Links for September 16th through September 21st
Some links for you:
- Supply2.gov.uk presents the Tendering for Success Roadshow 2008 - Home - Roadshow at Birmingham Uni on 15th October about tendering for public sector contracts.
- Developers dig Digbeth - Property Week - Looks like the credit crunch is saving the Custard Factory from further gentrification. Hat tip to Nicky Getgood.
- Mr Elephant Presents » Blog Archive » Digbeth 2008 Report #2 - A really useful reflection on Digbeth's gentrification. Have been planning to write up a similar thing myself at some point.
- NESTA - The Video Game: Friend or Foe? - Fringe event for the upcoming Tory conference. Malmaison Birmingham. Sunday 28th September. 545pm - 7pm.
"Each year, video games contribute £3billion to the UK economy, but have been linked with encouraging violence amongst young people. Join us for food and drink, when we will debate the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ sides of the video game. Note: This event is not taking place in the security zone, so you do not need a Conference pass to attend."
Links for September 13th through September 14th
Some links for you:
- Birmingham designers and publisher celebrate Booker Prize listing - Birmingham Post - I missed this from last month. Two connections for me: I used to work for Jewellery Quarter based designers Homer Creative whose top designer Sue Race has designed a book cover for a Booker Prize nominee. Second connection: I once sat with Tindal Street Press boss Alan Mahar at a Blues vs Everton game. Okay that second one's a bit crap I know. Well done to both though.
- UK hearts Twitter | chalkboard - "There was some interesting data released about twitter in the August 08 edition of Hitwise Media Round Up. The most surprising headline (for me at least), was that twitter is officially more popular with Brits than Americans - and it’s the stats that say so."
- 2012 | CompeteFor Portal - In case you didn't realise it this portal is the place to register for 2012 tenders
- London Office moves, but still free to use | Digital Central - The project I used to run has the fortunate legacy of still having support available in the form of use of an office in central Soho
Links for September 11th through September 12th
Some links for you:
- Expression of Interest - North Staffs Website (Sept Revision) - North Staffordshire regeneration partnership is looking to commission a web-development company to design and build a North Staffordshire creative industries portal. DEADLINE: 19th September
- Are you part of this, or just a reflection of it? | edu.blogs - "The thing about social media is that you have to be, ahem, social. That means you have to be in it, not anti-social by ignoring people or trashing others' work. It's a shame that one of the largest ad agencies out there, McCann Erickson, feels the need to rip-off others' work, without even a casual link out to the people they're attempting to copy."
- 7 Surprising Facts About Online Video…And 3 Ways You Can Profit From Them | After The Launch - "It seems every time you turn around these days, people are saying you must start using online video if you want to succeed on the web. But is it really true…or…is it all just marketing hype?"
- Small is Beautiful…but Big is Powerful - Collaboration - Articles - News, views and events - NESTA - Ken Thompson explores what we can learn about teamwork and group/community size from nature's most successful teams.
- Media industry is fastest sector to take-up childcare voucher schemes for employees - Of interest if you're in the media industry and trying to save a bit on childcare costs. Good to see the sector taking these up.
Birmingham - The Uncreative City
After writing a couple of months ago about Creative Republic I thought it about time I went along to an event. So last night I showed up at the Michael Wolff Masterclass in the so-new-the-paint’s-still-wet Fazeley Studios in Digbeth. Wolff himself had to pull out at the last minute which was a shame but in his place we had Stef Lewandowski taking us through a presentation he entitled ‘Birmingham Ambient Creativity Audit’.
This basically involved Stef roaming the centre as if he was a fresh-face tourist, trying to orientate himself and look for signs of our cultural life. In short, after taking 500+ photos, he didn’t find much bar the very occasional fly-poster. What he did find was poor sign-posting, an excess of cars, a lack of hang-out spaces and a derelict ice-rink. It was a useful and entertaining snapshot of Birmingham, the uncreative creative city. One of Stef’s key points was about how Birmingham doesn’t look like a creative place despite the fact that creative and cultural industries make up such a significant chunk of the city’s economy (almost 9% of GVA or 5% of the economy - bigger than financial services but smaller than Law and business services).
