Kicking off our #CreativeEconomy Networks day in Stour Space hosted by @CreativeWick and in partnership with @NetworkCentre, @QMUL, @ahrcpress and @brBritish with a welcome from Will Chamberlain focusing on local creative initiatives and interOlympic exchanges with Brazil
Tim Clement-Jones, Chair of Council @QMUL, reflects that until recently the contribution of the creative industries to the UK economy has been underestimated but this is starting to change, with @ahrcpress funding research to build a crucial evidence base & build new employment
And we’re into our first panel focusing on #CreativeEconomy Networks, with Martin Dowle of @brBritish, Morag Shiach of @NetworkCentre and our very own Paul Heritage of @QMULsed.
now @MoragShiach introduces @NetworkCentre’s role to bring together @QMUL’s research on, with and for the #CreativeEconomy as well as being a door into the knowledge exchange expertise there.
The UK’s Industrial Strategy is notable for the way it identifies the important role of the #CreativeEconomy and AHRC is fostering collaboration and partnerships between small creative SME’s and research organisations.
... and @NetworkCentre has begun to develop a voucher scheme to stimulate partnerships between researchers and small and micro creative enterprises.
Now @MJDowle of @brBritish welcomes the international gathering and notes the important contribution of the @NewtonFund to #CreativeEconomy projects between Brazil & the UK. There is huge potential to raise its 2.6% estimated economic contribution in Brazil, stimulate employment
Giant agrobusiness can never crack the difficult issue of underemployment, subemployment, lack of formal economic structures that affects so many young people in urban peripheries in Brazil. And the need for entrepreneurial amd management skills is common to both countries.
Paul Heritage reflects on the power of partnerships - we are better together when we also retain our differences - let’s use today to explore who we are & who we *can be* together. Partnerships require working thru difficult bits, sensitivity to unequally balanced relationships.
And partnerships that make impact are not made in hermetic spaces where everyone already agrees with each other. We need to understand how to work with people who we may not feel comfortable with. @NewtonFund partnerships are helpfully forcing the academic sector to be braver.
And @MoragShiach introduces the next 3 speakers: artist and printmaker @aidawilde, Michael Trew of Paper Shake, jewellery designer Emma Ware and Charles Siqueira of Rio Film School.
Aida reflects on the way trust and respect built up among what felt like an outsider artist community in the early days she was working in Hackney Wick. Exchanges between artists, informal-economy transactions, and friends helping each other out by sharing their resources.
Aida Wilde reflects on the value of friendship, when the relationships built on trust and respect among what felt like an outsider artist community in the early days of Hackney Wick generate exchanges, sharing resources and skills, that allow artists to grow and develop practice
Sharing of resources and help enabled Aida to deliver a community project on £100 worth of resources. Lots of emotion around the rising rents that are forcing out members of the local creative community - Aida has been memorializing Fish Island’s recent creative history
And she asks, How can we value the contributions of artists to the community?
Now here’s Michael Trew with a bag of seeds ... and a paper sculpture asking us to reflect on what conditions we need to insist on for creativity to grow.
A series of magical events brought him into the creative community of Stour Space - & to his first series of commissions. It was a creative ecosystem. In a diff studio, working by himself with no creative community, he didn’t flourish in the same way. So he’s back @CreativeWick
Emma Ware emmaware.co.uk left a soul-destroying career 10y ago for a better life of creativity - which comes from having fun in a community of like minds. It’s difficult to trust that those setting up a Creative Enterprise Zone really understand the importance of this.
Life and work isn’t separate - the individuals in this community have been able 2 realise what life is about. There is a gulf betwn the community that’s sprung up in the temporary spaces here and the culture of developers. Can it be bridged? What can be saved before it’s crushed?
Now Charles Siqueira of Rio Film School introduces the @brBritish @NewtonFund institutional skills collaboration which has fostered an exchange of young people from peripheral communities, coming to a culmination this week with this exchange trip.
3,000 applications were whittled down to 165 places on a course that built skills, market understanding & networks, & focused on the desires & motivations of the young people themselves. The resulting short films will be screened at 8.30pm tonight at Stour Space.@CreativeWick
There’s an enormous level of desire in Rio for work in the #CreativeEconomy of film and media. Charles asks us to focus on how to bring resources into favela communities & begin to build more coherent structures of opportunity that overcome the severe social fragmentation
It’s so important to make good on the promise of the Olympics to young people. We need to begin multiplying these opportunities out into their communities by training up film/media collectives that are already rooted there.
Now we have questions from the floor. Vanessa from @sebrae asks how Michael and Charles can share their learning and skills through videoconferencing, publications, etc?
