Creative Commissions in Balsall Heath

It’s been a busy few months in Balsall Heath with Arshad and our community commissioning panel members running organising different events.  Here are some of the highlights.

Back in June the first of the West Indian cultural group events took place, with an evening of music and conversation held at Balsall Heath’s Printworks.  Derek filmed bits of the evening’s activities, including this blues jam featuring Cornelius on bass:

Derek has been doing a lot of filming for the group and we roped him in to help with our second Poetic Transect.  He and Chris Jam have been out and about in Balsall Heath, talking to people about the neighbourhood, collecting stories and verse.  A new film will be online soon.

Meanwhile the new “Balsall Heath travel agency” has organised two major trips.  A few weeks ago the group took a couple of coaches down to London to give people a chance to visit the South Kensington Museums (and to disappear off to Hyde Park to go on the paddle boats in the Serpentine!).

The intercultural tour of the V&A looking at Islamic arts went down particularly well with group members exploring their heritage.

Last weekend Arshad & I had a day trip up to the Lake District to visit the group who were staying at the Priestley Centre near Coniston.  This was a women-and-children-only trip and was the first time in the Lake District for many of the group.

The Priestley Centre offers lots of outdoor activities and it was great seeing all the fun the kids were having swinging through the trees.  The group who went out on Lake Coniston in a canoe came back very enthused about the history of the area wanting to find out more about the Bluebird as well as visit Brandtwood, John Ruskin’s house overlooking the water.

In other news, the football tournament will be starting in a couple of weekends’ time. Naseem, who has been organising this, was showing off the newly arrived kit when we went to see him at his shop yesterday.

It’s been a really exciting time watching this all come together through the hard work and dedication of commissioning panel members.  And there’s still more activities to go over the next few months in Balsall Heath…

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New Book: Creative Economies, Creative Communities

Saskia and I were delighted last week to receive the first copies of our latest edited book, published by Ashgate.  Creative Economies, Creative Communities came out of a conference session that we organised at the Royal Geographical Society in August 2013 called ‘New Frontiers of connecting communities in the creative economy’ (we blogged about this at the time).

The subtitle of the book is ‘rethinking place, policy and practice’ and is our attempt to think through the way that space and place can have a major impact on the way that the creative economy is experienced and how communities can become engaged in creative practice.  As an edited collection it has contributors from a number of different fields, including professional practitioners from Birmingham City Council.  It also contains a piece by Cultural Intermediation’s very own Dave O’Brien looking at practices of participant-led evaluation within the Some Cities photography project, which was co-funded by CI as part of our pilot of community-led commissioning.

The full contents list and contributors is below.  It’s quite an expensive book to buy. but you can get in touch with the individual authors directly to see if they’ll supply you with a pre-publication version of their chapter.

Warren S & Jones P eds. (2015) Creative economies, creative communities: rethinking place, policy & practice.  Ashgate, Farnham

1. Introduction. Saskia Warren and Phil Jones

Section one: Creative Practice, Creating Communities

2. Producing people: the socio-materialities of African beadwork. Shari Daya

3. People, place and fish: Exploring the cultural ecosystem services of inshore fishing through photography. Tim G. Acott and Julie Urquhart

4. Evaluation, photography and intermediation: connecting Birmingham’s communities. Dave O’Brien

5. Creative place-making: where legal geography meets legal consciousness. Antonia Layard and Jane Milling

Section 2: Policy connections, creative practice

6. Bridging gaps and localising neighbourhood provision: reflections on cultural co-design and co-production. Ginnie Wollaston and Roxanna Collins

7. The everyday realities of digital provision and practice for rural creative economies. Liz Roberts and Leanne Townsend

8. Libraries and museums as breeding grounds of social capital and creativity: potential and challenges in the post-socialist context. Monika Murzyn-Kupisz and Jarek Działek

9. Cross Intermediation? Policy, creative industries and cultures across the EU. Paul Long and Steve Harding

10. Conclusion: the place of creative policy? Phil Jones and Saskia Warren

Guest post: Cultural Commissioning in Balsall Heath

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Balsall Heath, commissioning

Participants in Balsall Heath are currently developing their projects.  In this guest post two of our panel members, Fouzia and Tahira, reflect on their involvement with the project and what they would like to achieve.

We are part of a group panel, which consists of 14 females and one male participant. The ladies are from a diverse background with different levels of education and occupations. Being part of the cultural project has been a fascinating experience. We have gained more knowledge around this project, which has an impact on our professional development, ranging from what mobile interviews are and how they are conducted. In addition, we were able to gain insights from participants about their perceptions on being involved in the planning of cultural activities for the community.

