Safe Haven for Pirates
I attended The Big Debate, an event run by BCU, The Post and The NEC Group, on Monday 2nd November, which attempted to inspire debate around the topic of ‘Whether the Midlands’ Creative Sector can revolutionise the UK economy’.
The larger conference atmosphere was broken down after the key note speakers, whom it is worth touching on - Charles Leadbetter was truly inspiring with his call to make the Midlands a ‘safe haven for pirates’ – encouraging us as the Midlands Creative Sector to take in the renegades and the risky prospects and to celebrate what makes Birmingham different, not struggle to provide things that make it the same. I did however suffer an involuntary eye-rolling at the mention of pebbles and boulders. Yes, we are operating on a vast pebble beach, no the geology-driven analagy does not make it easier to navigate or understand!
Toby Barnes also brilliant and appeared to be very much along the same cognitive seam as I was (and it also appears that @peteashton and @paulbradshaw are) – JFDI.
Back to the debate, conference broken down into small debating sects on each table, headed up by BCU representative. I was on Table 18, which had a number of interesting bods all with great opinions about getting stuck in to creativity and digital (which are, as established, very different things). One person found the Birmingham scene very difficult to navigate and become involved with and in the end resorted to an MA as a way in. We agreed that it is cliquey and that the creative sector suffers the same issue as BCU itself – no central hub, instead 5ish demi-hubs scattered around the city, which, when one prospers (such as Fazeley Studios) automatically becomes less penetrable and more pedestal-like from the perspective of ‘everyone else’. This is not to bring down achievement anywhere in the city, just to say that it makes true cohesion quite difficult and what appears as a clique quite common to come by.
My gripe came when some members of the debate appeared to suggest that the answer lied in funding. They believe that the creative sector as well as the digital and therefore social enterprises of the city need central funding and backing, for one spokesperson to be nominated to speak for all and that without provisions to facilitate inclusion, training and unity the answer to the debatable question might be ‘no’.
Personally I don’t understand the desire to paint the WM creative sector (which in my mind is strong and expanding) as a weak link, requiring propping up from public sector funds. We are all supposed to be marketing/PR/digital experts so why not use our own abilities to do this job for ourselves and prove that we are unified, capable and a very viable sector even during recession by DOING it; not waiting for someone to give us permission to do it? I agree that social media surgeries, networking events and shared premises are a good idea – but they are already happening so lets build on that, not go running back for a hand out when we have a huge opportunity to champion pro-activity.
I also think cross sector conferences might be a good idea for the future. I’m not convinced innovation is ever going to happen by getting lots of media/digital/creative types in a room to talk about media/digital/creativity. Also feel there were quite a lot of people in the room getting frustrated with going to lots of events and seeing the same people rotating around the event circuit (like a carousel of ‘social gurus’). In my mind it was a step in the right direction and will be made more valuable and interesting (ten-fold) by what happens next. Andrew Brightwell had some simple and therefore achievable and useful next steps to making Birmingham a pirate asylum that I think are key.
In the meantime, I will try to get on with JFDI and hope that between this powerful network of communicators we can’t turn some of our talent and focus to building up the Birmingham Creative Sector brand.