For Charles it’s important to maintain the focus of the project: to transform the desire of these 165 individual young people, through training, into a foothold in the film industry.
Another question about perceptions of value - & the frustration that results when those perceptions don’t marry up, when what’s of value to you is disregarded or not understood. Who should be responsible for bringing these perceptions of value together?
Alex, from Rio Film School, reflects on the value of the course’s contribution to self-esteem among the participants.
Now Paul Heritage introduces the next panel chair, @LeandroValiati - a friendly economist from @ufrgsnoticias @neccult - to help us reflect on those important questions of how we value creative work. Leandro is joining @QMULsed as Visiting Professor in Cultural Economy.
Leandro asks: How do we create a real partnership between the University sector and small #CreativeEconomy organisations/entrepreneurs? Here to reflect with us; Nick Bryan-Kinns, running @QMUL’s Media Arts Technology #research centre and trying to understand innovation and value
Nick reflects that “regeneration” in Hackney Wick is not necessarily creating or preserving spaces the UN would recognise as allowing the #CreativeEconomy to flourish. There is an important role for researchers to challenge
Nick introduces “Diagonal Thinking” as a vital generator of innovation.
Media Arts Technology’s project wwe.wearsustain.eu looks at the sustainability & ethics of wearable technology, building a network of 1100 artists and technologies across Europe engaged with this question.
For instance, closed loop recycling: how can smart garments be built to be fully recyclable, within the processes of the fashion industry? Can a local tailor’s shop provide custom-made wearable tech? And the Mi.mu project with musician @imogenheap
The network alone is not enough - it also relies on having physical spaces where people can meet each other, talk, allow inspiration to strike.
Now Nick talks about the Kaleidoscope project - the invention of a 2-player musical instrument and how they explored routes to market.
And a project bringing together traditional Chinese handcrafts, storytelling and music with tech. From “Diagonal Thinking” to “Diagonal Doing” through collaboration.
Becky Stewart works alongside Nick in @QMUL Media Arts & Technology as a lecturer in Digital Media, researching wearable tech for the performing arts ... and “fighting to keep the weird” within the HE sector.
Becky talks anout collaborating with choreographer Dr Kate Sicchio and others to create costumes that give dancers live haptic feedback during their performance
She’s also collaborating with the fab @iamzuuk on “Good Night Sleep Tight”, an immersive experience recalling a childhood bedtime.
Becky works a lot @QMUL with 3D audio - binaural technology that gives sound the feeling of being placed in space. Exploring what are the aesthetics of distance, and how can we best direct them for theatre?
We’re now hearing from Noam Shemtov, @QMUL Senior lecturer in IP and Technology Law, who’s reflecting on the highly specialist advice that creative enrepreneurs need even at very early stages of developing an idea
How can creatives protect their trade secrets at initial meetings with partners? asks Noam. IP lawyers can help advise.
In the case of @Beatwoven, Noam advised on copyright, and on wording to describe the product that would avoid causing unnecessary legal problems - such as the legal implications of the word “translation”.
Becky is asked whether the experiments she’s been involved in have reached the market? Yes, she says - all have been seen by public audiences, in many cases, paying. She notes the importance of their PhD students understanding and developing an entrepreneurial spirit.
And Clelio dePaula of WeSense asks the panel for predictions of future trends; and how the relationship works between small creative enterprises and the kind of development lab within a University that we’ve been hearing about?
Nick says future trends will revolve around VR and wearables. There’s a problem that the computer game industry is a very mature market - it’s important that we don’t simply look at how existing gaming experiences can be recreated and made more itense by means of a headset ...
... we need to be exploring the massive potential of this tech, such as the way it can create dreamlike states, recall childhood experiences ... That’s why funded students, with time to explore the possibilities, are so crucial to innovation in this field.
Becky adds examples of the ways commercial developers have incorporated user- and researcher-generated hacks in newer versions of their products. Once the desire for this functionality is established, they see its value.
Closing reflections: the value of the University as a space for meetings and cross-fertilisation: “Quality of life” as the key to understanding yhe #CreativeEconomy: and “Making weird things”.
And we pause our tweeting for some lunch and #CreativeEconomy networking.
Well, that was delicious - thank you @CreativeWick for remembering to nourish our bodies as well as our minds! And we’re into the afternoon session of this #CreativeEconomy Networks conference gathering with @brBritish, @NetworkCentre and our international audience.
Introduced by Diana Daste from @brBritish, our first session of the afternoon is focusing on that critical aspect of the #CreativeEconomy: Routes to Market.