This project has created opportunities for the participants to be involved in something new, different and far from what they have done before. Also, it has provided the opportunity for participants to develop new skills at all levels. The learners have learnt time management and note taking skills, as well as gaining confidence in using their English speaking skills amongst the group members. Moreover, this has provoked them to reflect on any previous and existing cultural activities they have taken part in and discussing the long term benefits such as keeping artefacts and photographs to show generations to come.

Amongst other exciting activities taking place, the Lake District is the most popular and inspirational as it involves an overnight stay without their spouses. Looking deeply into the insights of the participants reveals that neither of the group members have visited the Lake District. During this journey we are focussing to capture key elements of the visit taking place, via using disposable cameras, which will be provided for each individual.  The idea of sharing the photographs with friends, family and teachers could encourage the new coming generation to participate in similar activities.

We are interested in creating new opportunities for Asian women and understanding the obstacles which limit women of Balsall Heath to access different types of cultural activities.  This raises questions of whether this is due to any cultural barriers, which restrict Asian women from seeking and exploring cultural activities.

Fouzia Choudhry and Tahira Hussain

Community Commissioning in Balsall Heath

We had a fantastic meeting last night where the Balsall Heath community commissioning panel got together to consider proposals for arts and cultural projects in the neighbourhood and decide which to fund.

This meeting was the culmination of two months of running around by Arshad, who has been working closely with all the subgroups since the panel was formally brought together in early January, to help them take ideas and form them into deliverable projects. The main outcome of the meeting is that all of the projects proposed were approved by the panel (subject to some negotiation over details in one or two cases):

• Beginner’s pottery sessions in the Sun Dragon Studio
• West Indian debating society and events
• Football tournament and CV checking sessions for 16-22 year olds
• An oral history ten years on from the Balsall Heath tornado
• Museum visits in London, including the V&A
• Balsall Heath Heroes campaign
• Residential trip to the Lake District including photography and sculpture
• Balsall Eat food festival

Now that the projects and the budgets have been agreed, the next stage is for panel members to actually make these events happen. Some will be fairly straightforward, working with existing cultural intermediaries in Balsall Heath and Birmingham to deliver the projects, with panel members determining how the projects should run and who is targeted. Others will involve more work from the panel members to shape and organise the activities. The debating society is exceedingly exciting in this regard as panel members will be putting together their own schedule of talks and activities.

Of course this brings up lots of questions about new skills to be learned. None of the panel members who presented project proposals last night had ever done anything like this before – pitching their ideas to a group of people. The presenters did a great job and it was a really supportive environment, with lots of enthusiasm for the ideas, even where other panel members had questions about aspects of what was being proposed. As the projects develop there’ll be other new skills people will need to pick up such as organising publicity, managing a budget and thinking about how the projects’ success will be evaluated. This brings interesting comparisons to what Birmingham City Council have been doing in their cultural co-commissioning pilot where a lot of the energy of the intermediaries involved has been on upskilling the communities being worked with – the kind of work that organisations like Reel Access and individuals like Matt Daniels have been doing for years. It will be really interesting to compare our approaches as we go through this phase of the research.

It’s going to be a busy few months, but we’ve got a great team of people working on the projects, so I’m more excited than scared about how things are going to go.

Little moments of atmosphere

Although I’ve been working on culture-related projects for a few years now, I have always considered myself to be someone who hasn’t really drunk the koolaid of the creative economy.  For sure, there’s plenty of good stuff going on, but there’s a lot of nonsense too and a lot of people believing their own mythology.

Hence when Arshad and I went down to Digbeth for a meeting with Phil Hession yesterday I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but was prepared to be broadly cynical.  Phil is in Birmingham for a few short weeks with a residency based at Grand Union.  He’s built a splendidly Heath Robinson contraption which enables him to record audio onto CDs by etching them with a nail, much like cutting a groove on a record:

He’s been experimenting with this device, taking it out into Digbeth and recording ambient noises, snatches of stories and songs as well as some of his own singing.  Each CD contains about 2 minutes of recording and can be played back on a standard record player.  The playback sound is very like early wax cylinder recordings, lots of crackle and noise, space and atmosphere, all underpinned by the rhythmic cranking of the mechanical arm used to drive the cutting of the CD.

Phil sings very beautifully, demonstrating the process to Arshad and myself by making a recording of him singing in the studio space.

