in another decade this activity might just have been called ‘enterprise’, ‘doing stuff’ or ‘trial and error’.   However, from my own research into disruptive innovation in the creative industries (due to be published by NESTA in May), I uncovered a wealth of people doing and thinking differently about how they framed – and later reframed – their business offer in the market through new business or production models. Perhaps this is what Schumpeter called “creative destruction” and reinvention rather than innovation – which is perhaps a too broad and yet too narrow term.

iFestival

Yet Regional Development Agencies love their innovation – with whole teams and programmes dedicated to the intangible verb.  Yesterday I went to East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA)’s iFestival – a celebration of ideas and inspiration from the region and a few bigger ideas too.

I tagged along to the second half and heard Luke Johnson, Chair of Channel 4, talk about his legacy as a food entrepreneur (Pizza Express, Strada and Giraffe to name but three) – and avoiding mentioned the inevitable  impending collapse and inter-broadcaster bunfights between C4 and others.  Johnson believed his success lay in taking the core roots of a succeeding entrepreneur and developing these into a corporate model of chains and franchises – entrepreneurs just got too bored after opening a few stores.

There was much talk from Johnson and the panel on the importance of youth and education – most innovators generated their great ideas in their 20s, when they will take risks (and have little to lose).  There was worry that too much reliance on age could see Britain like Japan – where conservative 50-somethings rule roost and resist change or new ideas.   Those who won’t take risks have low expectation and live in fear of the unexpected – and nowadays, the unexpected is almost to be expected.

What happened next almost defied belief; delegates were invited into a medieval street – resplete with musicians, a juggler (trading under the name ‘the Fluid Druid’, apparently) wenches and people dressed as giant emus (not sure why) – to enter the ‘Last Business Standing’ competition where businesses were encouraged to – over the din – compete to deliver the best pitch to the streets filled with regional business advisors.

From my own days working in the public sector, it’s easy to knock their efforts at doing something different (dare I say innovative) – but this event was odd, inducing smirks and giggles, but definitely memorable – though not necessarily for all the right reasons.  The discomfort from the black-suited middle age gents, mainly from traditional industries like manufacturing, and the incongrous medieval fayre to me ranks alongside the very bizarre snake dancers entertainment at Creative Clusters 2007 as one of those moments of unadulterated perplexion.

Nott Tuesday

Head somewhat fried, it was reassuring to head over in the evening to the second meeting of Nott Tuesday, the new network of high-tech and digital businesses, to hear two interesting speakers, Doug Ashby, IT business entrepreneur discussed “retirement at 45, heaven or hell?”.  If you were a small business owner into the number crunching of boom, bust, boom, boom zero to hero startup his account of the trials and errors of IT startup was no doubt interesting.

Ian Lockwood then gave a quick introduction to the Nottingham Fibre project, as a call to arms for Lace Market tech co’s to unite in the fight for faster broadband.  I’ve blogged about this project recently under its previous name, Ultraband.

The quality of chat this evening was undoubtedly higher and more innovative than at iFestival where I seemed to get emeshed in a very boring gentlemen’s musings on innovation in hole digging technologies for fibre optics companies.  Great chat with the ever idea-ful CJ from PCM Creative who intends to set up Nottingham’s first Media Camp in the spring – I hope to get on board with making that happen.

And Martin Wright who is hosting Nottingham’s first web 2.0 surgery on March 26th – a way of getting businesses and organisation to get some hands on help on “getting” all this complex web stuff (something the great social media tribe in Birmingham have been pioneering for a while) – and ditto I’ve signed up as an expert for that so hope to see some Notts folk there.

I was revived by the energy and ideas in the room and willingness to get on and do and make change;  it really seems tha now is the hour  for Nottingham businesses to get connected, linked in, and use social media to change the business and community landscape for the better – and now its needed more than ever.

So all this innovation seemed to be happily happening of its own accord, without a label, or if it did have one, it would probably read “people talking about interesting stuff and getting on and doing it” – which is the closed definition of innovation you’re likely to find.

Ultraband – high speed broadband for Nottingham city?

This week I went to hear a presentation in Nottingham by a project a little closer to actuality that the recent 2012 Design Capital bid I recently blogged about.

Ultraband is a public sector non-profit partnership led by Connected Nottingham whose current mission is to create a high-speed broadband ring hooked around central institutes in Nottingham (including Broadway and Biocity).  The network will enable businesses with high speed broadband needs, particularly in the media industries around Nottingham’s Lace Market, to access high fibre pipes to ail the curent creaking, high capacity broadband network which will be essential for the productivity of businesses in the future.

According to a survey they conducted which you can still fill out online (and you probably should as they’re basing their findings on just 23 responses currently) 71% of Lace Market businesses were unhappy with their internet, and had problems with bandwith and connectivity that prevented service delivery – including outsourcing rendering projects.

If the Lace Market wants to become a creative hub, competing with the net access offering of other European regions like MediaCity Salford, Amsterdam and Paris is essential.

The service would be operated on a non-project co-operative basis, which is how many Scandinavian high speed networks have been established.  However it’s subject to approval of an EMDA bid which could become a longwinded process.  Director Peter Goodwin was keen to point out that if we didn’t reach a decision on moving forward within a year the opportunity would be lost and with it competitive advantage for Nottingham.

I don’t know too much about this kind of technology and the pros and cons, but from speaking to others it would seem that high-speed is available already – though price may be an inhibitor.  A rep from BT was also vocal about a network run by “over enthusiastic amateurs” – assuring us it’s not about the fibre in the ground which already exists but the support and connectivity provided by the service provider.

With Virgin’s announcement of a rollout of 50Mb high speed broadband for the very affordable £51 month,  I’m still left confused as to whether we are missing out on an opportunity to do something radical that addresses a market failure (which is, or should be, after all the point of Regional Development Agency money) or whether the market is actually already advancing in serving the needs of the few for whom ‘big pipe’ access is an imperative.

Yet any infrastructure that makes Nottingham more appealing to incoming investors and retains the high tech businesses we have could be crucial in survival.  But what is it we need most right now in the recession – the telecoms networks or the business networks?

Ultraband are also keen to raise awareness and garner views about the project in the inner-city Nottingham business community.  A blog strategy perhaps?

Nottingham – World Design Capital 2012?

I went to a small shindig last night at ChinaChina restaurant organised by Nottingham Ambassadors (City Council) and Invest in Nottingham, to raise profile for the city (in his introduction Simon Green, the city’s council’s Director of Sustainable Development was to keen to point out this was the whole of Nottingham and it’s professional community, not just his local authority’s boundaries) in a bid to become the next city of World Design Capital, which in 2008 is currently Turin.

Mr Green solicited our answers on a postcard – but scant was revealed at this stage of what emphasis the city’s bid would take – or indeed what the benefits would be to us as business owners and practitioners (or will we, like the City of Culture bid, be in position to leverage in more European cash?).

Further probing on the World Design Capital website says the award is for:

“The vision of the World Design Capital project is to promote and encourage the use of design to further the social, economic and cultural development of the world’s cities.

The designation provides a distinctive opportunity for the selected city to showcase their accomplishments in attracting and promoting creative industries, as well as demonstrate how government and industry work in concert with educational institutions, designers and its citizens to revitalise and reinveint the urban environment.“

A laudable aim, but initially my thoughts were:

1. What design industry?

2. Is the city actually offering any systematic, public support to the design sector – or just riding PR off the back of its well-coutured coat tails?

Spot the cynical consultant.  Then after some reflection, and a chat with the lovely Debbie Bryan, a designer of exquisite knit wear and booches and resident of creative incubator The Hive, Nottingham is indeed brimming with design success stories – from pioneering computer games developers, great branding, web and design agencies of national calibre (like Souk Digital and Studio Output), a raft of homeware designers and most significantly the fashion industry, put on the map by local guru Mr Paul Smith – who says publicly he is backing the bid alongside other bid brand Speedo -  now spinning off a clutch of gifted textiles, fashion and designer-maker names – many graduates from the great design courses at Nottingham Trent University.

