Monthly Archives: January 2009

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Links for January 29th through January 30th

Some links for you:

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Come walk the city with me

walking map

I love walking. So does my Mom, even at 78 years old. I recall once walking with her and my siblings from home in Alum Rock to the city centre some time in the mid 1970s (was there a bus strike? more likely she just thought it would be good for us). My clear memory is getting to Masshouse Circus and instead of using the underpasses she made us go over the huge traffic island there. There was my mom and us three kids avoiding the busy traffic at each exit to the island until we made safe ground at Tescos (now Argos). We’d do longer walks around the city as we grew up but none stick in the mind like this one.

The city’s a tad easier to walk nowadays and I love walking it. Today I walked 4.16 miles around the city from New street station to a meeting in Aston Science Park, to the Custard Factory, back to the City centre and then on to the arse end of the Jewellery Quarter where my workplace is. I finished a bit annoyed at how it’s too often the simple things we’re getting wrong in the city, things that stop this walk being one for the tourist brochures despite the obvious historic interest along the way. I started at 8.45am and was back at work by 2.45pm. Here’s what I found:

  • From New st. to Science Park is a great straight mile that has benefited from the removal of underpasses at Bull street and Old Square. A lovely walk past the law courts and Aston Uni campus. Easy-peasy.
  • Who would think to use the canal from Science Park to Digbeth? A lovely towpath route but the entrance on the Science Park is obscured and poorly signposted. It is easily the simplest route. I passed only one other person.
  • The canal there is a bit intimidating due to poor tunnel lighting and the ongoing presence of loitering single men around Curzon street tunnel. Maybe a bit of a cottaging scene going on there? Of course it also lacks other people, maybe because no-one knows it’s there.
  • The new Yumm deli at the Custard Factory is a welcome addition. reasonably priced, cheery staff. Still love Rooty’s though but the love has spread now.
  • From Custard Factory to the city centre is NOT a pleasant walk. Was it lunchtime at the college? Does that explain the slightly intimidating youths? The ones who decided to do that come-right-up-in-your-face thing to me that youths sometime do? I’ve never liked it, still don’t. Too many side-roads including one where the traffic can come from the other side of the dual carriageway unexpectedly, and that fucking bus stop outside Digbeth Cold Storage where the path narrows. Why does this area need a dual carriageway? Why do we still love roads so much after all this time. Give us space on the pavement, please.

  • From Bull Ring shopping centre to the library is great, I like the second half of New street as it rises into the impressive Victoria Square and then to the library. The mall bit in the middle of the library still seems like an oddity though, to say the least.
  • But to get to Summer Row and to work from here – would you know how to do it? The weird exit to the right just after Nandos? Past the stagnant pool, down a red staircase (where do wheelchair users go?) and through the only underpass on the walk or across busy roads to avoid the underpass and onto another dual carriageway (although passing the very fine Birmingham Orthodox Cathedral),

Actually, in hindsight this is a great walk, spoilt only by poor signposting, a lack of thought about what make safe spaces and a continuing desire to prioritise the car. Above all, there seems a determination to keep the canals, the Custard Factory and Summer Row disconnected from the city centre experience. I’m not convinced that changing the road layout to prioritise pedestrians, stopping bus passengers being herded to the margins and installing better lighting on some canal tunnels need a Big City Plan to make them happen. It just needs those who make the decisions to come walk with us. To understand how good these routes are but understand the fine detail of what prevents them being great routes that we can promote with pride.

This is an open invite to all: in power, at the fringes of it or with a desire to influence it. Come walk with me, any time you like, I’ll show you the city I think you never take the time to see. And if she’s free, I’ll ask my mom along as well.

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Links for January 25th through January 26th

Some links for you:

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Links for January 20th through January 23rd

Some links for you:

  • Soho Road to the Punjab – Downloads – Now here’s a rich list of PDFs relating to all things Bhangra – really useful for anyone studying, or with a general interest in this area. Hat-tip D’log
  • Organ Grinder: Time for a change at the top of Channel 4 in the wake of Ofcom PSB report | Media | guardian.co.uk – Really useful summary of the PSB review whether or not you agree with its view that duncan needs to go. Hits on the key aspect of the review: “The things that ordinary people really care about, news, in all its guises, children’s television, and choice, are given more priority, rather than overpaid broadcasters.”
  • Creative Industries Book Club : interactivecultures – A review of our last Creative Industries book club at Birmingham City University at which we discussed John Hope Mason’s book on creativity.
  • i am ai: Done… – Nottingham based Arts company, AI, make pitch to 4IP fund in London: “We had lunch in the cool and cheap C4 canteen, great building although supposedly very leaky. Had carribbean stew as Gok Kwan and various other slightly familiar media-y TV types sat down to their own media lunch”
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#bigcityplan mid-term event Jan 20th 2009

 
Today I attended a one-day conference about Birmingham’s Big City Plan at the ICC. It was invite only although I didn’t get my invite until yesterday when it was clear that the group due to discuss the Connectivity theme valued having some expert input. Luckily my more expert colleague was there to do that and I could bluff my way through as usual. The view from the podium was that the day shouldn’t be live-blogged in case colleagues felt they couldn’t be open, so unfortunately there was little tweeting during the event itself.

