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Cultural intermediation & the creative economy

Cultural intermediation & the creative economy

Tag Archives: Creative economies

Co-operatives and the Cultural Industries

13 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by surflaura in Uncategorized

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Art, Community, Creative economies, formal governance, jobs

Co-operatives and the Cultural Industries was a round-table discussion organised on 1st of April 2015 by Marisol Sandoval and Jo Littler at Creative Industries Department, City University, London. Four speakers had roughly 20 minutes each to talk about co-ops, followed by time for questions, comments and discussions.

To set the scene for this discussion, it is important to consider the following:

Around 50,000 design and creative arts graduates come onto the labour market each year. They face entering the workforce as part of the new precariat, what Guy Standing has labelled the ‘New Dangerous Class’, which means they are likely to be “relegated to a bits-and-pieces life, in and out of casual flexible jobs, without being able to build an occupational career or identity” (Standing 2011).

The four speakers had very different experiences of co-operation as a business practice, but their presentations addressed these problems:

1) Unpaid work and internships are endemic, even axiomatic, in creative and cultural sectors and permanent jobs are hard to come by.
2) Although ‘entrepreneurship’ and business skills are taught as part of creative arts degrees as a matter of course, the co-operative model of business organisation is often marginalised as an option.

This event was convened by two senior lecturers to encourage a discussion of the potentials and limits of worker co-operatives as a way of organizing cultural work, but I went because I have a personal interest in these issues too: when two friends and I started a small clubwear business after graduating in the late 1990s we had a number of problems, but being a worker’s co-operative wasn’t one of them. The solidarity, sense of common purpose or what one speaker here described as ‘sweat equity’ (working your equal share despite not getting paid) that united us in a brave attempt to create and manage our own experience of working for a living was readily cemented by a legal and ethical contract, the common ownership worker’s co-operative business model, that made sense of our shared ambitions and more importantly, shared risk. There are some ideas here that could also be applicable to the kinds of grassroots projects and community organisations currently involved in Connected Communities research.

Economist Robin Murray started by explaining the economic context in which co-ops assert their difference from other forms of production within organised capitalism. He has been Director of Industry at the Greater London Council in the 1980s, and a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies, so he knows a thing or two about the world of macro-business. He used a flipchart to explain how when production became more complex and specialised, the necessary socialisation of its workforce increased, which was how Marx understood the development of industrial capitalism. Robin then introduced the Dunbar model for the number of stable relationships that humans can comfortably maintain, which is no more than 150, making the point that labour organises itself more easily in non-complex activities. In Robin’s opinion, the Dunbar model limits a co-ops’ ability to manage really complex business operations and so capitalism became the default format as a system for organisation for mega-business, especially in our highly specialised late-modern economy in the UK. Capitalists have the ability to manage the co-ordination of complexity and combine it with hierarchical socialisation, making them able to operate effectively at economies of scale.

The first great wave of worker co-ops in the mid to late 19th century followed the Rochdale pioneers’ example, which was a model for how the proletariat could react to the development of national industrial capitalism and build resilience by organising purchasing and retail operations in small groups. He calls it “consumer co-operation of the industrial working class” (Murray 2012), they were, after all, the dispossessed workers of their age. It led to the formation of hundreds of retail co-ops, a wholesale society, factories, farms, shipping lines, insurance and banks that, if taken as a single network, was at the time the largest corporate organisation in the world. What Robin suggests that co-ops can do to take back ownership of complex economic processes or to form businesses that need to operate at a larger scale is to combine separate co-operative ‘Dunbar cells’, as the first UK Co-op movement did, to become a huge cell network.

Rhiannon Colvin founded co-operative advocacy organisation AltGen to support 18-29 year olds to set up workers co-operatives. Rhiannon says she founded AltGen after applying for endless graduate jobs and unpaid internships herself without success and decided that young people could create something better if they started working together. She decided to reverse the blame for her own struggle to find work and wanted to help other young people understand that that the problem is not them, it is the economy. They are inheriting an economic reality in which they have no control over their time, no economic security, are forced into accepting low-income, poor quality and temporary jobs and are unable to accumulate any kind of capital at all. AltGen aims to help them find ways into a sustainable working future and contribute to a more stable economy through co-operation. “We need to stop fighting each other for work, especially unpaid work” she said. Putting together minds and skills to empower young graduates to take control of their own employment, AltGen can help them to understand and solve the employment crisis they face. The organisation is now looking into setting up a freelancers’ co-operative. Being employed brings rights that self-employed people don’t have, like holiday and sick pay, protection against discrimination and unfair dismissal, redundancy pay and trade unions. This next action will try and find ways to ameliorate an isolating situation that makes self-employed people more vulnerable to being treated as a disposable workforce.

