That being said, these awards from Birmingham City Council exist for businesses, and nearly all awards in the creative sector are created for companies to nominate themselves.

In the current climate, for businesses to compete with London agencies, and to build strong teams that consistently put out excellent work should be recognised even more so.

The creative sector contributes 9% to the Midlands economy and many designers learn their trade working for and with businesses in this sector.

Birmingham City Council have provided much support to this sector and people have benefitied and grown their business using this support, myself included.

The awards this year were a smooth operation, and will no doubt help show companies who are providing work to companies outside the region, exactly what Birmingham has to offer.

Just found this post. I have to agree entirely.

You can enter by self-nomination or by being nominated. We had several people receommend to us that we enter in 2007 so we did. We didn’t feel right doing it because our personal view on these things is that nominating yourself for an award surely is really arrogant?!

So anyway, we did enter, we were shortlisted as finalists, got interviewed by a small film crew at ITV (during which the final question was something akin to “how do you feel about all the help from the City Council particularly with the funding made availalbe etc?” and were told that naturally we have to answer because they’ve sponsored the whole affair, so we came up with some nonsense whilst thinking “funding? funding? what funding? We’ve not had any of that…”

After this we had to make a presentation to a panel who we believed, prior to the meeting, were interested in our creativity. But sure enough, pretty much the only thing they cared about was the money money money. Even though we had grown year on year, it was not enough for them.

So during the awards 2007 we came second place – in our category of two entries.

We actually had people come up to us after the meal at the awards telling us we should ahve won because our work was more creative than the other entry.

We came away from the awards feeling pretty deflated, and let down. We had not gone there genuinely expecting to win, but we really believed it was about the work that companies produce. It very quickly became clear that the whole thing is just about moeny and not creativity, and as such, within our company it has become known as the ‘Financial City Awards’.

As for the night itself, as soon as I walked in to the venue, I commented to my girlfriend about the tacky presentation of the event, and was even more shcoked at the appaling production quality of the interviews on the screens for the nominees – even to the point that they got our name wrong. Then to make things worse, they spend more time and energy bigging up the people who were going to hand out the awards rather than looking at the ‘creative’ talent who were in the room, much to my irritation.

Soembody who I won’t name but who has already comemnted above, asked me when I met them for the first time some 6-8 months after the awards “did you notice how all the winners were the companies who had received funding?” …. I hadn’t even thought about it, but it made sense.

It cost our company about £4,500 to enter the awards, jumping through all the hoops and fulfilling their ‘entering needs’.

So, after this long rant, are we bitter? Yes, a touch in honesty. Do we really care about the City Council’s opinion? No, as it became very clear that they have no idea what real creativity is.

We have worked with some really great people at the council who have been excellent client. It’s jsut extremely dissapointing that as an organisation they are pretty poor, and make life so much harder and less enjoyable than it should be. For us, as an organisation, they have been nothing more than a hindrance to our business.

Now, I’m off to congratulate LHM Media on their win – I know them very well.

re furthest sticker stuck, I saw a TAK! sticker in Tokyo…

Thinking about my own work on creative projects in the city, any recognition would be great, but I think I’d most like to be congratulated by my peers on making work which is inspiring, or touching, or groundbreaking. Lots of the companies involved in these awards make work which is all of those things, but it’s these bits of their work I think we should be celebrating.

Incidentally, I think it’s also the thing other creatives, and the general public at large, would be most interested in hearing about too, and it’s those things which make people want to work in, live in or visit this city, which of course has its own financial benefits.

Of course it’s great that we have some financially successful creative businesses in the city and I’m very proud of them. But I’m more proud of the fact that some of them make amazing work, and that’s what I’d tell someone who’d never heard of them. If someone asked you about a particular theatre or web design company you’d tell them about the shows they put on or the websites they design first wouldn’t you? You might mention the fact that they’re financially successful too, but that’s not what would make someone want to visit that theatre, or employ that company to redesign their website.

The best quality lowbrow creation.