Indeed, gatecrashing the fasionista club RSViP night after, quite a show of quality design people were showcasing there work in fashion, homeware and art.

Yet for me the buck stops at how the city (and region) is supporting and promoting its creative and design sector – and thus I fail to see how Nottingham could make a shortlist, despite a talent pool up with the best of England’s bigger cities.

As a starter-for-ten in the nearby, not especially design noteworthy Birmingham, the city supports the Plus design festival and Rhubarb Rhubarb international photography exhibition, alongside newer initiatives like Hello Digital digital film and media showcase. Not to mention Fused mag’s affordable art markets at the Custard Factory and a plethora of media, craft and arts events and exhibitions in between.  Many are run commercially or altruistically – yet many are given some seed (or bush-like in some cases) finance or marketing clout from public institutes like Business Link, Arts Council, Marketing Birmingham and Birmingham City Council.

The Council’s official press release on the city’s bid state’s we need to consider several areas for the bid, including: our proposed programme of events, design in schools, regeneration and architecture.  This seems quite geared towards architecture and the built environment to me, and as such perhaps Nottingham has developing some interesting work here in recent years.

Someone recently commented to me that Nottingham city officials expects the creative industries to happen without investing in it.  Big capital bids like developing Broadway cinema, New Art Exchange and Nottingham Contemporary art gallery run contrary to this, but from my own experience  of working in creative regeneration, projects need to be about much more than buildings and institutes, revenues need to flow through to support the fine grain of the creative city – which includes public spaces, networks, events, showcases, training and business support – either through European funding, regional funding, local funding from business rates or capital-turned-into-revenue endowments like the Bristol+ Creative Industries endowement fund I helped to set up with Bristol’s Watershed Media Centre in 2007 (though I’m disappointed that for a digital insitute they seem to be suprisingly unaccountable online as to how the £300K annual revenue is being spent or can be accessed – any further heads-up on the latest greatly received in comments).

And in this respect I fear Nottingham is many furlongs behind other English, let alone European cities.  However, I do think events like this are important in starting to galavanise the design community – in all its depths, shapes and sizes – and wider creative business sector to discuss our own strengths, opportunities and maybe do something about promoting it ourselves.

And who knows, perhaps Nottingham Council will put their money where their mouth is and commit to a significant event or series of activities to promote local alongside international design talent and start to put Nottingham on the international map for design – and with it attracting some very necessary tourism and inward investment.

What do you think are our odds for success?

Amplified 08 – connecting the dots in the social media maze

Yesterday I went along, like the rest of the Twiterrati, to Amplified 08 at the HQ of NESTA. Amplified is the new brain child of NESTA and Toby Moores (founder of Sony game Buzz whom I recently interviewed for a fascinating piece ‘in the mind of the serial disruptive innovator’ for a project for Creative Sheffield). It bills itself as a ‘network of networks’ that connects people from around the country who are developing leading-edge thinking in using social media technologies.

Around 200 people were there from a surprisingly broad range of disciplines – teachers, media producers, techno geeks, citizen journalists - a mix of ages and personalities but with a strong male bias. A fairly lose structure of discussions made for a somewhat chaotic space – having been to the OneMedia open space conference recently I found the sheer volume of people here a bit unwieldy to really have useful conversations – but in general the spirit and the ideas were full of vibrancy and excitement to connect and share ideas, and it was nice to put some names to faces and meet new folks outside of my usual digital media bubble.

The sessions were as diverse as the attendees, but tended to focus on changing the world a bit by changing a bit of the world, and what web tools can do to enable that. I popped into quite a few – some were really useful like Online Video, others a bit unstructured and meandering so I think it pays for session curators to be a bit better prepared to present their ideas to help focus the discussion. There’s probably a learning curve here and some delegate education needed on how to successful do open space or semi-curated events like this so people get the best out of it. We were all told to tweet after each session so there are heaps of tweets you can trawl through here.

On the whole I found it probably a bit too ahead-of-the-curve for my own more commercially focused practice (yes, me is un-cool consultant) – and sometimes I wonder if it’s best to go to ‘what you know’ where you can contribute and learn more or to throw yourself into the least relevant and known subject to see what you can learn. I did a bit of both – maybe at the next one I’ll throw myself into the deep end and go to more of the blogging-will-change-the-world instead of is-home-taping-killing-music sessions I usually choose.

I bumped into Toby then next morning at Tuttle London – many of the Amplified Individuals were somewhat muted after a night of boozing. Whereas I went over to a church hall in Leytonstone to film a pop video dressed as a school mistress (I kid you not – coming soon!) til the wee hours instead. Toby says the next step is to hold regular networks across the country to start to connect the dots – with sessions in the Midlands, South Coast, London, the North and maybe other places too. Hopefully the Amplified network will somehow will feed into my own plans to improve the connectivity and networking of creative thinkers in my hometown of Nottingham.

Onemedia unconference Nov 13-14, London

Onemedia logo

This week I headed down to innovation quango NESTA’s space age HQ (resplete with break-out rooms with circular board tables) to join in the first Onemedia ‘unconference‘.  This was basically an open space workshop where the 50 or so participants from a range of media industries – including web, digital, music, film, education and TV – gathered together to set our own agenda and form break-out groups to discuss the hot topics of the day and form our own solutions.  The attendees were a jolly nice bunch, mainly indie producers and consultants with a few biggers orgs like ITV represented.

I’ve been to several open space conferences, particularly during my days in Bristol developing projects with Watershed Media Centre.  Although you don’t always feel like you get the ‘top down’ knowledge you would from a speaker-led symposium conference, it really allows you to contribute and benefit from the wealth of knowledge of others – paticularly those working in parallel or complimentary fields, and it’s a cheaper and more accessible ways of organising an industry event – particularly in a smaller town or city.

And the best thing about open space is that it works on the ‘law of two feet’:  it’s OK to walk away from a session if you’ve said enough or just want to move on.  It’s a great way to get live feedback to test the waters with radical ideas.  But I forgot how tiring it is – so much talking and even more listening!

We self-secretariat-ed all our session – Mel @ Media Sauce has the un-enviably task of gathering and sorting through all our disparate notes – but some of the key thoughts and ideas I heard in the sessions I attended:

Branded and advertiser-funded content
There was much discussion from the indie production community on the return, 1950s soap-style, to the advertiser leading the production of quality content, from interactive drama through to James Bond heavy rotation product placement.  Many discussed the difficult of getting air-time with the major brands; without the gatekeepers that were broadcasting commissioners, the environment to get commissioned direct is impossible to navigate for the micro-indie, and in the case of the telecos, we need them more than they need us.  Another example of the ‘flatter’ media landscape being easier to cross the terrain for big players than the many small, yet Magic Lantern played upon the creative vanity and budget crunches of brand managers to deliver interactive content direct to online audiences, cutting out the perplexing range of ‘middle men’ in the current advertising market including buyers, ad agencies and producers.   Those established in the ‘old media world’, like Buffy creator Joss Wheedon’s Doctor Horrible or Radiohead’s In Rainbows, mean reaching existing fans with the benefit of years of TV or major record label investment is that much easier to profit from digital-only distribution and to acquire the investment in the first place.

Taste makers
Conversely, there is a key role for ‘taste makers’ like Last.fm and Hype Machine to help users connect with the influencers – be it Nike bribing cool kids to wear their trainers in the playground, or user recommendation and aggreation technologies.

Narrative
Understanding narrative was a key theme in several sessions – web producers need to understand narrative in the user experience journey as much as the many types of narrative forms which can be applicable to everything from a traditional storytellers to a console game.  The digital world has much it can learn from those from the film and TV industries – be it how to tell compelling stories on a budget or lighting design.

Universities may be churning out graduates with interactive productions skills ten-to-the-dozen, but those with the intelligence to be trained in the ‘art’ of media production, or the work training to do it, are lacking, yet a lot of the old training from the film schools isn’t needed in the YouTube and digi-camera age where accessibility and story are more important than framing each shot.  Budding film-makers can just learn by doing, and start to engage with an audience from day 1.