Printer and pro-co-op activist Siôn Whellens shared his own story, which in some ways was similar to Rhiannon’s. He trained as a printer but the recession in 1981 made finding a ‘proper’ job impossible. Living in London, he joined a community press organisation and started from there instead. He is now a member of Calverts, a communications design and printing co-operative, based in Bethnal Green. Founded in 1977, it is a worker co-operative with 12 members that can produce all manner of printed items from leaflets and menus to art books and multimedia products, it also creates websites and develops all kinds of interesting communication projects. Under ‘environmental initiatives’ their website mentions the company’s commitment to utilising the latest technology that reduces their impact on the environment in many ways, such as computer-to-plate technology which dispenses with film, as well as the obvious choices such as vegetable oil based inks. Siôn is also a business advisor at institutions including City University, where he advises on the nature and benefits of co-operative approaches to work and creative life. He has written about the precarious generation of creative workers on his blog suggesting that as the cultural sector has grown “workers have responded by developing agile, collaborative and creative approaches not just to work, but to the necessities of life including accommodation, leisure and social support”. He writes that despite “the primacy of individual genius and effort” that go with the territory of the creative industries and its rhetoric, collaborative practice is something that is “familiar and normal for many students and graduates”.

Tara Mulqueen is a PhD student in the Law Department at Birkbeck, University of London and her dissertation title is presently ‘Co-operation and Social economy in Critical perspective: History, Politics and Law’. Tara also has direct experience of being part of a co-operative as she worked at the community owned and volunteer run People’s Supermarket in central London, famously used by David Cameron to make a ‘Big Society’ speech in 2011.

She is interrogating the tensions or even conflicting aims of co-operative businesses to understand the difficulties of balancing social transformation with commercial sustainability, to consider whether becoming a market entity has a depoliticising effect on their practice and to locate them within the broader history of working class movements. Law is a “key terrain” (Mulqueen 2012) in which social groups and corporate bodies are defined. Co-operatives as corporate entities were brought within the state and its legal framework when they were formally recognised as a legitimate form of business in 1852. At this time joint-stock companies, trusts and friendly societies were already in use, now a number of different legal forms could also be co-operatives. It is a ‘protected category’ in law, which means that in theory, a capitalist business cannot use the word co-operative, but in practice it is the Government’s business secretary that has the final decision on this. One thing a co-op can never be is a charity, in fact it is the opposite of a charity. Trustees may not benefit from a charity. The market has therefore become the very terrain of a co-operative’s existence in which it is possibleto see them as a category of middle-class reformism, they are also limited by their recognition by the state, something that the trade unions resisted to preserve greater freedom of organisation. It is interesting that Tara’s own experiences of self-organised and ethical work included unintentionally becoming entangled with the state idea of a Big Society, a “dubious program” (Mulqueen 2012) to expand the voluntary sector as an alternative to state-funded services. Dilemmas over principles will continue to trouble the development of a social economy – one important question being is it acceptable to survive and prosper? Community groups and budding partnerships interested in producing and selling goods need to ask themselves this question. If they are considering adopting a co-operative model, would ‘business’ as the legal form of association actually obscure their political project and social goals? Or alternatively does the co-operative model limit their ability to operate within the mainstream economy?

In my experience, the common ownership worker’s co-operative model was, of the four options listed in the Princes Trust ‘starting a business’ guide, by far the most logical choice for us as a group of friends, yet being involved in conversations about the values of co-operative business did, over time, have the effect of making our business into an ethical and political concern. Becoming a co-op inadvertently developed and promoted a political project that I hadn’t understood would be an effect of running a business and started a chain of events which has ultimately brought me here – to the Cultural Intermediation project and the Centre for Sustainable and Regional Futures (SURF).

Refs:
Mulqueen, T. 2012. When a business isn’t a business: law and the political in the history of the United Kingdom’s co-operative movement
Murray, R. 2012. A different way of doing things.
Standing, G. 2011. Stirrings of the New Dangerous Class

Follow the speakers on Twitter:
@AltGen101
@Scumboni
@tara_mulqueen

Diversity in the city, University of Lisbon, Conference

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by saskiawarren in Conference, Exhibitions, Meetings

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arts, City, Creative economies, Creativity, diversity, Intermediation, Lisbon, migration, religion, segregation

