Brilliant. Near-complete 96 percent nationwide Google Street View coverage of the UK, from tomorrow. Including Stoke-on-Trent, it seems — not previously covered. Hopefully, the photos will have been made in the summertime/autumn.
Skillset Employment Census published
Skillset Employment Census 2009 (PDF link, 700kb). Taken in July 2009, the results are now available. They estimate that the West Midlands has a combined employed/freelancer total of 5,950. Strip out occupational groups like management, engineering, sales, “journalism and sport”, roadies and people transporting TVs to the High St., etc., and the total drops to a ‘creative core’ of somewhere around 3,000 people.
Of course, Skillset are only dealing with a subset of the creative economy. And they’re not winkling out the creative jobs that exist in a far wider set of cultural/heritage activities. As I suggested earlier on D’log, at 2006/7 we might have had as many as 20,000 ‘creative core’ jobs in the West Midlands. Of course, that’s an estimate and measuring the creative industries in the UK is notoriously difficult. One of the many problems of counting is that creatives often hold two or more jobs simultaneously. If statistics only count the main one, much can be missed. The Skillset census is valuable in that respect because it invites creatives to self-select to fill out an online survey. That self-selection may well significantly skew some of the results, but at least it’s a welcome alternative to trying to use the official statistics.
West Midlands Open 2010 – opens Sat
The West Midlands Open 2010 biennial opens tomorrow at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, showing 145 artworks until 2nd May 2010. Veteran photographer Lorentz Gullachsen, who lives in Worcestershire, is the overall winner…
BBC iPlayer Downloader
iPlayer Downloader. Open Source.
Artisteer 2
Those who’re still paying people to design a basic WordPress website from scratch — or paying $50+ for one off-the-shelf “limited number of sales” template to get a margin of exclusivity (yep, I’ve been there) — might do well to first investigate the unique Artisteer WordPress design software.
Despite its own rather naff website design, the Artisteer software ($50/$130) is excellent, semi-generative, and works as advertised. The UK’s major PC Pro magazine reviewed it positively here. It can also make templates for Joomla, Drupal, and Blogger (who they?). PC Pro wrote…
“The good news is that the Artisteer approach works brilliantly. It’s clear that, rather than changing parameters at random, [the 'suggest feature' ] intelligently varies groups of elements together to produce consistent, coherent and attractive designs. And the advanced dropdown menus and use of generated bitmap textures show Artisteer is going well beyond straight CSS.”
It’s true the results are indeed fairly instant, but once you get into tinkering and fine-tuning the hours soon start to fly by. A perfectionist might find they’re spending half a day day fiddling with every little niggle, and getting the theme exactly as they want it. Once you’re done, it outputs everything you need to upload to your WordPress themes directory. Don’t forget to lock down the ‘write’ permissions on your “themes” directory after you upload, for security reasons.
Eastside open studios
We Are Eastside. A new blog, and what seems to be an “open studios” weekend in Birmingham on Friday 26th March, and Sunday 28th March 2010.
Election tech
Those living in a Twitter bubble might do well to read the FT on the real technologies shaping the general election…
“These three forces [ data-mining of databases for demographics, search-engine swiffling, email lists + using Skype to follow leads ] are now reshaping Britain’s party political machines for the internet era. For decades, our politics has been organised around broadcast media; a world where cosy chats between politicians and journalists got policies on to the evening news. While this world has not gone away, a new web-driven model is now pulling alongside it. But all three forces are also largely invisible. As a result, discussion focuses on visible technologies, such as Twitter. Even worse, the media will soon go into overdrive speculating about Britain’s first television debates between the three party leaders. Yet, just as in the US, these highly scripted discussions are unlikely to move the polls.”
I’d add that one of the most important technologies is still the simplest and the one most proven to work, direct mail — a simple leaflet in the letterbox, five days before the election date, showing a clear and simple map/route to the polling station from the delivered address. Including a “best walking route”, which would prove to anyone walking it if the candidate really knows the area or not. Consulting a map is often needed since these days a polling station may be a mile or more away in an unfamiliar part of town, and in a general election it may well be at a different location than that used for a local council election. Eight weeks before an election, it seems to me that many have already made up their minds about how to vote — it’s just a matter of getting them to the ballot-box.
interchat
Fresh from their work in Eastern Europe over the last few years, Laundry get together with Birmingham City Council to host an interchat: a dialogue on arts and communities. 7th – 8th April 2010. Birmingham, 10am – 4pm.