New skills
Training and skills are paramount to allow people to compete in this shifting landscape – but the significant majority of freelancers in the industry don’t have access to professional development – or even know the question to ask they need the answers for.  The project I am working on with White Room for North West Vision is an interesting take – getting ‘traditional media’ freelancers and getting them placed into digital companies in a unique cross-industry experiment.

Writers, producers and directors still largely ‘don’t get it’ when it comes to creating the cross-platform worlds where audience expectations, aggregated by social media, are either enhanced or dumfounded by writers and the opportunities and limitations of each medium are best exploited.

Collaboration
Collaboration between different writers, producers and technical geeks is a necessity in the cross-platform world – and we just aren’t used to getting stuck in together or finding shared languages and commonalities.

Digital distribution
Overall, getting paid and finding the right business models from digital distribution is the crucial hurdle which inhibit development with the professional media community – although there is a necessity for new talent to ‘just f***ing do it’ – prototype your idea, get in online and start to build an audiences rather than chasing the golden commission.

I facilitated an interesting session on digital music distribution and what lessons other industries could learn from the bit-torrented collapse of the conventional music business.  Some key findings were that bands and artists have been successful when engaging with their audiences through making it very personal – using social media – like video, blogs and giving a bit of it away for free – were seen as winning tactics for musicians to build direct relationships and acquiring the data of fans which everyone from film-makers to indie games developer could benefit from.

We concluded the old structures – major labels, distributors and retailers – were largely redundant, but have been replaced with other corporate funded spaces like MySpace and Last.fm who act as gatekeepers and curators between content creators and audiences.

Overall, it was an enjoyable event if not a tad long – an intensive, bigger one-day event would I think have worked better.  It was a great way to meet people from different disciplines with granularity, but the wealth of indies/consultants compared to brand owners and major media players probably limited the impact of change the conference set out to make.  Sponsors NESTA and Pact are interested in the findings so let’s see what next.

Broadcast Learning & Development Conference 08, Oct 07, BAFTA

Had a more interesting time than expected at the Broadcast Learning & Development 08 conference in the swanky confines of BAFTA HQ (usual film types abound) on 195 Piccadilly yesterday.

Bit trepidation as Learning and Development (or L&D as those in the profession call it) is a bit outside of my knowledge zone – thus the trip to this conference – the first of it’s kind to discuss issues around skills and training in the broadcast (primarily TV and radio) industries.

It was jam-packered with HR and learning profs from places like BBC, ITV plus some indie people and a few freelancers.  Generally they seem to be ‘nice ladies’ in their late 30s/40s who go into this line of work, and good on them because I believe in my own consultancy practice, and indeed my own professional development, you really can’t think enough about how you can keep improving and thinking about the impact of skills and the growth of people on your business practice.

Expertly faciliated by Radio 4’s Roger Bolton (of ‘Right to Reply‘ fame), my highlights of the day were:

Sell the value of L&D to your business – a balloon debate

This involved bailing out the dead weight of the least interesting speaker in a series of knock-out rounds.  More Oxford Debating Society than Weakest Link.  Frank Ash, Creative Consultant to the BBC discussed taking producers back to ’storytelling school’ fared second best, but Leah Harrison Singer of Bloomberg News scooped the prize by discussing measured journalism and training that ‘their man in Kazakhstan’ could access, use and make relevant – a huge challenge in training a global network of several thousand financial journalists.  I tend to zone out when I hear a slick American presentation, so didn’t quite get it.

Workshop 2: Managing Talent

Jo Taylor of Channel 4’s 4Talent talked about the four pledges C4 have developed with their network of indie producers.  Which were:

1. Book-end each production with a meeting discuss your personal development.
2. Establish mentoring relationships between senior professionals and less experienced staff.
3. Share experience and expertise through master classes.
4. ?
The handout they distributed was wrong so if anyone knows the answer to elusive pledge #4 please post in the comments.

These are all solid and good – cheap and easy to implement, whether you’re ITV or a micro-indie producer.  However, the language still seems to frame L&D as something to implement in-house – the discussion across the day quickly zoned in on the favourable (nay jealous in present economy) position of the BBC and its responsibilities at training all of the increasingly freelance broadcast industries.   Freelancers have the least access to training, and also to even know where appropriate training exists – or to even access a learning plan to know what their skills gaps they should be plugging are.  A thorny issue, I felt not fully undertsood by the largely corporate broadcasting attendees.  My own view is that spaces like Production Base website can become ‘watercoolers’ to connect people more effectively – all freelancers chat and learn from one another informally.

Brian Kelly of BECTU, I think sort of got it – saying we should empower individuals by collating learning resources under Creative Commons licences to distribute and share.    David Knott from IBM talked about using platforms like Facebook to enable people to leverage existing technologies and structures – interesting take from the world’s leading supplier of IT services!

Many of the experienced faces in the room concluded that we’re very good at induction and starting to get better at diversity recruitment and bringing in talent.  But after the early years, people get lost in the system and their actual personal plans and goals end up under the hamster wheel.

Yet lest we not forget how hard it can be to win the battle for diversity in the still largely ‘mini me’ TV industry.  At a college open day in Hammersmith, a BBC HR rep was asked by young students – ’so what is the BBC, I’ve heard of it but I don’t know what it is?’.  Many see the BBC as something not ‘for them’. (Though us digitalists may argue that many in this generation don’t even see TV as something for them).  But from my own experiences of highly nepotistic, inaccessible and exclusive BBC recruitment over the last decade(“Regional development? But don’t you know we’re a national organisation?!” I kid you not), I’m tempted to agree with the girls from Hammersmith.

Yet the C4 Diversity Programme attracted 5,000 applicants – and yielded a diverse trainee group which included a traveller, Chinese, second careers and young black males.  The BBC’s programme attracted 3,000 – many of the 71,000 page views wisely put off by a ‘reality check’ quiz before the application (“do you want to give over your days, nights and LIFE to programme making’? etc).   A big question is how can we support the thousands who are rejected at the ‘open door’ stage – give them opportunities to develop themselves and come back next year.

What can we learn from other industries?

In short – not a lot. Or at least not that much from this generic collection of guys from IBM, Cegos, PIXELearning (sorry Kevin!) and Master Training Institute.

But what we did learn from Jeremy Blain from Cegos , Europe’s largest training and development survey you’ve never heard of, was that Europe has the highest participation in training in business (61%) and the highest ROI, yet the lowest budgets for professional development.  Exit interviews show the majority of people quit, not because of their relationship with the company, but with their line manager.

Using Henry Ford’s analogy, you wouldn’t let a factory run at 60% capacity, yet we allow our human capital often to work on auto-pilot.  Look at improving 100 people by just 1%, and that’s 100% growth.  I’m not sure I like or agree with this analogy of people as ‘performance’ machines, but I do agree that people need to be empowered to develop their own training and learning.  In France this is acheived by a 1% “do it or get taxed” levvy on professional development, yet this was thought to succeed due to the power of unions and also the generic non-bespoke nature of much of the training provided.

Richard Bradly from the Master Training Istutitute believe the most important question in planning training is WHY?  You should ask yourself this at least seven times before starting to do anything.

- What – analyse the need.  Maybe we don’t need to do anything.
- How – can managers be used to deliver it.
- You – walk the talk in delivering and doing.

David Knott of IBM believes online learning is key to success.  The enterprise of the future needs to tip the 70% classroom to 30% online on it’s head to 30% classroom with 70% online resources to succeed.  (In a later talk, Daniel Wain believes e-learning is most effective when combined with other types of ‘blended’ learning). An interested lesson an academic experiment teaches us:

Half the students were given an iPod lecture and resources.  The other half attended lectures in the normal way.  The iPod students came to seminars better prepared – not because the i-lecture was better, but they had access to the resources in advance to prepare.  It’s how we set up the learning as much as how we deliver it.

The future of learning

Vanessa Arden-Wood of Illumina, one of the biggest and most interesting producers of cross-platform content, gave us a damning vision of the producer of the future from a persona of characters.  The old media producer is a Tarentino wannabee, enabled by a love of consumption and nepotistic real-world connections.  The producers of the future is highly mobile, networked (working remotely from Germany was the example), connected to streams of content via mobile, a broad media education balanced with a specialist technical education and an active contributor of content.  This character description, I think, genuinally scared the largely old media room.  Perhaps the media producer of the future is less of the ‘master hustler’ of old and more an expert leader in the future?

