Yesterday I was down at the Creativity and Creative Sectors, Clusters and Networks event at the Birmingham University Business School. Here are the snippets I learned there about Birmingham:-
The city is apparently unofficially considering the proposal that they appoint a “Creative Director” for Birmingham. Which makes me wonder, when I read on the Creative Republic site that they are…
“…looking to recruit an ambassador. You will need skill, imagination, superlative communication skills, dazzling networks and the inside track on how to get things done in the city. The successful applicant has the opportunity to shape and develop Creative Republic, create a buzz around it and its potential and bring a focus and clarity to the creative sector in the City as never before.”
… as it would seem natural to try someone out in that “ambassador” role and then, after they have proved themselves, move him/her up to be the city’s main Creative Director.
A “Creative Village” area might be designated and signed by 2010; that may be either Moseley or the Jewellery Quarter, or possibly Digbeth.
Creatives are providing free input into the proposed 20-year Birmingham City Centre Masterplan (the “Parkinson Report”), especially in relation to the relocation of BIAD to Curzon Street and the branding of the wider Digbeth area.
There are proposals to place degree students into local communities to try to solve problems ‘creatively’. There were worries that – unless incredibly well organised, at the sort of Creative Partnerships level of funding and organisation – this would waste the time and energy of the best creative graduates, demoralising them by asking them to do the impossible; i.e.: to ‘solve’ intractable structural problems in the inner city. There was also the worry that “the gap year student” perception might develop on the part of the communities; in the same way that third-world projects welcome their friendly gap year volunteers, but realise that they are actually able to contribute very little and have almost no tacit knowledge. Instead, things like the redevelopment of Birmingham New St. Station could provide more inspirational ‘problem solving’ work for students, as it would also provide new art galleries and other creative/design/retail projects as part of the rebuild.
Many support agencies are very pleased to have to focus only on delivering jobs and hard economic growth, because they would be worn down by having a “social sticking-plaster” function foisted on them. They already have enough problems arising from tangentally encountering the hangover “workers’ co-operative” mindset that is still lurking out there in the city.
The right kind of private finance is still lacking, to aid in the growth of the city’s creative economy. Public sector funding is also still patchy, episodic and poorly targetted, although initiatives such as the Creative Region may increase their visibility in the future.
A Burns Owens study from early 2007 suggested that Birmingham and its commuter-area might have up to 15,000 employed in screen media production. This was partly based on the The Footprint: A Baseline Survey of the Creative and Cultural Sector Sector Skills Council document, although this document found that the whole of the West Midlands had just 36,790 creative and cultural jobs, which apparently includes the self-employed.
There is (apparently) “almost no published convincing material on what makes a successful public-sector support/intervention” in the screen media industries.
The focus on building a Serious Games cluster (sorry, “market”) in the Birmingham/Coventry/Warks area is still very strong; although it’s probable that Digital Central won’t have much of a role in that, as they may be steered more towards the music industry in the future. There is also a hope that the region may be able to lure a large new public-service digital content publisher, but that may be many years off.
Around 70 percent of graduates leave the West Midlands after graduation. Over 80 percent of national media coverage of the West Midlands is neutral or negative, and we have no real strategy for changing that perception. We can hope for some backwash from the cultural programme of the 2012 Olympics in London, on which we may be able to build some more positive media coverage.
Lisa de Propris is making a close and fine-grained study of the business of the Jewellery Quarter, with support from the British Academy. I was very impressed by her presentation. Tracking down the businesses can be tricky as there’s no enforced registration of firms (as there is on the continent), and no central yearbook of names and addresses; de Propris used Yell.com (the Yellow Pages) and hallmarking data from the Birmingham Assay Office as data sources, backed up by paper surveys. Although producers have a close (and possibly fragile, in a ‘falling dominoes’ manner) network of highly skilled suppliers locally, their international links are also good. There’s often a better level of trust with people overseas than there is with local suppliers of services. Security and car parking is vital in a place like the Jewellery Quarter, with its close proximity to the inner city. Only 36 percent of Jewellery Quarter firms say they have a website. Export is apparently still a painfully underdeveloped area for the firms of the Jewellery Quarter. Having in-house designers can be shown to boost business growth, to a small extent; although this may correlate with simply having more dynamic management in place. There are relatively strong and enthusiastic support structures now in place, providing input from the academic world and from business support agencies. There are between 40 and 50 designer makers of jewellery and silversmithing in Birmingham’s long-established Jewellery Quarter, but the majority of the retail shops there sell imported goods.
Centerpiece is an annual “one stop” city-centre show of work by local jewellery and silversmithing designer makers. It’s running right now at the The Symphony Hall and the Town Hall, until 23rd December 07…
The new Brilliantly Birmingham catalogue is also available for download (PDF link)…
AREA Magazine