That’s the key point for me. We’ve become a shopping city and a conference city, but can’t quite work out, in planning terms at least, how to be a creative city. I made a point during the evening about what Stef’s city tour might have felt like in the 1980s, a time when we were nothing more than a motor city, when we simply didn’t have the volume of creative industries activity we do now (2004 stats show 50% of all creative firms had started up in the previous ten years). In 2008 Stef was hoping to see more ‘indie’ culture as he walked around. He left ‘indie’ a little undefined but for me its more than shops or flyposters, its about people on the streets. Back in the 1980s hanging out in the city was a much more straightforward activity than it is now (Stef makes a point about the prevalence of CCTV and alcohol restricted areas). Then, the messiness of post-war planning left lots of curious, unwatched spaces - underpassses, undeveloped sites, old train stations - in which one could engage with friends in your own subcultural group (my own being ‘plastic punk‘ - into the music but too scared of upsetting his mum by ripping his jeans or dying his hair). Birmingham centre may be a lot better planned than it used to be but in that we’ve lost the diversity we used to see on the streets - a diversity of both people and places. A diversity that made us look like more of an ‘indie’ place.
In the last 20 years we’ve done everything that big, growing mature cities should do: we shut the underpasses, we gentrified the canals, we realigned the roads but we also privatised what were public spaces (Bullring was mentioned as an example of that), we priced out independent retail (we’re about to lose that great rabbit warren of youth culture and independent retail, Oasis Markets), we approved uninspiring architecture. I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve probably done everything you’re not supposed to do to plan a creative city landscape.
I think the idea of last night was that we’re essentially gearing up for more formal feedback to the Big City Plan in the autumn. Which is a good thing of course because consultation matters if we’re to take on Stef’s points and make his next city tour a much more rewarding experience.
Even though I had to dash off before the final feedback this was a useful night that gave me and others there plenty of food for thought. Well done to Stef and Creative Republic for pulling together something so useful rather than just canceling.
Links for September 5th through September 8th
Some links for you:
- The Long Tail: Clay Shirky on the weird things that happen when things suddenly become abundant - Even Chris Anderson seems to like this quote from Shirky that too many people seem in awe of. ‘Cognitive Surplus’ - it sounds like a medicine you take to help you poo properly. Shirky’s point seems based on a flawed understanding of how mass media works; how people make meaning from media texts. Its like cultural studies never happened.
- 4IP | Scotland and Northern Ireland 4iP are go - 4ip’s first fund manager makes his first post on the 4ip blog. Looks like he’ll be contact building over the next couple of months or so.
- Pact and NESTA Encourage Convergence in the Broadcast Industry - Pact - A handy guide to collaborating including all the legal stuff.
- 14 Ways to Do It With Others, Crowdsourcing « Internet Marketing - The Stratius Blog - List of social media tools
Floods, leaks and dodgy bulls
I’d hate to be the kind of blogger who has a bad day then proceeds to tell the world about it - my rubbish day is as nothing compared to the rest of the world’s proper rubbish days. Let alone those for whom every day is pretty rubbish.
But I tell you what - today (so far, its 8pm) has been fairly rubbish. An Ill-advised trip to town from which it took 90 minutes to get home through cancelled trains, stuck buses, and flooded rivers blocking roads.
Took some phone pics in Bournville after the taxi we’d resorted to couldn’t go any further of which this one is the only nicely dramatic one:
When we got home we found the roof had leaked which is annoying but if you want to see some proper dramatic pics then go take a look at Josh Hart’s pics. He lives near the river Rea in Selly Park which burst its banks.
However, the most extraordinary sight I saw all day though was the bull statue outside the Bullring in Birmingham. I knew they’d painted in silver (why I don’t know and don’t care) but look up close and it’s possibly the worst paint job known to man. I think it was best left alone….
I hope to finish my rubbish day by watching a rubbish film, Cloverfield. It really couldn’t get any worse could it?
Links for September 3rd through September 5th
Some links for you:
- Producer’s Support: - UK MEDIA Team - Various EU funding pots have just opened to support TV productions or multimedia projects. Uusally you need partners in europe but the guidelines vary across the pots so worht a look.
- City is eclipsed by rising star of Manchester - Birmingham Post - “How Birmingham must now be regretting failing to attract the BBC’s regional headquarters, which went of course to Salford.”
- 4ip Blog | Mobile usage in US v EU - “The usage numbers are shockingly low - less than 10% of mobile users have downloaded a game for example, despite all of the marketing efforts of the mobile operators and mobile content industry over the last 8 years.”
- Invitation to Tender: East & West Midlands Screen Heritage Regional Delivery Plans - Tender - apply by 12th September: Regional Screen Agencies EM Media and Screen WM are seeking a professional person or company to coordinate and produce complementary Screen Heritage Delivery Plans for each Region, which are to be submitted to the Strategy for UK Screen Heritage Programme Board by the 10th October at the latest.
