Directors and Villages

The mighty D’log went to the Creativity and Creative Sectors, Clusters and Networks event at the Birmingham University Business School on Friday and wrote up his notes and impressions in three posts (one, two, three). A lot of it went over my poor head but a few things jumped out and raised an eyebrow.

When a senior consultant and researcher was looking for statistics at a regional level, he found it’s “unbelievably confusing when working at a regional level” … “it’s a mess”. On national statistics about the creative industries, the research is still very poorly done but “the DCMS is still spraying this information all over the place” while being fully aware that the data is misleading or plain wrong. The data is “incoherent … we are building a policy that is completely unreliable”. *

There will be a second follow-on event, “Creativity and the City: sector, cluster or network?” in Birmingham on 4th April 08.

The big one, however, is this.

The city is considering appointing a “Creative Director” for Birmingham. A “Creative Village” area might be designated and signed by 2010; that may be either Moseley or the Jewellery Quarter, or possibly Digbeth. *

Geary of The Post has some questions and speculation about the Director thing and how this ties in with Michael Woolf’s calls for something similar.

Meanwhile this Villiage notion is intriguing. While the Jewellery Quarter and Digbeth have the Big Peg and Custard Factory complexes anchoring a creative industry Moseley does seem more “village-y”. Ironically, however, most of the Moseley creative scene seems to live in Kings Heath these days because it’s cheaper…