The skills gaps between old and new media:

- Online v TV platforms – requires active consumption and production
- Understanding that audiences create their own content
- Multi-platform strategies need to be specific to the requirements and benefits of each platform
- Commissioning – less about a drink in the pub, more about ITT’s and technical compliance.

Illumina often find staff who are skilled in old media or other areas and train them in-house using cross-department skills (‘i-schools’).  As a company they aren’t big enough to outsource training, so everyone needs to contribute to the learning of the organisation.  They provide breathing space for R&D activity for everyone – because again as a smallish producer, there is no seperate R&D function.

David Wain, consultant, believes training is the law of the jungle – stand still and be the gazelle that gets eaten first by the lion.  But get the tools right – are we selling hearing aids by telephone?  Consider the intent, the content, and finally the technology to judge the best way to deliver training.

Summing up

Mr Bolton summed up nicely – there are more plurality of channels, yet less diversity of voices.   Broadcasting is not a democracy but needs to be elite in order to be outstanding.  The BBC and others are just about broadcasting – the rest of what they do follows from that.

Myself, I learnt a lot.  OD actually means Organisational Development, not the continual bleeting on about the economic situation.  ‘Blended learning’ means doing different stuff – on and offline.  And training in broadcasting is an area where technology and the changing nature of doing business online is having a great impact, but importantly training must deliver – organisations in these uncertain times need to fight to retain and develop their human and intellectual capital – and fight to survive.

Broadcast Training Awards

The post-event awards do presented by the new two-day old minister for skills (who he?  exactly). It was a shame they were all big players nominated, but that probably says a lot about indie’s resources and abilities to implement dedicated training programmes in-house. And the nomiations were:

BBC – “Operation: Hamster Wheel” took Radio 1 producers of the treadmill and out and about to meet their audiences.  In Scunthorpe.

Bloomberg News - Sophisticated tools to analyse the rapidly shifting markets delivered to a global network to help stem the overall economic collapse of the western world.  Apparently.

ITV – Get a bunch of trainees in black t-shirts and trainers and get them to make a film about what ITV’s vision and values are.  Everyone gets it now.

GCap Radio – Stemming the outflow and retaining more of their news staff, by, err, well not quite sure but Helen starts her new job at RAM FM in Derby next week, so it must have worked.

QVC - Their staff had a lot of fun at ‘The Office’ style new age workshops trying to sell each other a bottle of water QVC-style.  QVC’s CEO thinks all his people have the ability to become leaders of the future.

And the winner was…

Bloomberg.  Well given then impending economic apocalypse, we’re putting a lot of faith in their hands from now on.  So let’s hope they’ve got their training plans right…

Ideas from thin air at NESTA Innovation Edge

On 20th May I went to NESTA’s Innovation Edge, a free one day conference at London’s South Bank Centre where the good and the great of innovation-led entrepreneurs, technologists, policy hucksters and futorologists (many sporting wide-heavy rimmed glasses, like myself) gathered en masse (3,000, exactly) to conflab on the broad subject of ideas in the UK – a temporary ideopolis, if you will. This was the largest ever event held by NESTA, the state-funded endowment for science, technology and the arts (three-quarters funding quango, quarter fresh thinking).

Here’s a few highlights alone because I only caught half the event and it’s been covered in detail elsewhere and aggregated by NESTA. Indeed, this was an event with social media at the heart where Twittering was actively encouraged by participants and fed into the discussion. See the Innovation Edge stream of tweets.

A few thoughts on what I saw:

Bob Geldof

Bob Geldof (describing himself as ‘not small and fat like Bono’. Good to see the Oirish rock dinosaurs are as bitchy as members of Girls Aloud) tells us, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw’s description of ‘unreasonable men’, that an innovator “persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the innovator.”

Other cutting-edge revelations from the man who saved the world:

• “Ideas are like a-holes. Everyone’s got one”.
• Consumerism is not king: world resources are limited, so innovation entrepreneurs are needed more than ever, in particular social entrepreneurs (like Muhammad Yunus and micro-finance for better ploughs in Bangladesh) Yet we are losing the ability to celebrate social entrepreneurs – it’s all about he who makes the most money, not the most radical change. Examples include e-credits by mobile phone to buy meat from a far away village, to guarantee food will be there instead of wasting a day’s travel.
• The English are proud of their eccentricity – but also proud that they don’t make any money from their inventions (like Tim Berners-Lee)? Yet there is an underlining fear of failure whish is destroying innovation.
• The future is about co-operation not competition – it’s Facebook, Open Source and the NHS. Knowledge and connectivity will liberate the world from politics and poverty – Harvard geeks and ubiquitous computing spread the knowledge which ended the Cold War.

Interesting ideas and inspired delivery – and of course Sir Bob can get away with saying (and expleting) what the rest of us in need of a pay cheque cannot. But not really sure if he had anything new to say about innovation, and I glazed when he starts banging on about famine, politics and the like (knowing full well he’d be taking tea backstage with PM Brown).

From the keynote panel:

• Not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur – we need managers and follower to.
• Children learn in different ways now -a 6-year-old published a white paper on Barbie using Google.
• Throw out the ancient conflict between East (China, India) and West – come together to tackle the big global issues of health and climate change. Power blocks can become trading blocks.
• Developing world citizens are honest in managing investment, not handouts – Kiva, lending to entrepreneurs in the developing world, has a 98% payout rate.
• What can the Prime Minister do? Not let the rules of the past, the 19th century way we still do business, rule business today. Leading nicely to…

Gordon Brown

As expected, a lot of rhetoric and hot air a la Creative Economy. ‘We want to be the innovation nation, not just now but in the future’. ‘UK will shine because of our creative ideas’. etc. BUT…

A much underestimated man, Brown’s speach, un-scripted and seemingly off the cuff, was filled with humour, anecdotes and a genuine enthusiasm for the work of UK’s innovators. He recalled his pre-parliament career as a university lecturer – and certainly exhibited qualities of enthusiasm, dedication and learning – ‘which you have to leave at the door for a career in politics.’ I couldn’t help wondering if he’d be secretly happier in the hallowed corridors of Higher Education than ruling the country. Inspired but without substence.

Seminar: Are Online Social Networks the New Cities?

Delving further into the realm of a digital ideopolis with Michael Birch (CEO of Bebo, just to put you in the picture, and because these kind of events do kinda drag after lunch, he looks lots like Chemical Tom of Chemical Brothers), Richard Leese (Chief Exec of Manchester City Council, looks like Nick Hewer from The Apprentice), John Gisby (Channel 4 New Media, looks like Dom Jolly of Trigger Happy TV) and curator by acclaimed author of ‘the New Entrepreneurs’ Charles Leadbetter (looks like just about every other male at the conference).

Birch: Bebo is modelled on what makes a city great – but diverse like London, not modelled like Milton Keynes. Social Networks are like a bar, they can be brilliantly designed, but if they’re not populated they won’t do business. ‘Early dopters’ are like the alcoholics waiting at the door for the bar to open.
Leese: Manchester has to drive itself forward – it could easily become the first post-industrial city of decline as in times before.

Panel and audience discussion:

• Sue Thomas (De Montfort University) describes social media as ‘the dissolution of the monasteries’. Interuption is a part of digital, modern life. Yet it’s not always atruistic, it can be used for negative political or social gain e.g. cyber bullying.
• We wouldn’t put so much public money into TV if we were starting from a clean slate; Channel 4 Innovation4Public starts to re-dress the digital balance.
• Social networks are like online version of coffee shops – nodes of social interaction points. Digital oils the wheels of social interaction. Can we establish a digital bothy - a Scottish moutain refuge where serendipity, not shared niche interests or offline connections, can connect people together in new, unexpected ways?
• Schools need to be more web-based, but a straw poll showed a small majority of attendees think the teacher/pupil relationship for learning will still be the core of future education, not replaced by an online model.
• Is digital media fragmenting the family? Strangely, in days gone by we gathered together in the living room in front of the TV – but today everyone is on their computers in their own room online.