A two pence bus fare for the digital age
I have a new job. I’m off (on long-term secondment actually) to work for Digital Birmingham as their Economic Development Manager. As part of my interview I had to do five minutes on how I would put Birmingham on the digital map. It was five minutes without PowerPoint so I wrote a speech which I thought I’d reproduce here (and no, I don’t quite answer the question but I do talk about buses a lot and yes, I added the embedded links afterwards):
“Birmingham feels strangely exciting at the moment. I say strangely because as someone who’s lived here all of his life, ‘exciting’ is a status that Birmingham has only occasionally reached the giddy heights of. But there is one time when I remember Birmingham reached a frenzy, when an event affected everyone in the city. No, I’m not talking about the double whammy of the G8 and the Eurovision in 1998 but rather, about the now almost legendary decision by the city council in the early 1980s to introduce 2 pence bus fares for under 16s. What halcyon days they were. That long-held dream of going all the way round on the number 11 bus could now be made a reality. The question of what to do on a weekend now had a simple answer – get on a bus and stay on it, see where it took you. It was a decision that mobilised a generation of idle youth. It took us to town and back every Saturday and left us plenty of change for space invaders and a cup of tea in the café on the sixth floor of Lewis’s.
In his article on youth culture from 1981, Gary Clarke actually makes reference to Birmingham’s 2p bus fares. He notes it caused uproar amongst the population, everyone was talking about it. He describes the moral panic caused by this mobilisation. To quote him: “Birmingham youths have created new meaning from the conventional activities of shopping and public transport”. But what’s this got to do with Digital you’re asking? The quote’s interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don’t think I’ve ever read a better summation of how I spent my teenage years. Secondly, I suspect that is how we’ll be talking 20 years down the line about the digital tools we’re seeing now. That is, as conventional activities.
Actually you’re probably thinking what’s all this got to do with buses? Well, the most exciting blogger in Birmingham right now is a Bus Driver. TWMDriver has his own blog as well as a Twitter account where you can leave him a question about life on the buses. Also, Jon Bounds, author of the Birmingham Its Not Shit blog, wants us all to spend the 11th of the 11th this year on the 11 route, leaving at 11am. He wants an army of Brummie bloggers out there, talking about it, recording it, photographing it. Why? Because it’s there I suppose and because blogging connects you to people and once in a while can actually mobilise them to do something they may not have thought about doing otherwise.
And I think that’s what I feel is exciting at the moment. There’s seems to be a developing, lively social media ‘scene’ going on and some of us have cottoned on to the fact that it’s cheap bus fare time out there in the digital age. More than cheap actually, most of the tools are free. But, what drove us onto the buses in the 1980s wasn’t just the reduction in fares. That facilitated the pre-existing desire we had to discover, to meet, to share. To spend afternoons in Virgin records flicking through magazines we were never going to buy. Digital technologies aren’t the driver of change - they’re an enabler of change.
So what excites me about this social media landscape is how it seems to be bringing citizens together and connecting them on a whole range of topics. I’d agree that at first glance it seems to be a social space partly occupied by a few ‘usual suspects’ in the creative industries. Yet if you dig deeper, you’ll find a rich seem of bloggers talking about where they live (Vale Mail), their work (a blog dedicated to Night Working in the City), or their interests (myself and others wittering on about our allotments). There are opinion leaders out there of course and what I think Digital Birmingham should be is one of them.
Using my Birmingham Post blog I’ve already written about how those with influence can make use of Social Media to start a genuine debate about the city - to develop, if you like, a Birmingham Digital School of Thought. There is a lot of influence to be gained in this city by being part of the digital discussion. Bloggers have a developing cultural capital that planners and decision-makers are beginning to take notice of. Power comes from what you’re saying as well as what you’re doing – it comes from being a part of the discussion.
We’re potentially heading for an economic downturn and if digital technologies can help us through the worst of the impact of such a downturn – by creating ‘digital’ jobs in the creative industries or in medical technologies or in serious games – then we need to speak up now to ensure those with the money, as well as the power, are listening to us and heed our guidance. What growth there is in the economy is in those and other hi-tech industries – the evidence is out there, let’s ensure we understand it and that it influences change.
So for Digital Birmingham its about exerting your influence by contributing to the debate. Be someone, or something, with a view, a position, a take on things. Digital isn’t a box to tick or a target to reach, it’s not a league table…. It’s a bus. The driver, as I’ve mentioned, is already part of the action. I believe Digital Birmingham can be a powerful body to exert the kind of influence that will mobilise our citizens to get on the Digital bus, stay on it and, as we did on the number 11, go round and round just for the hell of it. Birmingham needs a 2p fare for the Digital age and Digital Birmingham could be the body to make that happen.”
Job starts in September. Nicely evocative bus pic by Pete Asthon