Our creative and cultural industries – media, arts, online, music – are collectively bigger than construction in this city (that’s a great fact we used in the bid team and final pitch).

Incredibly, there is no-one to speak for us on the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) – almost as incredible as the lack of female members but we warned you about this male, pale and stale phase creeping up on ya me old hearties.

A lucrative and dynamic sector that is developing in markets across the world will remain uncharted waters as far as local strategic development is concerned.

Beyond the nautical references, Ammo Talwar from Punch has a serious point to make in his Birmingham Post column.

I went along to see:

• what kinds of issues are being discussed
• how the artistic/cultural/wider creative interests of the city are being represented

As far as the issues being discussed are concerned, things seem to still be at an early stage. The main topic of discussion was what we might want a LEP to be responsible for and the responses were fairly wide-ranging. Bear in mind that the deadline for proposals to government is a month away and that other large areas around the country have already come to agreement and are settled and you start to get the picture.

From my position as a lay person in all of this, there seemed to have been two widely held opinions from the business folk in the room – we need to get on and do something fast and the local political infighting needs to stop.

The latter was put rather more strongly by some, but you didn’t sit through a two hour meeting in which that was the only light relief, so I’m keeping the exact phrases to myself. Next week I’m going to go to a nice exhibition or something and report back on that.

As for creative industries representation, a rough headcount revealed six of us – Lee and Rachel from Fullrange, Julia from Aquila, Lorraine from Weave Marketing and Creative Republic, a lady from Toye Kenning & Spencer (I can’t find her name just now) and myself. There may well have been others.

I also clocked Anne O’Meara who deserves a mention. She’s a fantastically experienced property/regeneration lawyer (and my one-time boss, as it goes) who also chairs the CBSO and has been named by Arts & Business as a Midlands Cultural Champion. She was there too and a good reminder that there are some people on the business/financial side of town that are committed to the arts/culture cause too.

You may have heard of the government’s plans for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs):

joint local authority-business bodies brought forward by local authorities themselves to promote local economic development – to replace Regional Development Agencies (RDAs)

Marc Reeves has written an amusing summary of the situation in the West Midlands. Or it would be amusing if this stuff wasn’t quite so important. Essentially it’s all a bit of a mess. Here’s the substantial bit:

Business VoiceWM, 17 Chambers of Commerce and their affiliates, IoD, CBI, the EEF, FSB, the Noddy Club, and Kingswinford Lions have joined with 65 other business organisations to each separately make several statements about how united they all are about Doing Something Serious for the West Midlands. Unfortunately, none of them quite knows what that is.

Marc suggests we compare and contrast this with the harmonious situation in Leeds. Manchester seem to be doing pretty well too. If you want more detail then David Bailey in the Birmingham Post has been worth a read on this subject recently. Follow The Business Desk (WM) too.

There’s a worry going round that businesses aren’t sufficiently involved in the discussions around what might/might not come out of all this. I’d bet that creative industries businesses/freelancers are even less involved. It’s important to have a voice in the discussions though, especially given the amount of funding/investment funnelled into the industry and the extent of the cuts predicted.

So people should get involved. There are a few questions though:

• with the current level of uncertainty, who are the people we should be speaking to?
• how should businesses/people get involved?
• who’s getting involved on whose behalf?

Answers on a postcard…

UPDATE

There’s some great comments below. Additionally, Dave Harte has written a stat-stuffed companion piece.