Best from the rest:

The ever eloquent James Heartfield pours cold water on the Davos-like event atmosphere cast by Gordon Brown c/o Spiked Online.

Nick Booth @ Podnosh captures some of the Twittering.

And a proper-proper review c/o Claudine Beaumont @ The Telegraph on Tim Berners-Lee who describes the internet and its users as like a teenager with growing pains.

In summary:

A good day full of somewhat lively discussion and networking. Innovation Edge #2 would be a ‘must be there’ event. However, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and it did feel like the lack of any commercial or other sponsors made the event very much about selling NESTA’s new agenda and self-promoting its own greatness with the best known speakers money can buy. Does it skew the balance for commercial events? Probably not, but next time some commercial input – or even opportunities for open space or small user-generated discussions, would be welcome. The IQ of the room must equal a billion – enough brainwaves to raise the roof and do some serious positive damage if harnessed in the right way.

Creative Clusters London Reviewed

Creative Clusters, Nov 12th to 14th 2007, London

Creative Clusters is the annual shindig of global cultural and creative policy makers. It’s where the good and the great of critical thinking, research, policy and exponents of hot air in the sector get together to sing glorious the unrestrained growth of global creative industries, and ask where it’s all going.

I did originally question ‘why London?’. Newcastle/Gateshead in 2006 was great to see world-class regeneration in action, but we all know London (and some of us regional types also question why London needs creative industries investment, given that it inevitably sucks in the best of the regions we spend so much time and money nurturing. More on that later). Or do we know London? I actually saw some interesting new aspects of the city – Rich Mix in Shoreditch, a sort of multi-cultural cinema venue, was a relaxed place for Day 2, and BFI/South Bank was a pretty spectacular place for day 1.

A tour of Oxford Street/Soho on day 3 also made me think about the unique problems of central London – land rents, traffic, lack of expansion, fragmented property ownership – but also the same problems, trying to ‘upgrade’ retail, build in creativity and persuade the best to stay.

As always, far too much going on and Simon Evans, Conference Director is doing his ‘trendy vicar’ (his words) bit to hold the many threads together. This year’s themes were The Creative Quarter, Creative Economy, World Creative Hubs and Creative Crowd. Although you can add the word creative to just about anything nowadays. Four sessions to choose from meant lots of missing out, as did an epic hangover (c/o guys from Inspiral, cheers, this is turning out to be an annual binge!).

Split venues on day 3 (Soho and Kensington) not great from a networking point of view – in fact Day 3 never seems worth sticking around for. Still, maybe you can’t get too much of a good thing. And the conference handbook gives you an overview of what you’ve missed (or another useful doorstopper).

My highlights:

- Kevin Spacey bares all and gets back to basics about the power of theatre and getting bums on seats. (probably a misleading juxtaposition of Kevin Spacey, bares all, and bums there – sorry ladies!)

- Jude Kelly takes the debate up a gear and asks when we will stop banging on about growth and economic impact and take responsibility for reinvesting in nurturing creativity and the arts.

- A Daily Mail hack wiping the floor with the outgoing Arts Council CEO on the lies, lies and damn statistics that is Labour’s creative industries policy.

- Re-emphasising the role of creative brokers and insightful intermediaries that help industry take control of public policy.

- Are creative cities in danger of becoming clone towns?

- Money can’t buy you creativity? Think again – Abu Dhabi’s $2.7 billion “Happiness Island” cultural development includes the Middle East’s Guggenheim and Louvre.

My footlights:

- Creative Economy Green Paper. Now merely a policy document. In the post with your Christmas card. Or maybe New Year. Or Valentine’s. Worth waiting for?

- Will Hutton, DCMS and London dragging us back down to mere growth numbers, economics (but are they even believable?), but we wonder if what’s good for London is good for the UK.

- A statistician’s playpen. Too many numbers. 10101000100. We. Cannot. Take. Them. All In.

- The division between arts/culture and commercial/economic creative industries still runs too deep.

- Ken Livingstone’s ‘cultural advisor’ saying she’s ‘concerned’ about BBC moving jobs to Manchester and how London will suffer (claws bared from the regions).

- Zhandra Rhodes – dressed in some kind of metallic outfit that Klaus Nomi rejected. Great speech (‘did I forget anything, luv?’) followed by middle age men ogling scantily dressed models. All in the name of fashion, dahhling.

- The circus entertainment. What was that woman with the snakes doing?! I’ve never seen an audience watching with such intense concentration, wondering ‘is this bad or bloody awful?’

My daily highlights:

12 Nov, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Keynote speaker: Jude Kelly, Director of South Bank Centre

Jude Kelly asks: Is our approach to the creative industries sustainable? In this age of globalisation, are the creative industries feeding excessive consumerism and undervaluing the role of ideas?

The saint of creativity is Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the world wide web. Contrary to the popular vision, creativity rejects ego and creates cohesion. Anarchy is self-centred.

We must take collective responsibility for the good and the bad – for slavery, for winning the World Cup – and for creative regeneration.

There is selfishness in the UK succeeding globally in the creative industries – there is too much “I want more – on my own terms”. Both good and social injustice is happening as a result of the UK creative industries (e.g. encouraging rampant consumerism). We must take responsibility for giving back more if we are doing so well – returning economic gains back into regenerating the arts and creativity.

Keynote speaker: Charles Landry, The Creative City

Creativity is like a rash.

Everyone is now in the creativity game. Creativity has become a mantra of our age endowed almost exclusively with positive virtues. At the last count, over 80 cities called themselves creative: from Creative London to Manchester, from Toronto to Vancouver to Cincinnati or Tampa Bay.

Of the top 25 global cities (London being the only one in UK), several are city states – Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong. Perhaps the success of a creative city is in its containment rather than sprawl?

Is creativity an industry – or just people doing creative things?

Has New York reached its creative capacity? Both land and property prices and political change mean the creatives are moving out. Is Chicago now more imaginative and edgy?

High quality artists give a quality of thinking and a quality perception to the creative city – yet arts is a journey with an unclear destination.

Beware of reading too much into data – clusters can have strange patterns – Love Hotels are clustered next to cemeteries – re-birth and death entwined?

Include science as part of creativity – Florida’s “Creative Class” account for a third of all USA workers. Today’s classic was yesterday’s innovation e.g. Eiffel Tower.

Government’s risk policy removes both risk and opportunity. A creative city is a jazz jam session more than a symphony – we all need equality and an opportunity to perform.

We need to reduce the creative bureaucracy, away from rules and regulations to a social, flexible model – less risk and more partnerships, participation and enablers.

We need to combine the different insights of the opposing partners, e.g. economic development versus the arts. Think of the software of the city as well as the hardware – take a holistic view.

‘Chaos’ and ‘Pain’ are two key international graffiti tags. The creative city is a contradiction – Istanbul has mannequin shops next to mosques.

Cities measures of success:

1. Innovation and creativity
2. Networks and connectivity

The creative city is not a factory but a centre for enquiry. Avoid clone cities – always think – ‘what can we only do here?’

Art, Science, Industry Session – BFI

Simon Stevens, Enable Enterprises

Simon has cerebral palsy, but in Second Life he’s a gifted entrepreneur, providing disability consultancy services and running a nightclub for the disabled. And in Second Life, like the real world, he’s in a wheelchair.

There are more wheelchairs in Second Life than in the real world. There are difficulties here too for users:

- Many questions and assumptions, hostile reactions from users – ‘Why are you in a wheelchair?’

- Accessibility of Second Life software

- Accessing buildings and the environment in a wheelchair. Possible need for anti-discrimination legislation in constructing the Second Life environment?

Second Life is not what it is yet, but it presents an opportunity for things to come. Marginalised people can take centre stage, but how can this democratisation translate back into the real world?

