The event is free to attend and takes place on 12 October, from 1 – 5pm at mac, hosted by The Producers Forum.

“Social capital” now has a very real value and multiplatform storytelling is increasingly the way to ensure that our projects are contemporary, compelling and wide reaching.

CiB’s Chris Unitt will be on one of the panels of guest speakers, along with Natasha Carlish, Nick Booth, Dave Harte, Julia Higinbottom, Pip & Lisa/Jenny and Helga Henry. They’ll be discussing how their experience in using social capital and multiplatform storytelling has lead to some exciting and innovative projects and new ways of working. The event will also feature a live and recorded web cast from the annual Power to the Pixel conference.

Book your place via their eventbrite page.

First the set-up:

I think this position [that creative industries need handouts] comes from the confusion of thinking that the subsidised Arts sector has much to do with the Creative Industries sector. There’s overlap of course but in Birmingham the two most significant contributors to Creative Industries value have been Architecture (32% of GVA in 2004) and Software (35% of GVA in 2004). Music and Performing Arts are low-value sectors in economic terms (1.1% of GVA in 2004).

And, keeping in mind that 1.1%, here’s the bit that hadn’t occurred before:

Writing in 2006, Calvin Taylor noted that it was:

“significant that the arts lobby mostly uses the creative industry tag. Very few other sector bodies, representing other components of what are taken to be the creative industries, use the tag in their sectors promotion work.”

I pointed this out to Pete Ashton who happened to be sat a couple of desks away at the time and he’s run with it on his own blog:

it’s no surprise to me that the “subsidised Arts sector” are the major cheerleaders for the Creative Industries in the West Midlands given they operate on a financial knife-edge and will grab at every opportunity to raise funds from wherever possible. Meanwhile those who make their income from international deals and multi-million dollar sales don’t feel the need to lobby the local chamber of commerce

Although I wouldn’t go along with that entirely – the arts sector is often chastised for not having a particularly strong/coherent lobbying voice around these parts (that’s partly what Creative Republic was set up to solve) and the games industry have been doing some quite high-profile and temporarily successful lobbying recently, especially around tax breaks. However, I agree with the general thrust and would pick out this bit too:

The other fantastically vague label that everyone’s keen to attach to them at the moment is “digital”

Which ties in with a bugbear of mine – that in some conversations the words ‘creative’ and ‘digital’ seem to have become oddly interchangeable, when they’re really not. It’s just there’s perceived to be funding available for ‘digital stuff’ (often quite useless ‘digital stuff’ at that) so that’s what dominates the phrasing of the conversation.

Oh, and I’ve just seen that D’log has chipped in with some analysis of Dave Harte’s stats. Cor, it’s like the good old days of blogging with comments, discussion and all sorts going on (it’s the same voices speaking up too).

Anyway, this is all a bit heavy and texty. In the next post there will be pictures.

In light of this, I wanted to let you know some things I am working on at the moment. I’m going to be changing the aesthetic of the blog, and changing the template we use. I’ll be using a free, downloadable template  just as Pete did when he first created CiB. I will be doing this for several reasons, one simply because I am not a technical person and wouldn’t have a clue how to design or adapt my own, but mostly because I want to encourage others to start blogs by using these free tools that are available to anyone.

I am also working on a great big CiB Google Map of Birmingham. As a reader of CiB one question has always stuck with me: “That gallery / project / meetup / exhibition looks great, but where the hell is it?” When putting this map together and encouraging others to contribute, I am hoping to find lots of exciting stuff happening all over the city; it’s suburbs and back streets, North & South. I have been partly inspired by Nicky Getgood’s: Digbeth is Good Arty Trail.

I don’t think the map should be a comprehensive documentation of creativity in Birmingham, but a rich working document which evolves over time with many contributors adding locations, photographs, video and trails.

Creative Republic managed to snatch victory from defeat the other night – the star turn couldn’t make the ‘Creative Masterclass with Michael Wolff‘ so instead we were given a chance to ponder what the Birmingham’s presentation of our very important (as we’re constantly being told at the mo) creative scene.

Stef Lewandowski kicked things off with a pretty scathing presentation of Birmingham from a tourist-eye view.  He had walked the city, camera in hand, trying (and generally failing) to find signs of creativity. He’s keen to point out that his negativity was slightly exaggerated but it was interesting that the vast majority of his criticisms went unchallenged.

Stef’s presentation is online.  The slides are good quality but you’ll have to excuse the audio in places:

Sat in groups, we were then given the chance to chew over some of the points raised before reporting back to the rest of the class people there.

The chat has continued away from the event though.

• As well as uploading the slides and audio, Stef has put up a blog post called ‘A creative director for Birmingham?‘ with many of the photos used, text to explain them and a few extra thoughts too.  The comments following his post are worth a read too.
• Graphiquillan wasn’t at the event but the subject of Stef’s talk chimed with her, prompting musings on the subject of ‘finding the creative needles in Birmingham’s haystack‘.
• Paul Groves’ post ‘Creating a stir in Birmingham‘ rounds up the thinking and suggests that despite “a lack of clarity and vision in recent times” we now seem to be getting “the sort of lively and informed discussion that is long overdue”.
• Dave Harte has picked up Stef’s theme on his Birmingham Post blog with ‘Birmingham – The Uncreative City?‘ suggesting that, as well as making some good moves in rejuvenating the city, mistakes have been made – privatising public spaces, pricing out independent retail and approving uninspiring architecture.

The idea is for some of the thoughts collected over the course of the evening (and since) to go towards informing a future event with Michael Wolff and perhaps a submission to the Big City Plan itself.  There’s still plenty of time for anyone to join the discussion.