This is genuinely joyful stuff.  What struck me, however, was that this was almost the opposite of cultural intermediation.  Phil hadn’t really worked out what he wanted to do with the recordings or even, really, why he was doing them at all other than the fact that he could and that it was kinda cool.

He’s got a show coming up in Digbeth in early March.  Definitely worth checking out.

A big thank you to Saskia

A little over two years ago, when interviewing for the research fellow who would be working with me at Birmingham, I was pleased to remake the acquaintance of Dr Saskia Warren, who I’d first met as part of a conference session I co-organised with Harriet Hawkins at the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference in Seattle, 2011.  Saskia did an excellent presentation and interview really impressing the appointment panel and I was delighted to offer her a job.

At the time I thought I was simply hiring a good researcher, but it turned out that, more than this, I was hiring a truly excellent colleague who took hold of the cultural intermediation project and ran with it, taking it to places that I never expected it would go.  What’s been really impressive is the way that Saskia has delivered a huge amount of material for the project as well as keeping her own research work active, writing a papers, running a small grant on surrealism and organising multiple conference sessions an exhibitions.  I feel exhausted even thinking about how much she’s achieved in the last two years.

It was always clear that Saskia was going places and so it was no surprise to me that Manchester – one of the UK’s top geography departments – offered her a job earlier this year.  I feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to work with such a fantastic colleague and now, as she starts the next stage of her career, I just wanted to say a big thank you for all her work on the project and good luck with the new post.

Cowriting poetry and academia: an email exchange

From: Phil Jones
To: ChriSJaM
Sent: 15 September 2014 12:54
Subject: Writing, writing, writing

Hi Chris,

hope all is well. I’m about midway through writing something for one of the Royal Geographical Society’s journals, ‘Area’. They take relatively short pieces (~5000 words) and I was putting something together based on the poetic transect. I’ve written the theoretical set up thus far and am about to start talking about what we did and what we found out. I was hoping I might be able to use your newly minted poem responding to the Cardiff Bay stuff as part of the analysis section of the paper – the idea being that you’d be named as the co-author of the article when it finally appears.

I can send you what I’ve got so far, though it’s a bit rough around the edges and I don’t think I’ve explained the theory as clearly as I need to.

Let me know what you think.

P

———————

From: ChriS JaM
To: Phil Jones
Sent: 15 September 2014 12:58
Subject: Re: Writing, writing, writing

Hi Phil this sounds great.

You can def use poem etc, i will send you it in a while. I am just waiting for some advice on some Welsh words I have used in it and then I will record and amend the Vid.

Its taking way way longer than I wish won’t waffle as to why it just is. Almost nearly there.

Send your bits through and I will mail you the poem shortly and as I say there will be an audio verson and a version incorporated unto the vid.

Warmest warmness fine fella

——————

From: Phil Jones
To: ChriSJaM
Sent: 15 Sep 2014 13:21
Subject: Re: Writing, writing, writing

Here tis so far. Just read it back, dear god it’s dense stuff. Just to give you some context, the normal way I’d have to do an academic article would be:

• Introduction (what’s the problem, what’s the answer – neither of which I’ve really written into the intro yet)
• Theory (what’s the intellectual lineage underpinning your argument)
• Method (why did you do what you did)
• Case study (what you did)
• Analysis (why what you did tells us something interesting)
• Conclusion (the introduction again, but in more forthright tones)

So I’ve done most of the intro, theory and method sections, though they still need work and I need to write in some more stuff about arts-based methods. Thereafter it’s the case study/analysis that are the more fun and interesting bits. So far it’s at about 3000 of the 5000 word-limit, which is about right.

P

——————-

From: ChriSJaM
Sent: 18 September 2014 01:38
To: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: Writing, writing, writing

“Ellis et al. (2013) suggest that affective atmospheres are a means of unveilling the ‘less-than-conscious’ ” …..love that…much provoking stuff in their fine fettler….and in my own untrained opine v v well written…am just about to look up affect and see if much of what I intuitively am interpreting what I’ve read thus far chimes with what I find….but yeah love it…

——————-
From: ChriSJaM
To: Phil Jones
Sent: 18 September 2014 01:40
Subject: Re: Writing, writing, writing

“has argued that affective atmospheres disturb neat divisions between acting subjects and passive objects….” now this almost drowned me…almost I think I kinda 66% get it and 66 not so love to expound on this sometime

——————

From: Phil Jones
To: ChriSJaM
Sent: 18 Sep 2014 11.53
Subject: Re: Writing, writing, writing

{chuckles} academic language games. Fun, in a very closed-shop sort of way.