Terry Trickett, Trickett Associates, Advisor to the Wellcome Trust

Terry described four Sci-Art projects funded by Wellcome Trust, all of which are starting to have research or commercial applications:

- Modified photographs of phantom limbs of amputees

- Artworks made of decomposing grasses (can computerise traditional plant research)

- Researching a painter’s hand-to-eye co-ordination

- Kinetica interactive art – Millie the Neural Net Starfish (application in hotels, nightclubs, screensavers)

Sci-Art is cross-disciplinary – mixing people from diverse disciplines to enrich each other’s thinking and research. It holds up a mirror to the future. Sci-Art ideas may be as powerful as the industrial revolution.

Arantxa Mendiharat, Disonancias

The Disonancias project, in San Sebastian, Spain, brought research companies into contact with international artists to create new products or innovation processes. It encouraged deviations and dissonances away from regular thought. Issues included difficulties in understanding and commercialising IP. Learning from the programme – many findings are commercially sensitive (a valid means of public investment?). Now, artists are emerging from their ivory tower, embedding in the real world, and learning from it.

The Artists as Property Developer, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Mubarak al Muhairi, Abu Dhabi, Tourism Development

A presentation about Saadiyat (“Happiness Island”), Abu Dhabi’s landmark $2.7 billion 670 acre cultural district with infrastructure designed by world’s leading brands and architects: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi designed by Frank Gehry, Louvre Abu Dhabi by Jean Nouvel and a performing arts centre by Zaha Hadid alongside luxury hotels, 150,000 residents and ten causeways connecting it to the mainland. It will attract an estimated 500,000 visitors. The development will ripple to provide economic opportunities and creative skills to those in neighbouring communities. High spend, high impact. Who says money can’t buy in creativity?

Eddie Berg, BFI

Changing his presentation from UK’s under-activity in film to a more personalised dialect about cultural cities, Berg discussed his view of the changing face of Liverpool from the first day of its Cultural City status. FACT (Liverpool’s digital media centre he was formerly the director of) was embedded as a local connection in the community, and a long time in gestation. The new BFI film centre aims to provide an openness, café culture, as part of a £25 million development and to be fit for the digital age when film-making is no longer the preserve of the privileged.

Dawn Austwick, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation

A discussion of the development of a number of UK modern cultural landmarks and institutes:

- Millennium Bridge, Southwark – official were at one point ‘afraid’ of people from Southwark “crossing over” the bridge to enter the city and St Paul’s.

- Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, South Bank – would it have faired so well without the rest of the South Bank regeneration? It succeeds not only in restoration but in innovation – it is a platform for new playwrights.

- Middlesbrough Institute for Modern Art (MIMA) – the art press said you can’t translate magnificent architecture into alien territory. But it succeeded – there is a relationship between place and content.

- Baltic/Sage, Gateshead – a platform for the community with challenging programming within the community and education. North East’s cultural regeneration enabled by Peter Davies, a serving Arts Council Officer – the small can influence the large.

- Whitechapel Art Gallery – established in 1901 to bring high quality arts to East Londoners. Never part of regeneration, but community’s cultural enrichment. Today, it’s still part of the cutting-edge – the first gallery in UK to show Rothko.

- Arcola Theatre, Dalston – serves and entertains the local community, e.g. Turkish and Kurdish drama group, Pay What You Can nights. Rather than a regenerator itself, it may be regenerated by new transport links to Hackney, which may in turn give sustainability to the theatre.

Success lies in the right people at the right time with the right attitude and inspired leaders – Southwark County Council underwrote the purchase of Tate Modern site to make it happen there and then.

But…

Art as regeneration – when did modern art become so safe and dull?

Arts organisations are obsessed with their buildings – the Lottery exacerbates this.

The future matrix for arts: a higher volume of smaller public and cultural spaces suitable for local or specialist communities.

Micro-communities (e.g. Facebook groups) creates a dichotomy with the need for large scale gatherings (e.g. Glastonbury) – Bristol’s ‘Cube’ Cinema versus Odeon or BFI.

When the 19th century industrialists had earned their fortunes, they turned their money and time to social responsibilities e.g. model villages and communities like Saltaire and Bournville. How does this responsibility translate into the 21st century?

Creative City Regions, Purcell Rooms

My session, investigating creative regions outside the capitals (or the obvious) was an interesting sandwich of Sweden, Philadelphia and Bristol.

Anders Sjostedt, Swedish Experience Industries

The ‘experience industry’ is used in Sweden as a collective label for practitioners with a creative approach – it includes the creative industries, along with tourism and gastronomy. This ‘experience industry’ accounts for five percent of Swedish GDP.

Anders gave a typically laid-back, Nordic overview of his approach by putting policy into the hands of business – not a top-down model of national policy with regional branches but creating policy from what is already happening.

The approach is called F.U.N.K - an intriguing Swedish acronym: research, education, business, culture – all needing to be interlinked. Top down policies are boring! FUNK stems from the talent/entrepreneur, making it viral – effective and cheaper. It’s low budget: 1.3 million euros for eight regional hubs, but with lots of activity.

The method was expanded into the main regions: Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo. But there are gaps on the map – many parts of country not engaged as some industries lack activity.

National strategies need regional approaches, but regional strategies need national ambition to avoid becoming provincial. Give the regions responsibility for key strands specific to their specialisms and they will rise to the international challenge.

The creative industries are knowledge-intensive, constantly changing and depend on the arts for innovative, non-commercial input. We need neutral agents to bring together research, education, business and culture.

Kelly Lee, Innovation Philadelphia

- At the other side of the world, Innovation Philadelphia, working with both creative and knowledge/design industries (e.g. engineering, product design) in the Philadelphia state region, carried out a mapping of their ‘regional assets’ to identify and demystify what their key strengths were.

Linking for-profit and non-profit organisations, they formed a ‘round table’ of 62 leaders with one common strategy, to try and identify the gaps e.g. employers who have more jobs than the talent to fill it, and recognising that more art school graduates start their own business than business school grads.

Personally, the idea of trying to get 62 people to agree on anything – particularly with a whack of the heavy hand of the public sector – requires nerves of steel, moral courage, and utter compromise and dilution. But maybe it can work in Philly more than the English provinces, and they can create a collective altruism.

Susi O’Neill, South West Regional Development Agency

Then me. The last time I stood on the Purcell Rooms stage was for John Peel’s Meltdown in 1998 with a post-rock industrial ensemble. I discussed South West RDA’s investment in Watershed Media Centre to create an endowment fund to benefit creative businesses in the city for the next 112 years (a real investment of up to £50 million). More on that here.

There was even a charming write up in Design Week, name-checking me next to Jude Kelly and Charles Landry (The fame! Oh for lazy journalism!). And also an interview with me in the less celebrated Exeter Echo talking about creative investment in South West England.

Interestingly, although we all represented very different parts of the western world, our approaches had two similarities:

- Putting industry in the driving seat – letting initiatives become less top-down and more bottom-up and seeing what happens.

- The need for intermediaries – ‘honest brokers’, creative connectors who can link the economic or public sector with the arts or creatives – the need is more acute now than ever before.

Keynote speaker: Kevin Spacey

As the ladies in the house swooned, we learnt that other than Hollywood housewife’s choice, Kevin Spacey is also the artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre in London (doh! Cultural ignoramus!) . Spacey’s talk was easily the most inspiring and honest of the week – an in depth discussion of how Spacey’s team transformed the theatre from cultural ivory tower to an intrinsic part of the community.

He described how his career was developed by those who took a chance on him – producers, directors and writers. He got his break doing Shakespeare in the Park in Central Park, New York, playing several bit parts including a rock. But his secret passion since his teenage years was to open a theatre.

He reminds us:

- The classics of yesterday were once new works

- To develop talent involves encouraging the risk to forge an original identity

- Film is a director’s medium, but theatre is the actor’s medium

Old Vic has done a lot of outreach, getting 26,000 young people and 3,000 from local community through its doors. Old Vic, New Voices project led to 45 productions at Edinburgh.

The Old Vic has no public subsidy at all, relying on sponsors and philanthropy. Spacey’s links and industry contacts (not to mention his celebrity status) have bought favours in terms of donors and relationships – American Associates is a new writing co-production between the Old Vic and Broadway, and they are establishing a trans-Atlantic company with Sam Mendes, playing a double bill in USA and Old Vic.