And first up is Professor Davi Nakano, researcher from @usponline, who’s been studying both growth and concentration in the digital economy. In recent years, traffic has concentrated around the top 5 platforms, and the big digital players have moved to buy out top-15 platforms
The competition in this marketplace is therefore very, very touch. How can a new entrant compete - even if they come in with a unique idea?
This market is characterised by: • few producers (concentration)
• consolidation around few (one?!) platforms. And it requires resilience and the ability to survive repeated failures before eventually a product succeeds. Angry Birds was the 51st app by its producers.
• consolidation around few (one?!) platforms. And it requires resilience and the ability to survive repeated failures before eventually a product succeeds. Angry Birds was the 51st app by its producers.
A strong market may have mass appeal; or it may be very well adapted to a strongly loyal niche audience.
Now Davi Nakano is describing characteristics of the Brazilian gaming and audio-visual industry. It’s highly dependent on the “three F’s” for funding ... Family, Friends and Fools. This means it’s not well adapted to the real market. And people guard their ideas jealously ...
Which inhibits collaboration. So following his research, he has made a number of policy recommendations to govt. to try to raise the contribution of the sector to Brazil’s GDP.
Our next speaker is Polly Noel-Storr, from Not On The High Street, the curated platform most of whose successful partners (designer-makers, sellers, etc) say they started their business as a lifestyle choice rather than with the intention of making profit.
The platform not only provides centralised services such as the website, sales platform and marketing: it also offers things like spaces for networking where partners talk about ideas and develop their inspirations.
For designer-makers, routes to market and trade fluctuations can be really tricky. At this scale, most don’t hold stock. What if you get a massive order that takes 4-6 months to handmake the stock for ... where is your dreaming time for the next idea?
One thing @notonthehighst emables for designer-makers is a very small scale, low risk market test: they can make one or three of a new product and see how readily it sells.
The advantages of @notonthehighst for designer-manufacturers (who use manufacturing processes to produce products in larger volumes) centre on the way they can benefit from the platform’s marketing power while having control over how their own product is marketed.
Polly is chased off the stage by a cat (not really) and is followed by Pedro Affonso from Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy with this fabulous SWOT analysis of the Brazilian #CreativeEconomy: 
The typical entrepreneur they focus on lacks the time, money and skills to develop a business plan or a business model. What if we didn’t have to write a long plan, though, but developed understanding and market intelligence iteratively, thru discussion with potential buyers?
These kinds of new approaches can help open up markets to non traditional entrepreneurs.
To help these entrepreneurs develop their access to the market, Pedro suggests they should “treat your whole neighbourhood as your shop” - working your local networks. And develop your digital literacy so you’re more likely to be able to be in the right place at the right time.
There are a larger issues here too, though - fragility of digital infrastructure; and lack of access to capital, when investors aren’t confident of being repaid. Intermediary organisations need to work harder to bring investors to the market. Also, copyright registration ...
Pedro tells a brilliant anecdote about an invention that recently made it through Brazil’s patent registration system after 10 years. It’s an advance in videotape technology. So when the market is moving faster than the patent and copyright infrastructure, innovation chokes ...
... and is more vulnerable to piracy.
Pedro finishes with a call for entrepreneurs in the #CreativeEconomy, to collaborate; and to institutions, to support networks and the right kinds of infrastructure.
And to all of us to think strategically about new initiatives; to respect the characteristics of existing networks that support creative entrepreneurs; and to build a warm atmosphere of trust.
A perfect entrée to Diana Daste’s presentation of @brBritish’s new #CreativeEconomy initiative and the launch of their new publication, ‘The Brazilian Creative Economy’, downloadable from britishcouncil.org.br
The next panel has a very special focus: the particular value to the #CreativeEconomy of the world’s indigenous cultures. Julia Cort of @HornimanMuseum is chairing and introduces her first panellist, Yamalui Kuikuro, from the Xingu region of Brazil.
The #Kuikuro have initiated a partnership with People’s Palace Projects which has raised funding from @ahrcpress through the @NewtonFund and Global Challenges Research Fund to build a residency centre in the Ipatse village and begin an exchange programme ...
... building wider appreciation of their culture as well as bringing an income stream to the village. As Paul Heritage talks about the fact that many of the Xingu’s inhabitants have retained first-millenial characteristics in their culture, we see an image of a smartphone ...
and we’re discussing how we can better understand how to make connections with small, delicate cultural ecosystems and the rest of the world without destroying the very characteristics that have preserved them.
The Xingu reserve area was set up, indeed, to give indigenous people control over their own pace of cultural adaptation. Rather than ecotourism, the Kuikuro are clear they want to make a relationship through cultural exchanges that enrich and spread their culture.