There was no delegate list (or pack even) for the event but a quick glance round the room suggested that it was a mix of representatives from trade organisations, developers, community groups, universities, architects, planners and probably a lot more. Seemed to be fairly high-level, circa 300 in total. The introductions talked up the success of ‘Big City Plan’ as a brand in itself – that it had attracted attention for its ambition and was being widely discussed. Kelvin Campbell from Urban Initiatives (the consultants tasked with co-ordinating the plan) gave quite an uplifting presentation that included some interesting thinking about making some of the inner ring road into a kind of Birmingham La Rambla (so tempted to link to Las Ramblas then instead).

The day centred around a series of 16 break-out groups looking at different areas of the plan so I can only really talk about the chat in the Connectivity (cycling/walking/digital) group. The group had a fairly passionate discussion on walking (we lamented the lack of clear sign-posting and the blockages out from the centre to key areas such as the Jewellery Quarter and Highgate) and on cycling (the major arteries into the city are treacherous and the centre is difficult for bikes). 

But when we got onto ‘Digital’ the passion kind of disappeared to be replaced initially by a kind of ‘so what’? It was partly (in my view at least) that as described by the plan ‘digital’ is seen as a utility service. Nothing wrong with that, surely the council has a duty to treat it that way and ensure citizens get the access they deserve. The only point of debate was, almost inevitably, that we need city centre free wi-fi. But then our friend Kelvin dropped in on our discussion and pointed out how the lack of free wi-fi had created a number of ad-hoc social media spaces around particular cafes. Kelvin’s question was is that a good thing (he thought yes) and if so, how do we institutionalise it? Could we create a equivalent of a Section 106 so that new developments were obliged to create Social Media Spaces as part of new builds. Then the discussion was suddenly fired up about social media and the connectivity it creates between individuals and businesses and the creative potential therein. I made mention of the Big City Plan translation (news to all I think) and the ability of ‘digital’ to harness expertise and make connections directly to citizens was suddenly made real.

Further, there was recognition by Kelvin that the consultation to date hadn’t had the full engagement with the social media community that it could have had and that this group could recommend a change in tack in that respect. And that’s what we did – one of the group’s actions was for the Big City Plan team to utilise social media, and thereby engage with those leading in that area, to widen the debate. So we ended up having a very positive discussion after a flat start. 

A lunchtime appointment meant I actually managed to miss most of the summing up bar the one for this group. In the final slide was the bullet point ‘Twittering is Good’. As it was the last slide of the day it stayed up for quite a while during the closing speeches – point made.

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Links for January 15th through January 18th

Some links for you:

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Birmingham vs everywhere – Fight!

Birmingham Map

Or to put it another way – I’ve just discovered how easy it is to compare Birmingham to other cities using the nomis service from the Office of National Statistics. These are figures from the industry labor law charts that relate to the labour market. That is, who is or isn’t working, what people earn, what benefits they claim, how much of the population is ‘economically inactive‘. You can pull out stats for regions or local authority areas, or even better, make comparisons between two or three areas.

Pulling up the stats for Brum on their own are interesting enough. Here’s some things I didn’t know before:

  • Average weekly pay for a man in Birmingham is exactly £100 more than women get (£473 compared to £373)
  • The average wage of Birmingham-based jobs is £36 more (£470) than the average Brummie earns.
  • 18.9% of working age people have no qualifications at all (13% is the national figure)
  • 85% of Birmingham jobs are in the service sector
  • We have over half the national average of self-employed females (2.4% to 5.2%).
  • We’ve got over twice the national average rate of Job Seeker’s Allowance Claimants (6% to 2.8%)
  • 2490 businesses started trading in 2007, 2230 stopped trading in the same year. That’s a higher churn rate than the national picture.

You can query many of the data sources as well if you really need to know that in 2008 there were three times as many under 25 men (1540) than women (560) claiming jobseeker’s allowance in Selly Oak constituency. Actually that’s an improvement as it used to be four times as many back in 2000.