Dr Jennifer McGarrigle organised an excellent conference in Lisbon on 26th and 27th June, which I was fortunate enough to be part of. The conference theme Diversity in the City: Shifting realities and ways forward brought together international researchers looking at issues of migration, integretation, segregation and spatial encounter in the context of plurality. I gave a paper in the session on Migrants and the Arts which came out of the current cultural intermediation workpackage underway in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. Taking a community-centred approach, the paper proposed that research needs to capture creativity in marginalised and peripheral spaces in the creative economy, including ESOL classes, places of workship and the domestic scene, to effectively insert diverse migrant experiences of culture and arts into funding and governance structures. Unexpectedly and fortuituously, one of the keynote speakers, Dr Richard Gale (University of Cardiff) delivered a fascinating paper using social-spatial network analysis in the very same area to investigate neighbourhood interaction and friendship. In the context of negative UK public discourse on segregation and conservative Islam, both papers and the wider conference attended to various sites where connectivity across ethic-religious groups takes place.

Lisbon isn’t a bad spot to spend a couple of days either…1977225_10152206244397747_1800544418922695315_n

Reflections on the ECE 6th Conference, University of Toronto, and Artscapes, University of Kent

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by saskiawarren in Conference, Meetings

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Art, Birmingham, cities, communities, conference, connected, Creative economies, geography, Intermediation, Policy, Richard Florida, Toronto

At the end of summer term the academic calendar segues into conference season. First was the ECE 6th Conference at the Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI), University of Toronto from 18-21st June. A highly stimulating yet exhausting programme ran from 8.30am till we had finished up to 7 courses of our dinners (around 9.30pm, depending on stamina). The conference was designed as a way to bring early career academics together from around the world in a process of field-rebuilding on the creative economy.  Generosity of funding by MPI enabled early career academics with limited or non-existent research budgets to attend – although Canadian immigration prevented two of the speakers joining us in person (Ammar Palik, Pakistan, and Andrés Goméz-Liévano, Colombia).

Richard Florida gave his time to meet one-on-one with each of the participants as part of a game in academic speed-dating. He also led a discussion on revisiting the creative class where he rightfully noted that 100s of trillions is invested in urban spending and urban practice therefore focus needs to be concentrated on how spending is translated into pragmatic strategy. Casinos, stadiums and bike lanes are not, of course, the simple solution. Issues of inequality and disadvantaged communities in urban space were discussed in the session and throughout the conference, with common agreement that the pay and conditions for the service sector were unacceptable. A set of fascinating papers ensued. In particular I was impressed by the potential of Dr Xingiian Liu’s data visualisations which showed how creative cities are networked in terms of level of workers and interdependence.

The next week it was onto a very different but interesting conference Artscapes: Urban Art and the Public at the University of Kent, 27-28th June. As an example of where site-specificity falls down, Dr Rob Knifton discussed David Mach’s Polaris (1983) which was set on fire by a protester on Southbank who suffered fatal burns. The paper recalled the type of intense public participation, and ‘radical decommissioning’, that artist Simon Pope articulates in the burning of Raymond Mason’s Forward in Birmingham City Centre in 2003 (see my artist talk with Simon here). Of particular note was an excellent keynote talk by Dr Jonathan Vickery which read Jochen Gerz’s 2-3 Strassen in relation to creative cities literature.  Vickery’s consideration of how culture in public space has to map itself onto broad objectives of governance and government usefully brought together the strands of thinking from both conferences which feed into our governance work. Exploring culture as a function of policy is one of our lines of thinking, and, taking a multi-level approach, in the next academic year we will be working with communities to learn more about how they connect into cultural and creative practice. More on this soon.ImageImage

Theory, practice and dilemmas

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by surflaura in Uncategorized

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Birmingham, conference, Creative economies, Culture, Festivals, Salford

The other day I was at a symposium at Leeds Metropolitan University called ‘Protests as events/Events as protests’, listening to the dilemmas of some academics who are or have been activists and how they consolidate these different identities in their jobs and research.

The opening address was a conversation between Dr Ian Lamond of Leeds Met and Dave Webb, Chair of UK CND and they discussed how they first became politicised, how this had affected their careers, up to the point of where they were today. Dave offered a useful insight from his many years of experience at CND: “Sometimes there’s a mis-match between what the public perceive you’re doing and what you think you’re doing” he said, “and you don’t know how much your organisation has achieved because you’re too close to it”.

Over the last few weeks I have also discovered that reading for my PhD is actually more productive when I’m on a train. I’m putting this down to the possibility that when I’m among strangers and in strange places, perhaps I feel more in the world so that I can think about it from the point of view of others. All of this, I hope, will be helpful!