Dashing off to meet someone from cultural collections now, but will give you a potted version of the answer q later on today.

P

———————

From: Phil Jones
To: ChriSJaM
Sent: 20 Sep 2014 09:15
Subject: Re: Writing, writing, writing

Okay, so there’s us, walking, breathing, thinking people. We are ‘subjects’ in that we can actively take control of a situation based on decisions that we make.

Then there’s stuff, things, which we can describe as ‘objects’. A building, a pen, a landscape. They don’t actively take control of things, they have stuff done to them by acting subjects.

The thing is, there’s not a neat division between these two things. People can be treated as objects (e.g. objectifying women by treating them purely through their sexual value to men), things can ‘act’ to change how the world works (e.g. the stuff-like qualities of walls and bars in a prison makes people behave in certain ways, so the prison can be said to ‘act’ to change the behaviour of prisoners).

Taking the example in the paper of the sports stadium. Yes, people are the ones doing the shouting when a goal is scored, so they are the subjects. But at the same time, they’re only shouting because they’re in a situation which is stimulating them to behave in a certain way. And part of ‘creating a situation’ where that happens (which we can call the ‘conditions of possibility’) is the physical architecture of the stadium, the presence of other people, the actions of the players on the pitch, the rules of the game that govern the behaviour of the players, the presence of alcohol, testosterone etc. etc. etc. Some of those things can be called ‘objects’ (the alcohol, the stadium building, the grass of the pitch, the ball), some can be called ‘subjects’ (the fans, the players, the people controlling the music in the stadium, the security people), but in truth there’s a blurry relationship between objects and subjects because it’s about how they all come together in that particular moment.

So this is where atmosphere comes in. It’s the idea that when you get these gatherings of objects and subjects, there’s something that operates between them, to bring together the people, the place, the event, the music, the booze etc. to generate something shared. So you then get grown men and women screaming their lungs out when a goal is scored without that necessarily being the conscious choice of an acting subject – you cheer because the atmosphere demands it. Did the stadium make you do it? Was it the other fans? Was it the music? Was it the goal? The atmosphere makes the idea of acting subject and passive object much more blurry.

Is your head hurting yet? It’s probably an atmosphere… 😉

————

From: ChriSJaM
To: Phil Jones
Sent: 20 September 2014 16:31
Subject: Re: Writing, writing, writing

Not in the least dude…first thanks for taking the time…next it resonates with understandings from shall we say spiritual realms….I wont start waffling coz it not clear at the mo where what you have eloquaintly outlined is striking a chord with me…when it does shall mail you.

Bless bless blessings

—————–

From: ChriSJaM
To: Phil Jones
Sent: 20 September 2014 20:15
Subject: Re: Writing, writing, writing

Consciousness; levels of…..fequency vybration

The rate of matters viberation determines its level of consciousness

Matter Minerals Plants Animal Human Soul Spirit

Matter Minerals have fixed consciousness due to the relatively slow rate of vybration…..these rates are too slow for any type of self consciousness…

Plants are unique in that they display atributes of both fixed and mobile consciousness and some degree of self consciousness is present in some More sophisticated Plants – the more a thing vybrates the higher degree of both organisation and consciousness it can afford –

An example of the Plant paradigms mobile consciousness is thier ability to to spread seeds.

Animals consciousness is tottaly mobile however their levels of sophistication – capacity of actions; organisation and level of comprehension – lower than human not as a consequence of the rate of vibration of the sub atomic particles that constitute their body; Animal form can reach and in cases surpass the level of sophistication present in humans, rather the level of consciousness and comprehension is a result of rate of vibration of the Soul.

The Soul does not exist it is real…..what is unreal neva is, what is real neva is not.

Something that is real has is and will always be. And this is not bad description of the Soul. The Soul has neva been born and therefore cannot die. Things that are born, made or created are of this relative finite paradigm; which is but one of many.

