I almost tacked this question onto the end of the double dip thread but didn’t want to hijack.

I’ve been invited to a Creative Industry Seminar next month. The question being asked is how do we encourage growth in this industry? Don’t normally attend these things, also don’t normally talk politics on here so be gentle!

On the assumption there are a fair few creative folks on this forum, I wondered if anyone had anything to suggest or recommend (so I’ve got some idea of what to say and don’t sit their like a plum!)?

According to the condems cut all the funding.

It’s not really growth if it’s funded though.

TandemJeremy cuts are a given but there will still be some funding, guess the question is what would you do with it?

Creative industry as in …. ? Exactly what?

If you are creating something, and that has value, then ‘growth’ should be a given?

Or maybe you need a bigger ‘marketing’ budget…. 🙄

I would have thought the ‘Creative’ types shouldn’t need to ask others

chewkw TV/Radio/Print/Magazine production, Web designers, Freelancer photographers, etc. etc. Media types, Marketing, Advertising etc. etc.

Does that help?

Yes, but what do you actually do?

crikey well building and running this forum would count as something, as would producing the Singletrack magazine?

uilding and running this forum

That’s more systems admin and webdevelopers, not really creative media stuff.

give them tax relief so they can employ more eastern Europeans.

You best bet now is to export your creative wacky funky ideas to richer nations or nations with plenty of loaded people like China to get some money back. They want quality sophistication at rock bottom price so you need to do that otherwise life will be tough from now on for your industry.

Bear in mind, they are now trying to be decadent so your best option is to sell the style or culture of creativity, for example, ways of saying things in media, ads in the slightly sophisticated provocative style, web designs that will bring in some cash for them yet presenting their views … etc but in their language.

This is the creative industry’s turn to do the good since bloody finance industry has screwed everyone.

Since you are merely in the supporting industry you need to know that there is no much budget left locally or in the local economy for your activities as the basic industry is dying.

Only way out … export your creativity!

🙂

TheBrick yeah I guess, but the idea for having a forum based on a magazine and the on going money to keep it running then. But I reckon web developers are more part of the creative industry than they are IT. Definitely the front end guys, usual have design backgrounds.

Get them to lay off the gak ?

Regardless of whether you need a creative director or web designer you are going to face a tough time as supporting industry, as it is usually your industry that gets the cuts first in a down turn. A luxury that not many can afford.

web developers are just nerds.
creativity to them is deciding to add cheese to their pot noodle.

Erm, just be creative and make something up!

OK in summary ideas for growth so far:

[list]
[*]Get bigger marketing budgets.[/*]
[*]Employ more immigrants.[/*]
[*]Export more … mostly to China[/*]
[*]Stop taking drugs.[/*]
[*]You’re the ideas people you figure it out![/*]
[/list]

Good stuff! Thanks guys 🙂

Creative Industries isn’t particularly wll defined but includes anything from cottage craft industries to computer games design and bundles in between.

Try looking at what Arts Council England and Creative Scotland have to say on the subject for a couple of perspectives.

And yet the world somehow manages to carry on without their valuable contributions…I’m not saying that what ‘creative’ types do is worthless…..oh, yeah I am.

Something possibly helpful here – as many creative businesses are small/SME how about helping support the employers so they can invest in new talent and invest time in exploring new technologies and business ideas (ie, funding for innovative web ideas such as Facebook/twitter type of concepts (but not copies of those obviously – just using them as examples of new ideas using existing technologies).

And yet the world somehow manages to carry on without their valuable contributions…I’m not saying that what ‘creative’ types do is worthless…..oh, yeah I am.

but the creatives help sell the really boring shite that you make or want to sell.

Creatives make tins of value baked beans look appealing.

They could start building the B ark.

invest massively in promoting the unsung heroes of cottage industries up and down the country..

bring into the public eye by means of the good old fashioned Grand Exhibition.. the tens of thousands of craftspeople.. artisans and hobbyists that have little or no outlet for their talent and creativity.. and certainly not enough financial reward..

These people could inject a much needed anti-venom of culture and integrity back into the industries that you mentioned above..

yunki I like you’re style on the grand exhibition!

gothandy – your seminar isn’t in Notts is it by any chance?

The creative/media industry has a symbiotic relationship with the larger economy. It gets bigger as more is spent on advertising. Work shrinks as budgets are cut.

Your question is a bit broad really. What can be done by who? The government?

And yet the world somehow manages to carry on without their valuable contributions…I’m not saying that what ‘creative’ types do is worthless…..oh, yeah I am.