PPP and the Kuikuro invited the extraordinary @FactumArte @FactumFound to be the first artists in residence - you can see more of this project om Sunday 6th May at @TateExchange. And we invited Leandro Valiati and his team to come along and help us reflect on *value*.
We asked the economists to help us devise a way of measuring value within a society which doesn’t transact money, internally; only in its relations with the outside world.
Leandro outlines the scale of this back to basics economic challenge - trying to find non financial indicators for the value of a cultural exchange. After all, what is economics as a discipline fundamentally about? Wellbeing, he says.
Assuming that the value of exchange can be expressed in economic terms, therefore, how would we go about capturing it?
At their heart, cultural exchanges have the same characteristics as economic transactions: journeys, meetings, routes, and exchange.
And the economic agents in the Kuikuro community don’t need money to produce value through their economic activity within the sphere of their village and their network of social relationships.
Every one of the specialised creative products available in the marketplace of the billahe - oars, clubs, stools, cloths, beadwork, baskets - occupies its own niche in the market; and responds to laws of supply and demand.
And while they may never be bought, each item adds its value to the cultural stock of the village.
Apologies for a break in our live tweet feed for technical reasons, and we're back. Missed some interesting stuff which I hope some others here and following the thread can summarize!
Yamalui has been reflecting back that many among the Kuikuro community were initially concerned about the potential impact it would have to introduce artistic and academic visitors - but the experience didn't pan out that way at all. The exchanges added real positive value.
Our next chair is Rebecca Shoesmith of @brBritish Creative Economy team East Asia @UK_CE. She introduces @cleliodpaula of WeSense, a creative coder from Brazil who designs, develops, builds, remixes and launches immersive experiences using new technologies.
Clelio shows us a prediction by Nikola Tesla in 1909 that "soon" individuals would be able to send messages using wireless technologies. And here we are! Welcome to the future
... where we have digital, AI, and virtual reality personal assistants. And what about 7 years from now? What should we be watching? Holograms and holographic presence - potential uses not only for communication and conversation, but also for creating memorials to individuals
... and for preserving cultures through volumetric videos.
Next up: avatars; and photogrammetry. Both of these have exciting potentials for application in environments for collective experiences such as museums.
Next, Rebecca introduces Erica Campanha from Estudio E Design for Education, Sao Paulo, who grew up in the peripheral community of Jardim Angela and who at Estudio E has won a series of competitions in design. designparaeducacao.com.br
Her neighbourhood was at one time identified as one of the most violent in the world, and with one of the highest rates of mortality through violence in Sao Paulo. Here Projeto Colmeia (Project Beehive) was born, in 2009.
Erica talks powerfully about the lack of economic opportunity making its way to communities on the periphery of major cities like Sao Paulo - even when initiatives are set up especially to address these communities.
Now Leandro Carvalho is speaking - he's a former Secretary of State for Culture of Mato Grosso - the state in which the Kuikuro live, in the Xingu. Instituto TIM, a project of one of Brazil's major mobile phone companies, developed a new tech to help the Secretariat build data
... about cultural production, called Mapa Culturais. The project was developed by TIM, taking in social networking data as well as inputs from cultural organisations about events etc.,, and became a partnership with Brazil's Ministry of Culture on a national level.
Leandro Carvalho ends with a beautiful video about artistic exchanges: and now we hear from @helenleigh, children's author, who's talking about how technology impacts communities - and how communities impact technology.
Helen learned all of her technical knowledge and skills in the community - taught by her peers and from the internet, teaching herself to code through w3schools.com. She reflects that genius doesn't usually arise in isolation, but inside likeminded communities.
These communities of interest can cohere on the internet without the need for geographical proximity - but what's really special is when that community of interest does come together in a geographical place, such as a makerspace.
Helen reflects on the immense power in this coming-together of a community in a space (even as it brings gentrification in its wake). And she warns that we must create technologies WITH communities, not FOR them, or both the technology and the community will fail.
Rebecca throws a challenge to the panel about how best to engage communities with technology? Erica insists that a digital technology or offering must have benefits in the real world to persuade communities to adopt it.
Clelio reflects on the fact that new technologies can be both disempowering - if you don't possess the hardware - and enabling - in allowing us to make a permanent record of a culture that only a tiny minority knows.
He had to adapt his work recording performance to a totally different dynamic in Kuikuro culture - for example, dance happens not on a stage to an audience, but in a circle and is performed to other participants in the dance.
Our final conversation of the day, chaired by Tarek Virani of @NetworkCentre with Mhora Samuel of @LDN_Culture and Will Chamberlain of @CreativeWick, is on a hotspot of today's discussion: Creative Enterprise Zones. and the development & regeneration of London's East End.