A survey of people living adjacent to Old Vic (based on the request of Spacey to the Education Manager go door-knocking) showed 98% had never been into the theatre. He set out to show it was not an island just for the rich in this rough estate.

(Cosby Show moment..)

- When asked why he wanted to take on this role, Spacey spoke of the need to ‘send the elevator back down’, as Jack Lemon once advised him to do. If you’ve succeeded – challenge yourself to do something outside your comfort zone.

- Often, good ideas get throw over the wall.

- A negative attitude is too easy and achieves little.

- But…it doesn’t matter what floor you’re on, you can always ‘send the elevator back down’.

Leadership qualities:

- Don’t be too content – and don’t take your foot off the gas.

- Bring people together, and chose the right elements.

Spacey believes the English are too shy about fundraising and asking for money.

There isn’t a digital response to theatre – people have to go to the theatre to appreciate it, but young people shouldn’t be in the heavens but at the front of the stalls – youth and zeal also spurs the actors on!

Inspiring stuff, but we couldn’t help questioning afterwards (during a bizarre fashion show with Zhandra Rhodes), that Spacey’s celebrity status may buy Old Vic more than any mere ordinary arts leader, and when he goes, will also the generous patrons? I was just plain confused. I thought George Clooney was doing the keynote, and thought he looked very different in E.R

Creative Clusters, Tuesday 13th November, Rich Mix, East London

DCMS: Creative Economy

The moment all of us happy folks in RDA land have been salivating for…
But sadly, not worth the wait.

Brian Leonard, Head of Industry at DCMS, spoke about the ‘long journey’, three years so far from its inception, of the Creative Economy Programme. Now at destination: station shed. No longer a Green Paper (with potential for change to white, i.e. legislative change) and now a policy document. Worth the wait? Well, maybe it was all about the journey – the relationships and the dialogue.

The Programme emphasised the special relationship between infrastructure and the creative industries, and how infrastructure nurtures talent. By infrastructure we mean ‘stuff’ – buildings, institutes, public places and facilities e.g. Tate Modern, Watershed or Workstation. Infrastructure needs to be useful for youth and talent development.

There will be a cross-departmental ‘cradle to grave’ approach with schools, families, education, business to new creative approaches. But government is risk averse to collaborating inter-department. There is a mooted rumour of a major event.

When asked what he thought, Brian Leonard responded: ‘my opinion is not important’ i.e. ‘I couldn’t possible comment’. The ever-devout civil servant.

Will Hutton, The Work Foundation

Will Hutton, the dour author of ‘Staying Ahead’ (thought to be ‘off’ creative industries after a long tenure writing the paper), said he was originally commissioned to write a “State We’re In” for the creative sector.

The creative economy tries to show the links between all 13 sub-sectors and their relationships. UNESCO states the UK is the world’s biggest cultural exporter, and the knowledge economy employs 45% of UK’s workforce.

Hutton’s approach as a non-fiction author is to link the real and fictitious strands of history, philosophy, heritage and economics – a collaboration of serendipity, not just focused on all things creative. Perhaps there are parallels here with how the creative sector needs to integrate with the rest of the cultural sector and the wider economy?

Creative industries’ IP derives from copyright – not from patents but from a clear blue sky. But this creates a higher uncertainty in creative than other industries. The sector need to learn to manage this uncertainty and risk – and learn how to exploit the potential and successful parts of each businesses portfolio.

Creative Commons increases the flow of creativity – but there needs to be a balance between Creative Commons and copyright in the digital age, as there has been in the pre-digital age.

The blogosphere allows for too much free comment and hiding behind anonymity. There is no comeback and it can breed prejudice and extreme views.

Other sectors want to be part of the creative industries: ceramics, engineering, financial services. They have their noses pressed to the glass looking in (or, cynically, are they sniffing out the subsidies?)

There is a need to ‘crowd in’ creativity into design and other sectors.

But the language is moving away from subsidy to investment across the sector.

Creative regeneration needs to:

- Delight residents

- Create jobs (creative industries are good at doing this)

- Be stimulating and exciting

- Build in creativity to all public infrastructure investment e.g. good design

But cities don’t know how to do it with a unique approach (echoing Charles Landry’s idea of ‘clone cities’). There are 46 medium-size cities and eight core cities in the UK. They all need to have a good art college and good residential accommodation to grow as creative places.

But…there are problems for the creative sector:

- Arethe terms of trade fair for the many small players?

- Are we too white, too middle class – as Greg Dyke once said of the BBC?

John Sorrell, Cabe

Creative industries are new – only defined in 1998. Yet the sector is now singing the praises of ministers with non-cultural/creative portfolios e.g. Blair, Brown and Darling.

The sector is typically more working class and less formally qualified, an artisan sphere (not born out by the numbers of graduates in film, TV and software - the most graduate rich of all industries) who find it harder to speak up to government.

Creative diplomacy could be a way of creating a dialogue between nations.

Discussion:

Creative has not had its fair share of the pie?

- £800 million invested in new apprenticeships – none for creative sector

- Enterprise Capital – some investment, but mainly new media

As invigorating as the talk was, I was disappointed. After Monday’s writing in the sand by Jude Kelly, the focus again shifts back to metrics – economic success, growth and back-patting. Is it even believable? How does this benefit the roots of the cultural sector? Or does creativity not need the arts? Discuss.

London – World Creative Capital?

A heated session which raised an interesting question from the floor – it may be good for London, but is it good for the rest of the UK?

Jude Woodward, Mayor’s Advisor, Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism

London is the most international city, a ‘world in one city’. It’s the finance epicentre – the Stock Exchange is the major global financial force. It’s situated in the middle of the major western time zones.

- 50% of Londoners are born outside London

- 33% of Londoners are born outside the UK

- 300 languages are spoken daily

We are a creative nation. ONS figure claim the UK spends 50% more on creative products than on food.

Yet Jude committed the heinous M25 faux pas of critiquing her regional rivals – claiming she was ‘concerned’ about the BBC’s move of five departments to Manchester, whether Manchester would cope with this, or actually another city may steal London’s thunder through dissipating what is strong, collective and co-located in London – the immediacy of interaction, inspiration and face-to-face stimulation operating on a global scale. London is the engine – loss of skills or jobs to regions may mean other nations benefit more than other UK cities.

An interesting consideration, but wrong I think. Making the regions stronger will make the UK stronger. Make London strong, conversely, I think can make the regions weaker. It’s complicated.

Alan Freeman, GLA Economics

2001-2 showed a mini-recession in the sector, but there has been a continual rise in creative product growth. (Although James Heartfield did make the scandalous suggestion that GLA Economics had been told to lie and subvert data to re-write their research because the story of creative decline was not what the leaders wanted to hear).

London and the South East has one third of the UK’s population, but contains nearly two thirds (58%) of the creative sector – double the density (note: interesting rhetoric here.  To be pendantic – 58% is closer to half than two thirds). Two thirds of all global industries have headquarters in London. This breaks down:

Creative jobs location:

London – 32%
South East – 26%
Rest of UK – 42%

Yet London’s creative jobs are more volatile than other sectors, and private sector jobs are more vulnerable here than in other regions.

Creative product sales are 58% to consumers, 42% to businesses.

Creative infrastructure is demand-led – but if you lose it, you won’t get it back.

Tom Campbell, London Development Agency

LDA has a budget of £500 million and employs 400 people to grow and regenerate London’s economy.

London is the biggest but it still has capacity to grow:

- 77% of the UK film industry is in London. Film London’s ‘film friendly’ policy increased filming in London boroughs by 42%.

- Frieze Art Fair – one of biggest UK art fairs, £55 million of art sales and 50,000 visitors.

Future LDA projects: Tate 2 extension; National Film Centre (BFI); more live music infrastructure; Ravensbourne College relocation; Diversity works diversity programme (though there are equality and diversity targets for all LDA projects).

Discussion:

Tom describes artists as the ‘shock troops’ of regeneration – going into an area, and starting the improvement. But I would question – how do the artists benefit? Everyone talks about the importance of arts to the creative commercial sector, but no one wants to put hand in pocket to give more to the arts (apart from a minor inflation-busting Arts Council settlement).