But the really interesting stuff comes when you compare Birmingham to other regions. Inevitably I pulled down Manchester from the menu. You can go read the stats yourself and try out other cities. Whatever you do don’t compare us to any other London boroughs – in a fight they win flat out on just about everything.

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Links for January 13th

Some links for you:

  • Sheffield Digital Campus – Home – I had no idea – Sheffield have built a big glass office block for their digital sector: "Sheffield Digital Campus has been designed specifically for companies in the digital sector. The site – centred in simply the best location in Sheffield – offers high quality office accommodation that enhances the creative process." Their 4IP person is to be housed there apparently.
  • Sheffield Digital Campus & T’ Super Steel Slide! | Tomasinho on Trends – Shaky video tour of Sheffield's Digital Campus. "Here is the station that will bring in the people". There's a great big steel slide inside the building. Looks fun but: "if [the] building ends up as a call centre in the next 5 years I will slice, dice, cook and eat my beloved fish pen. Because that would be well… uber.fa!l."
  • A glimpse of the future | Resource | guardian.co.uk – Worth your time reading this if you're looking to see how schools are innovating around social media: "There is a general consensus that ICT is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Learning to use a particular technology is not the point; learning how that technology can take you to where you want to go is the goal."
  • Funding News from SYFAB – A blog that lists funding opportunities in South Yorkshire. This is exactly what we need in the West Midlands – dontcha think?
  • Joe Holyoak News Blog » Blog Archive » The Big City Plan – A response to the consultation document – Essential reading on Birmingham's Big City Plan: "in the desire to reinvent and reposition Birmingham in an international league table, it is necessary to understand and respect the history and the nature of the city. At a superficial (but still important) level, this means continuing to use historic place names, and not seeking to replace them by bland invented marketing terms such as “Eastside” and “Westside”."
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Links for January 8th through January 10th

Some links for you:

  • Lynsey Hanley: Burnham's minor works | Guardian – Brummie's take on Burnham's idea about UK capitals of culture: "You can see Birmingham now at the front of the queue, hoping to boot Manchester back into the age of Engels. They'd have to employ people to hurl themselves in front of microphones any time they get near a real Brummie about to dismiss it all as a load of rubbish. (I remember the 1986 Olympic bid and the Super Prix as only a native can.)"
  • Fused Magazine – SXSW Music Delegates wanted – Fused are looking to take music types with them to South by South West in Austin Texas in March. There's some funding available. Deadline 20th Jan.
  • Cutting an Effective Indie Trailer | the Workbook Project – Slightly off-topic for me (although am a huge film fan so maybe not) but a useful guide on how to edit a movie trailer. Top tip: trailers that give away lots of plot work best.
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Creative Industries – the slowdown begins?

The latest figures on the Creative Industries (CI) are out. For the most part they hint at the beginning of a downturn although overall it’s a sector that still punches above its weight when compared with the rest of the economy. You should make yourself aware of two things: these are 2006/2007 figures (the latest available) and they are, as ever, based on sufficiently flaky sources to be classed as estimates rather than National Statistics.

With that in mind here are the highlights:

  • The overall value of the CI dropped from 6.8% to 6.4% between 2005 and 2006. The 2005 figure was previously given as 7.3% but there seems to have been some revisions since the last estimates were produced in 2007.
  • The rate of growth remained higher than the economy as a whole but slowed from 6% growth (2005 figures) to 4% growth (2006 figures). The change means that rather growing at twice the rate of the economy as a whole they grew at just 1% more.
  • The decline in growth is across many sub-sectors but with a significant (-23%) drop in Advertising. Software declined just 3% but this is after a continual period of growth since the estimates began (in 1998). The Video, Film & Photograpy sub-sector grew by 27%.
  • Exports grew from £14.5billion to £16billion although that’s still a slight drop (from 4.5% to 4.3%) of all the goods exported.
  • Creative employment grew from 1.9 million to 1.97 million between 2006 and 2007. This includes those is creative occupations but in firms outside the creative industries.
  • There is a large rise in the number of CI businesses between 2007 and 2008, an extra 50,000 in fact (up to 157,000). However, this is largely due to a change in methodology: “the figures have been enhanced to include enterprises based on PAYE employers that are not also registered for VAT.” Previously only VAT registered businesses have been included.

Difficult to draw conclusions from all this as the data is poor enough that fluctuations have to be ignored to a certain extent. The rate of growth seems to dropping though and the question is will it drop into negative growth along with the rest of the economy or remain just above and be one of the few industries to weather the recession relatively intact. What may decline significantly is creative employment. There are more creatives outside of the CI than within, so as the rest of the economy shrinks we can expect many creative jobs to go as well, even if those in creative firms remain static.

(pic: chebbs)