Umm… aren’t creative industries one of the few remaining strong exports that we have? You would be happy to live in a world without ‘creative’ types? 😕

made in Guildford by hmmm ?

Personally speaking exporting more to China and India is pretty much killing my line of work (animator) substantial proportion of the actual artwork side of making series, e.c.t, all goes off to India and China thus very little work for people here. I would be happy getting paid a pretty basic wage but even that still can’t match production cost that overseas can offer.

I would say we need to keep things more in this country thus giving people a chance to work in this industry. We have some of the best art colleges in the world but have very little for people to go into from there.

In the film industry we need more tighter regulations as people get really exploited because no one wants to cause a fuss as there are so few jobs that you have to be grateful for working. There are some real horror stories I could tell but won’t for diplomatic reasons. (you never know who might be reading this!)

We need a Government that recognises the value of art and how it can help and inspire people to better things. I have personal experience of the benefits it can have to people, especially young people, through working as an arts worker. Having swapped my emphases to this a while ago (to find most of the funding for this type of thing has gone and thus the work). Sadly we have a government that cares very little about this and would rather tackle problems in a reactionary way.

That was a polite sum up of my feelings.

Maybe, as this thread shows, we could start by doing some PR on ourselves around what the word ‘creative’ actually means.

For example, many people conflate ‘creativity’ with ‘wackiness’ or ‘funkiness’.

Whereas, in fact, it’s often the opposite, like doing a lot of research and business analysis to improve a back-end process which, in turn, enables a successful user experience at the front-end (to use an example from the area of design I work in).

When you say ‘Creative’ types, I think you actually mean ‘communicators’, like writers, graphic designers, interaction designers, etc. (It’s important to say what type of designer, because ‘designer’ on its own is more or less meaningless.) Communication is usually about problem solving, and there are established, proven, reliable and repeatable processes to solve problems. Selling that might be more successful than selling airy-fairy notions of ‘creativity’, with its overtones of unpredictability, unreliability and risk.

Something along those lines, maybe?

For starters, read this report

Then read up on the role of cities, proximity and knowledge production.

Then have a look at the ways in which creative centres are linked together and the role of trade fairs/expos.

Speak to people in the industry about the constraints to doing business, and what catalysts help them develop/grow.

You might also want to review successful examples of policy intervention.

It is worth noting the creative industries grew at twice the rate of the rest of economy upto the recession.

Industry doesn’t need more creative types; there are enough of them already swanning around in their black clothes drinking coffee.

Industry needs people with a solid grounding in engineering, which is creative but not at all glamorous.

From my very limited experience (having only graduated uni last July and trying to work self-employed in web design, video production, animation/motion graphics etc) people do want the “creative” stuff, but due to the price of everything else increasing (tax and that) they just can’t afford to put enough money in for anything worthwhile. Even with me undercutting most of the competition, there’s not a lot of small businesses that can afford a nice website, promotional material etc. Can’t speak for any medium-large businesses though as I’ve only done work for one of those!

Better/more use of ROI modelling.

Industry doesn’t need more creative types; there are enough of them already swanning around in their black clothes drinking coffee.

Industry needs people with a solid grounding in engineering, which is creative but not at all glamorous.

the industry doesn’t need any more engineering types there are plenty of engineers swanning around in millets action trousers and christmas jumpers drinking cheap tasteless lager.

The NWRDA (remember them?) did an initiative a couple of years back called Creative Credits. It was the fag-end of New Labour and typified that aproach. Lets chuck some money at the problem!

The theory was a good one. It was encouraging Manufacturing copanies to engage the services of local Creative Agencies. They would issue them with funding to do so. The idea was a sound one as the one over-riding criteria was that the funding had to ‘further develop the companies business’

So, for example you couldn’t say: “I want a flash new website that looks the cats nackers’

But you could say “We don’t have a facility to retail online from our present site’. Then you could get a creative agency to build you a full e-commerce website.

In theory a great idea. In practice, we went to the launch and were met witha load of overpaid suits eating canapes, drinking white wine in the Lowry Hotel (yes – the most expensive venue in Manchester!). They were all the (doubtless horrendously overpaid)heads of various Quango’s and proceeded to talk absolute Spaff for a couple of hours.

Despite being a city centre design agency and knowing a lot of people in the creative sector we don’t know anyone who successfully got funding. We do know however that the MWRDA spunked away £120 million of tax payers money. On what? Who knows? We certainly don’t. Though the salaries of the various gobshites in charge probably figured highly. And the canapes and white wine was probably repeated every lunchtime

If anything it only taught me that Dave was bang on when he abolished the Regional Development Agencies. Absolutely bloody useless!!!!