Will moved to Hackney Wick in 2008 to find one of the most concentrated & numerous communities of artists in the world - at clear risk of displacement from the regeneration following the 2012 London Olympic Games. @CreativeWick aims "to prove that creativity makes places better"
It's probably true that there are fewer artists living here than there were - but it's also true that there's a great deal of affordable workspace coming though as part of the Creative Enterprise Zones programme.
The opportunity: if we can found a sustainable creative community here among the desirable real estate of Hackney Wick as part of the Creative Enterprise Zone, then we've achieved a model that can succeed anywhere amid the same challenges that we're hearing are present worldwide.
Mhora Samuel talks about the research commissioned by the @MayorofLondon 's office in Tottenham, which identified 4 key elements: 1) community, and that means both artistic community and local community, because local young people need routes into the creative sector to be open
2) supply of workspace - if there's lack of supply, workspace tends to become affordable. This can be ameliorated through policy: Planning, & how support for #CreativeEconomy affordable workspaces is embedded in the Local Plan; Business Rates policy; and broadband distribution.
So 3) in the list of essentials was identified as Policy. And 4) was training and skills. All of these 4 things have to be in balance in order for a creative cluster to thrive. So, creative clusters can't just be led by one individual or group, it needs a consortium approach.
Will talks about the consortium here in Fish Island, the 4 organisations that have incorporated as a Community Development Trust to hold affordable workspace here in perpetuity. It's a collaboration between @CreativeWick, @YardTheatre and 2 others that will be a pathfinder.
The new agreements are bringing in tenancies of up to 7 years, at this stage; bringing the capacity to experiment in a certain degree of security.
@manick62 notes that we may be discussing 3-, 5- or 7- year leases but how can we try to extend that conversation to talk about 25-year leases? Is the policy conversation including the potential for artists to own the properties, as well as renting?
Mhora Samuel agrees that this is a real issue, and one of the things the Creative Enterprise Zones are trying to address. In new sites, we're looking for conditions to be achieved within the context of new developments to give long term protection for creative uses.
This is a matter for strong local policy support; but we're also developing policy measures to strengthen and support this within the London Plan.
Tarek notes the unbalanced nature of consortia with developers as members: and asks whether it's possible to strengthen Section 106 provisions so that they become unassailable? Mhora answers that this is very much within the aims of the Creative Enterprise Zones programme.
Mhora: Success will come through developing a common vision and long term strategy.
Now a question from @marcusfaustini about the power of public policy to create and direct creative projects. He's familiar with local examples from Rio where the policy context is responding to challenges that are years out of date.
Mhora agrees: public policy often takes longer than you imagine, and changes of leadership can speed things up. slow things down or even derail them. She adds that public policy can initiate change, but it's not necessarily responsible for keeping initiatives going forever.
That sustainability comes from the consortium, and the governance has to be set up with a genuine long term vision, says Mhora.
Pedro Affonso, our earlier speaker from Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy, asks how the Creative Enterprise Zones are planning to forestall some of the problems of displacement of the local community through the development of the creative cluster?
Mhora Samuel talks about how the Creative Enterprise Zones aim not only to ameliorate existing problems in inner London boroughs but also to support the development of new models that include long term sustainability for creative clusters, for instance in Thamesmead.
And Will Chamberlain adds that as well as threats, gentrification brings some benefits - such as new, interesting and highly skilled members of the community. often with creative businesses closer to the mainstream, but who are "early adopters".
Another questioner asks: Are there ways in which we can design the implementation of the Creative Enterprise Zones so that they work with and protect the existing grassroots infrastructure, rather than tearing it up and then trying to create something that looks the same?
Mhora observes that every community experiences change - so, the consortia that lead CEZ's need to design in the ways that they manage that change for the better. And the stronger the consortium is, the louder it represents the voices of the grassroots.
Will adds context to this question: under the CEZ procurement rules, the local bodies can't apply to be lead agencies. So there is this curious waiting period while they wait to be approached by potential applicants and wonder who they will be. It's a nervous time.
... but in general, there's a sense of optimism as we reach the end of a day of high-quality contributions. Thanks to all our speakers, session chairs, tech & translation support, and of course the partners & funders @Ahrcpress, @brbritish, @Newtonfund and @NetworkCentre @QMUL.
If you're in the Fish Island area, please join us at Stour Space at 8.30pm for the presentation of Rio Film School's films from their @Brbritish Institutional Skills project. If not, we'll see you tomorrow for our second day of #CreativeEconomy Networks debate. Bye-bye for now!
*village* - obviously