All matter is subject to the laws of cause and effect and relativity. The Soul from its perspective – level of conscious comprehension – is not. From the perspective of the body the Souls encompass and the brain and mind that defines, projects, reflects thoughts and feelings based on its own internal self image, its appears that the Soul is Subject to the laws of relativity however this is misunderstanding the purpose of existence. Exsitence a paradigm of infinite relative possibility created by creAtion that it might experience in sense terms what it already knew itself to be. All of it Alpha Omega Akara Ukara Makara AuM. Not just all of the matter that was produced and is ever expanding and evolving consciousness through form. Also the consciouness itself, the Soul, the spirit, the ideations, the ideation and the just is beingnesss that constitites reality. All of it is real, any part of it is relatively real. As can and will exist for a predetermined sequence of moments and thrn will cease to be because it was: and never can be real. Their is from outside of this paradigms perspective where all is quantifyable measurable only only one Soul, however this souls unimaginable level of sophisticaton due to its beyond light speed rate of imdulatin afgords it the capability to create what is nest described as an illusion; the illusion of separate souls. This is not howevet delusion or the soul being duped by some darth vader type scenarion, rather an expression of the Souls deft artistry that it might in a sense divide and diversify itself in order to experience what it already – and has always and will always – know known knew. The purpose of the realm of relativity.

So from essence stepping down to spirit Souls appearance of Souls, Mind, Energy, information; in formatio, light gases, matter, the rate of viberstion descends in order to accomodate differing types of forms that all of it might experience all that it is as each part, parcel and particle is.

So at some level all these bits pf matter some level of consciousness; they have to that ultimately is all matters primary, fundamental comstitituate part – consciousness.

So in terms of affect and effect matter has lessening degrees of ability tp cause an affect that in turn eggects other things and or beings, due solely – Souly – to its rate of vibration.

So yes I concurr with that stuff coz in a sense all that matter made into chairs, stadium computers has been made to do that stuff, consciously though matter itself is not conscious of this

Connected Communities Festival, Cardiff 1-2 July 2014

One of the nice things about working on this project is learning new skills and experimenting with new ideas.  At the start of July quite a lot of the academic team (including myself, Beth, Saskia, Jess, Dave, Antonia) went down to Cardiff to take part in the AHRC’s Connected Communities Festival.

Of course a sentence like that brushes over the large amount of prep that that goes into an event like this.  Indeed, this was one of the biggest events the AHRC have run, so there was a lot of stress on their side.  We were just one of forty teams who were exhibiting, across a large number of venues, running break out sessions and arts events/interventions as part of this two day Festival.  Indeed, with meetings either side, the whole thing took up much of a week, so respect to the AHRC team for putting on such a slick event and thanks for their support in putting on our part of it.  As videos from the event have just been released, this seemed like a good opportunity to make a note about Cultural Intermediation’s presence in Cardiff.

Our contribution was threefold, we had a stand in the main conference centre, a break out session on the limits to co-construction and made an experimental short film with poet Chris Jam.  We started work earlier this year although we only got confirmation of funding in early May so it was then a bit of a mad scramble to get everything together in time.  The idea of the breakout session on the Limits of Co-Construction was to draw on the expertise of a group of ‘cultural intermediaries’ – people who, among other things, are the ‘how’ of cultural engagement – to highlight the key issues they faced in co-constructing projects.  Beth took the lead on organising this along with Andy Miles from the Understanding Everyday Participation project and we had some excellent invited participants (Stella Duffy, Gaily Skelly, Sandra Hall, Kevin O’Neil, Matt Daniels, Alison Surtees).  I’m not going to say too much about this as Beth is compiling some reflections about the session which we’ll hopefully have online soon, but a big thanks to everyone who took part in a really interesting set of discussions.  If you’d like to watch the video of the whole session, it’s available here:

We also had an exhibition stand – from my point of view this was quite a steep learning curve.  At last year’s Edinburgh Showcase I was mightily intimidated by the quality of stands from other people’s projects and so I was determined to put something more impressive together for Cultural Intermediation this year.  This of course means learning about graphic design and display printing as well as organising to put some of our research findings into a more user-friendly format for public-facing brochures and leaflets – links to all of these (in English and Welsh) can be found on the Outputs page.  It’s fascinating seeing your words transferred into a properly laid out brochure and even more interesting to see them translated into Welsh.  We also had the prototype of our touchtable app on show, which caused some sleepless nights – more thanks go to our programmer Aba-Sah for pulling out all the stops to deliver a prototype for us to take to Cardiff.  The AHRC’s multimedia team were buzzing around the different venues and recorded a short interview with myself and Beth at our stand, which you can watch here:

Last but not least Chris Jam spent the first day of the Festival wandering the streets of Cardiff persuading people to give him snatches of poetry and stories to make an artistic transect of the city.  This was one of those ideas that you have when in a playful mood and it’s great that the AHRC give us licence to try out different things.  Can poetry help you see the city differently?  We made a short film, editing overnight to show on the second day of the Festival.  Chris is, even as we speak, working on a slightly longer version from the miles of footage that he recorded with the help of Colin Lorne and Arshad Isakjee.  We’ll probably post a more considered reflection on this material at a later date, but in the meantime, here’s the recording of the session in which we presented the freshly minted film:

(Note that the AHRC’s team have unexpectedly promoted me to Professor!)