“Day One will be of specific interest to artists and practitioners (whether as individuals or as part of an organisation) wishing to develop their practice in the context of community engagement and internationally. Day Two will be of interest to artists, arts organisations, NGOs, local authority officers and regional agencies interested in cross-cultural practice, community engagement and international perspectives.”
Kate Oakley on Cultural Labour Markets
Anything by Kate Oakley is worth reading. Her newest is “Art Works” — cultural labour markets: a literature review (PDF link, 200kb), which appeared last autumn for the London-based Creativity, Culture and Education literature review series. She evaluates the last fifty years of research on cultural work and labour markets (in the UK, USA and Australia — there’s no mention of Hans Abbing), and pays special attention to the predictable hurdles that all new graduates face in getting into creative work.
“interviewees overall equated success with the quality of the work produced, rather than earning income from the work. This led the authors to conclude that artists’ careers are different from others in that it is ‘psychic income’, rather than monetary rewards, which drives artists.”
A bit dangerous that one. ‘Pat them on the head, give them some shiny awards, and let them starve’ seems to be a potential junior ministerial mis-reading of that in the current economic climate. After all ‘they can always work in a bar’ if they’re young and pretty enough…
“A less recognised but important aspect of the city’s leisure infrastructure is the opportunity it offers for multiple job-holding to artists who are unable to make a liveable income from artistic work alone.”
Creativity, Culture and Education (aka Creative Partnerships) have some other useful-looking papers at the literature reviews page — such as Justin O’Connor at Leeds on… “the history of the formation and definition of the creative sector”, and Ken Jones at Keele on the… “idea of culture as it has permeated policy-making, public debate, practices in schools and academic writing”.
[ Hat-tip: Annette Naudin ]
Above and beyond the fold
Sad to hear that the British Journal of Photography is to become a monthly. But it means we can look forward to an outstanding new cover redesign…
RoboThespian
The first 20 seconds of the video are a “teaser”, then the robot really starts acting.
eBuy
Blimey; just took £50 for my old Windows Vista on eBay. There must be people out there who’ve never heard of Windows 7. I’ve also sold a handful of old books that my BIAD office was throwing out (literally being chucked in a waste bin!), for £60 — I wish I’d taken more of them, now.
MADE : Talking Cities
Birmingham’s MADE has published the 2010 programme of talks in their Talking Cities lecture series, including….
Dominic Papa, S333 Architects, on “Designing for a knowledge economy” | 17th June 2010, 5.45pm
“Jus’ give me a cardboard box mate, ’s all I need…”
PhoneBoo
Nice idea at London’s PhoneBoo. Speak for up to three minutes into a normal home telephone (tech-heads should first blow the dust off…) and have the audio instantly and anonymously uploaded to the web as a linkable file.
An eye-phone.
The Beeb’s online cuts
It seems rather ironic that the BBC went through all that hassle to move people and services out of London (a process that thoroughly bypassed Birmingham for some unknown reason) — yet they’re now looking at huge cuts that seem likely to disproportionately target those same relocated staff (such as Manchester’s BBC Future Media & Technology dept.). A 25 percent reduction in web spending by 2012, the loss of a quarter of the online staff, and throwing half the mismanaged bbc.co.uk site in the bin along with having… “far fewer bespoke programme websites” in future. Apparently this is all to help pay for better quality broadcast TV? If that’s the battlefield then they lost that one with me a long time ago, bar Doctor Who and the odd documentary.
The bright lights of the BBC in Manchester, doing its bit for sustainable energy use and dark night skies.
Art history day-schools in Birmingham
The programme of history day schools at Birmingham University in 2010 contains many related to art…
Glassmakers of the West Midlands: History, Art and Industry.
Arts and Crafts in the Midlands from Birmingham to the Cotswolds.
Pre-Raphaelite Art and Literature: Connections and Influences.
For the steampunks: glass inkwell, made in Birmingham 1907.
Arvon’s 2010 graphic novelist retreat – now recruiting
The Arvon Foundation’s Shropshire retreat is recruiting now for a Graphic Novel week with Bryan Talbot, Hannah Berry, and Posy Simmonds, in September 2010.
Bryan Talbot’s pencils for Heart of Empire.
Zahra’s Paradise
Zahra’s Paradise, a new webcomic…
“Set in the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra’s Paradise is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has disappeared in the Islamic Republic’s gulags. [...] The authors have chosen anonymity for obvious political reasons.”
Keep it Rea-l
A 10-week artist in residence opportunity at the Rea Garden, an outdoor artists’ project space in Digbeth, Birmingham, including a two week exhibition. Artist fee £1,000 and a materials grant of up to £500.
New photo