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.

if this represents an opportunity for artists to present a series of temporary large works on the cleared site?

It’d be more exciting than the actual proposed plan for the area which crams in the usual suspects – ‘mixed use scheme’, ‘enhancement of the canals’, etc and yawn.

D’log expounds:

Such shows would have an audience, in the countless people approaching Birmingham on the trains from/to the north. There’s no traffic nearby to distract, so light could be used to dramatic effect and (if structures were tall enough) could reflect in the canal. At the very least, AWM might consider laying the site with wildflower seed turf as a temporary measure, rather than letting it become a mess of scrubby buddliah and weeds for the next three years. What if the 2009 West Midlands Meadow Gallery could be held on this highly visible inner-city site? Perhaps followed by another Festival of Xtreme Building?