Overall, the Festival was quite a fun event and gave some space to take a step back from some of the things we’ve been working on over the last couple of years and to think a little more broadly about what we’ve achieved and where some of these debates are going.  So a big thanks to the AHRC for giving us the opportunity to reflect, debate and play.

Walking interview pilots

Just a quick posting.  We’ve started piloting walking interviews as part of the ‘communities’ work package, where we’re investigating how people living in Balsall Heath and Ordsall experience the creative economy within their neighbourhoods.  I’ve previously done work using walking interviews as part of investigating sense of place in Digbeth, but Balsall Heath poses some interestingly different challenges.  This is not the least because where Digbeth is primarily a working area with not many passers-by, Balsall Heath a has much more active streetlife during the daytime so, in a close knit community, researchers on the street can be highly visible leading to questions being asked as to who were the strangers seen walking around…

Paul and Saskia had already run one pilot when Saskia and I went out on Friday to talk to a second participant.  The weather was somewhat biblical, but our interviewee nonetheless was enthusiastic to show us around for 45 minutes in squally downpours.

Paul is also keen to try capturing GPS tracks of the walks and I recorded Friday’s on my phone.  I’ve anonymised this track as we need to get permission from participants before publishing.  As you can see, we didn’t walk terribly far, but spent quite a bit of time hanging around on street corners discussing various features in the landscape as my trainers slowly filled up with freezing rain water.  I think the participant was a lot hardier than me!

We’re going to meet shortly to think through the pilot walks and how we’re going to use this technique appropriately for the neighbourhood contexts we’re working in.  Hopefully we’ll report back on our thoughts about this soon.

Cultural Intermediation at the Royal Geographical Society #RGSIBG2013

Last week Karen, Paul, Saskia and I headed down to London to attend the annual meeting of the Royal Geographical Society (or Institute of British Geographers, depending on your taste/politics).  This is a regular bunfest held at the RGS headquarters in South Kensington, a rambling Victorian building which feels a little like a down-at-heel gentleman’s club (of the non-stripping kind!), located next door to the Royal Albert Hall.

RGS is quite a big conference, with several hundred sessions running in parallel across three days, which means you get to pick and choose the kinds of things that you’re interested in and build your own conference programme.  It’s a great opportunity to graze new ideas and meet scholars working in your area.  This can be fabulously eclectic – I saw papers looking at Peruvian gastronomy in Chile, car sharing schemes in Malta and ‘voguing’ as a tactic of resistance in LGBT Manchester among many others.

Karen gave a great paper co-written with Beth in a session on ‘Urban transformations and city living’.  In Cities at the Frontiers of 21st Century Britain: Greater Manchester and the ‘Original Modern’ Creative City they explored the contrasting approaches to the governance of culture seen in two Greater Manchester case studies: Manchester International Festival and Islington Mill.  I found it really fascinating to get into the nitty gritty of these case studies, particularly the close links to the Biospheric project, which is transforming a derelict mill in Salford into a space for urban farming.

Saskia and I organised a couple of sessions (which is to say, Saskia did all the organising and I basked in the reflected glory) under the title ‘New frontiers of connecting communities in the creative economy’.  Abstracts for both the sessions and the papers can be found here and here (sadly Bob Stone was unable to make it on the day due to unforseen circumstances).  There were too many papers to discuss them in detail here, so apologies to anyone not mentioned.  It was really exciting to have Ginnie Wollaston and Roxie Collins from Birmingham City Council coming down for the day to talk about the City’s cultural pilot and the local arts fora.  Our very own Paul Long gave a paper examining a pan-European project on cross innovation within the creative sector.  Lizzie Richardson developed some interesting theoretical ideas using Ranciere to examine how the co-constitution of art and community through a case study of Acta in Bristol.  Liz Roberts & Leanne Townsend made some really lovely observations about how there is an implicit city-bias to creative class discourses, when examining the resilience of the rural digital economy.  Best title of the session (if not the conference) went to Julie Urquhart’s People, Place & Fish, which used a mix of techniques – including some great photographic and arts-based methods – to explore inshore fishing and the culture/heritage of different northern European coastal areas.  Great stuff.

Saskia Warren and audience members for our session at RGS 2013

Paul Long in full flow at the RGS conference 2013