Economics usually asks the question – ‘how do we stimulate growth?’ Creative industries has growth, so perhaps the question is ‘what kind of growth do we want?’

Need to address diversity – not just the public school, white middle classes ascending.

But…you can’t make a meal by cutting up the pie.

Wednesday 14th November, Soho Theatre

Creativity and the Economy

Now the gloves came off.

James Heartfield – How creative is the creative city?

Easily the most controversial and engaging rant of the week – Heartfield continues his lonely diatribe exposing, guerrilla style, the ‘lies, lies and damn statistics’ of the fallacy of the creative economy.

Calling the Cox Report ‘creative accounting’ and Gordon Brown the latest leader to be ‘seduced by the mantra of creative Britain’.

Why not to invest in creative industries:

1. He claims advertising is ‘parasitic’ to the failings of other industries, rather than contributing to their growth.

2. The creative city is a policy ‘template’ on a desktop. Zurich described its creative city as “weak” – whoops, must have hired the wrong consultant.

3. Blair described Britain as the ‘design workshop of the world – leading a creative revolution’, but “Staying Ahead” reveals the poorly disguised cracks in definition and decline of sector: ‘the DCMS recognises the imperfection of the definitions’ ‘sectoral boundaries may be re-written’ and its ‘just a snapshot’. DTI Business Clusters in the UK (2001) states: “for most of the creative industries, any regional presence must be considered embryonic”.

4. Statistics are all hogwash, addressed to the arts not to economists or real businesses. GLA Economics cover up the huge decline in creative workers.

5. The creative city is promoting a culture of clone towns – everywhere is creative, ergo nowhere is creative. Charles Landry’s ‘toolkit’ creates homogenisation. “Replace one name city with another you would not know the city” (Creative City, p. 43)

6. Work Foundation and DCMS – they are like Enron and their accountants – if they were in industry, they would be in prison.

7. It’s all lies to create jobs for their friends.

8. It encourages subsidy of something that is not worth developing.

9. Sheffield Museum of Pop – a drain to the city’s economy, not an enhancement.

10. Hoxton as a template does not translate outside Hoxton. Manchester and Scotland – creative industries is not what they are known for.

Phew….beat that….

Peter Hewitt, Chief Executive, Arts Council England

There are less failures in public sector capital investment than in private. The cost of £800K for Angel of the North (Gateshead) against its value by people is far higher. The regeneration of Gateshead is valued at £1 billion.

Arts Council invest where the private sector never would, but there are commercial spin-offs, e.g. subsidised theatre feeds the commercial theatre. Alan Bennett’s The History Boys was funded by a £200K initial investment and has subsequently become commercial and toured.

Creative Partnerships project is proven to develop creative thinking skills for all subjects.

The Sultan’s Elephant – had an economic impact of £1 million for London and was a commercial-free spectacle for all to enjoy and see their city in a new light.

Dan Atkinson, Mail on Sunday

More spouting on the fantasy of the creative economy from the author of ‘Fantasy Island’, a critique of Blair’s ‘legacy’. Atkinson asks: how long can the hot air last?

The benefit of the arts and creativity is evident – but is it an economy?

Creative industries were part of the seven “daydreams” of Blair’s Britain e.g. “Cool Britannia”.

Science (1970s) was a Labour vision, technology (1980s) a Tory one.

China was once seen as marginal and ‘arty’, whereas Britain was the industrial powerhouse – now, China is the centre of manufacturing and UK is proud to be arty.

Germans: great at precision engineering.
The French: food and drink.
Scandinavians: mobile phones.
Americans: movies, aircraft, computers.

What is UK Plc’s USP?
Talk.
PR, advertising, writers, politicians.

June 2007: a £22.3 billion deficit in trade, down from £18 billion a year before.

Britain is a servant economy: four million employed is service, the same as 1860s Victorian society and three times that of creative industries. But this isn’t the right rhetoric for the government.

Lord Puttnam: Britain is “an island of creativity surrounded by a sea of understanding”. Or is it just a fantasy island? Or just an island, surrounded by sea?

The film industry is in trouble, the television industry is in trouble and the music industry is in trouble. The creative industries were in a better states when Wilson and Callaghan were in office.

Martin Smith, Ingenious Media Plc

A discussion of private investment in the creative sector. Ingenious have invested £5 billion in media since 1998.

But competition is tough: France offers tax breaks to games developers in spite of EU State Aid rules.

The UK is a ground for creativity not it is not great for competitiveness. Film, music and video games are consumer-driven and unpredictable both ways – both unprecedented gains, but also unprecedented losses.

There are three types of creative businesses:

- Creative content – IP and ideas

- Creative processes

- Creative distribution – e.g. broadcasting

All have low levels of skills and lack MBAs. Investment success is marrying the creatives with the business talent.

Risk management is investing in a slate (e.g. film slate) and not a standalone product.

Digital opportunities and threats:

- The digital threat is diminishing value with distribution and the attitude that content is free, creating investor uncertainty.

- But content is king still – there is a premium on high quality content.

- Opportunities are the proliferation of platforms, the long tail, and quality becoming more valuable over commodity.

Future value lies in rights ownership/management. The sector needs more sustainable investment to protect individuals and to not sell of ISP too cheap.

But it needs to be credible to the city – investment needs a portfolio and high quality management approaches to create a virtuous circle of investment.

Creative industries need to be taken seriously to gain investment. In economic terms – there are too many small companies who lack capacity – do we head down the drain? Or rise to the challenge – create internationally competitive companies?

There is a shortage of risk capital in media – it’s OK at start-up but it lacks the knowledgeable capital – investors who understand the sector well.

Raising £10 million for a film is hard – much is invested by wealthy individuals or the creators, but it’s a too risky approach.

In the US, $15 billion is raised from Hedge Funds to invest in a slate of 35 to 40 Hollywood blockbusters.

Discussion:

Creative industries does not work as a sector – take out digital and the sector is growing slower than the rest of the economy.

Fine art auctions are successful at growing sales, but not investment in new art production.

The creative industries are over-subsidised and under-productive.

The Arts Council have created a blurring between public good and commercial return which confuses businesses. The UK arts are not as competitive as the USA or China.

Creativity is the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ – we are more creative than other nations, but not good at selling it to others.

The UK exports its best talent – fashion to New York and Milan, video games and film to Los Angeles.

And so…to the bar…

Creative Partnerships: creative economy and the curriculum

I was invited to take part in a debate at Bristol’s Watershed on 7th November 2007 organised by Creative Partnerships, entitled: Space to think: UK – The world’s creative hub?

The ‘Space to Think’ series is held around the country as a forum for the creative, cultural, education and business sectors to meet and discuss a broad range of issues concerning creativity and learning.

Creative Partnerships is the Government’s flagship creativity programme for schools and young people, managed by Arts Council England and funded by the DCSF and DCMS. It enables schools to work with participatory artists (visuall artists, designers, musicians, theatre etc) to devise integrated creative learning programmes and activities – and at pilot stage it has been hugely successful with national roll-out looming.

I was on a panel with two very illuminating people:

TC Jefferson - a creativity and learning consultant who has worked with Creative Partnerships and also Chew TV in Plymouth. TC expounded the failing of the curriculum as a mechanism, but also the need for continually investigating new ways of learning.

Lucy Byatt, the director of Spike Island (artist studios, galleries and design incubator) spoke about her own background crossing the rock path from education to practice, and also the story of how Spike transformed from a squatted community to a bastion of the cultural infrastructure of Bristol.

Feeling like the boring glue that sticks things together, I spoke about creative industries and the creative economy, both in the South West and nationally, with some statistics on the state of UK creativity and how this fits with Higher Education – including the shocking statistic that one year’s design undergraduates represents 50% of the commercial design industry – which is itself in rapid decline.

In a discussion, educators and creative professionals discussed how enterprise is becoming embedded, for better or worse, in curriculum, but it is a slow process. There needs to be also a sense of learning for learning’s sake with all levels of education, and also, I think, creativity for creativity’s sake.