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.
Birmingham Creatives - I can’t hear you
Cross-posted from my blog at the Birmingham Post.
Actually I can hear some of you, particularly those of you that are on the same social networks as me or that I happen upon as result of my work. I can hear you loud and clear and you’ve got lots to say about this city and how it values or doesn’t value the arts and why what you do matters. What I can’t hear is the voice of the organisation that’s been set up to represent you collectively. Or to put it another way: what’s the point of Creative Republic? If they’re the voice of the creative sector aiming to make it “stronger, louder and more effective” then why does it all seem a bit quiet out there.
Actually they have had a few events, one as recently as June during which creatives got to mingle and have a nice drink. In fact the Facebook invite for the last event emphasised: “No Pack Drill… No Speeches… And No Charge”. That struck me as pretty depressing for an organisation that’s trying to represent us at the highest level in the city. So that’s an event that won’t be asking creatives how they want to be represented? No chance for attendees to have their say? No ‘we’ll fight them on the beaches’ rallying call for creatives to raise up their pens/brushes/mice/cameras and get themselves known and heard? No chance for the next generation of creative leaders to push themselves to the front of the room and tell their colleagues why they can make change happen?
There’s an economic downturn under way. Maybe it won’t be too bad but research tells us that growth in the Creative Industries are cyclical, that is, when the economy grows they grow more but when it slides they slide more. So we might be entering a downturn that puts the jobs of regional creatives on the line. Not just in service sector jobs such as design and interactive media but in cuts to the arts and support organisations. We should be ideally placed in having an organisation like Creative Republic to point out to city fathers that even if times get bad we’re worth sticking with. If Brum wants to be a must-live place then it should continue to support the arts no matter how sticky those council meetings get.
I have no doubt that there’s plenty of politicking going on by Creative Republic board members behind the scenes but why is it so quiet? Do they have a view on the impending closure of Culture West Midlands, the organisation from which it takes it statistics? How does it feel about Advantage West Midlands’ strategy for the Digital Media and Music sector?
As I understand it Created in Birmingham is part of the Creative Republic set up but that serves a different function - that’s about saying “come and look at all this great stuff happening in Birmingham’s creative scene”. What’s needed instead is a voice (a blog would be a start) that reflects what Creative Republic is trying to be - a political organisation that has an opinion and is fighting the good fight for the city’s creatives.
Politics and policy are dominated by the voice of business at the moment and here we are with an organisation that has a real chance to be the voice of the worker - for that we need pack drills and speeches rather than a free drink and cosy chat.