I also recently presented at my first ever conference. I made a Pecha Kucha entitled ‘The Role of the University in the Cultural Economy’ and presented it in Salford at the SPARC post-graduate conference on the subject of Theory, Practice, Impact. I found that the ’20 slides, 20 seconds each’ format was a great way to condense academic waffle into a fast paced and fun performance (paris pics.tif-10I even won a prize for it!)

Starting off with my current sticking point – ‘what is the cultural economy?’ and presenting to a non-specialist audience, I crammed in some basic ideas about whether culture means high art and civilisation or popular culture and commercial products, Spice_Girlshow the value of cultural goods can change over time and happens within an economy or eco-sytem that combines a mix of cultural and social exchanges with the production and consumption of goods, some of which have intangible and non-market values.

I went on to talk about how an economic system combining state-funded activities with commercial production and international business attracts plenty of debate around value for money and justifying public investment. Then I connected that subject of enquiry up with my other big topic – the role of universities in the cultural sector (and the coming of the REF), before suggesting film screenings as ways to acheive public engagement. 200429986-001

There was just enough time to mention bringing together different groups of people from on and off campus to exchange knowledge, ideas, culture and experience, and how presenting a series of film screenings could work to generate impact in my own research before my slides ran out!

So with public screenings in mind, I’m still looking around at what’s new in the world of film and I was really chuffed to finally get along to one of the leading documentary festivals Sheffield Doc Fest this year – a festival that has such close links with the Sheffield Hallam University that they run an MA programme together. Two standout films for me were the new documentary about Stuart Hall by John Akomfrah (2013) and From The Land to the Sea Beyond (2012 – a repeat of one of last year’s favourite events). This surprisingly moving film was made mainly from BFI archive clips of the British seaside and coastal industries, directed by Penny Woolcock, produced by Sheffield Doc/Fest and Crossover Labs and screened with a live score by British Sea Power.

The Staurt Hall Project film is brand new, was backed by BFI Film Fund (which is also run in conjunction with Sheff Doc Fest) and is meant to be coming out on general release in September, which will be especially significant for those at Birmingham University I expect. Sunrise  A Song of Two HumansMurnau Sunrise  A Song of Two Humans

Before that, however, for those of you in Birmingham there’s a great opportunity coming up this month to see the classic Murnau silent black and white film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) presented by Flatpack Film Festival outdoors at mac arts!

In this film you can really feel the tension in American and European society at the time, perfectly summed up by a single tram ride that crashes two fairy tale worlds into each other – the luxurious, shiny depravity of urban modernity and a sweet, gentle agrarian home. It also had the best action sequences Hollywood could produce at that time, winning an award at the first ever Oscars for unique and artistic production, and I am assured that the screening will go ahead whatever the weather!

6th Annual Experience the Creative Economy Conference, University of Toronto

17 Friday May 2013

Posted by saskiawarren in Conference, Uncategorized

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Birmingham, cities, Creative economies, Culture, Intermediation, Richard Florida, Toronto

18-21st June 2013

I received some good news recently. I’ve been selected to take part in a highly selective forum for early career scholars who are engaged in research related to the creative economy. The conference hosted by the Martin Prosperity Institute, University of Toronto, brings together 25 individuals from around the world to share and discuss their research. During the four day programme we’ll be looking at opportunities to develop methods and collaborate, as well as exploring the creative scenes and neighbourhoods of Toronto.

For the conference I’ll be presenting a paper entitled:

Local governance, community commissioning and intermediation in the creative economy

Here is my abstract which provides some more detail on the topic:

“Birmingham is at cross-roads in its governance of the creative economy. The second largest city in the UK, Birmingham has high levels of unemployment and inequality, the youngest population in Europe and its ethnic profile is projected to be majority minority by 2020. Contradictions in its cultural policy strategy include ambitions to develop a global city for culture and creativity, with simultaneous cuts in investment from local government and regional arts bodies resulting in a downward trend of arts provision in educational and community spaces.

Tracing processes of cultural intermediation (Bourdieu 1979; Woo 2012), this paper investigates the methods of connecting communities in the creative economy through self-organizing neighborhood arts groups. Balsall Heath, one of Birmingham City Council’s Priority Neighborhoods with multiple social deprivations, is a testing ground for new community-led budgeting and community culture commissioning pilots. Emerging arts infrastructure include Ort, a commercially run café, music and arts space with an ethos of community engagement, and Balsall Heath Biennale, a local partnership, who investigate what the role of artists can be in the 21st century through neighborhood practice.

Policy associated with the ‘Big Society’ (Cameron 2010), with emphasis on localized and distributed forms of governance alongside reductions on public spending, is transforming the role of the state and cultural organizations. Using the case studies of Ort and Balsall Heath Biennale, this paper investigates the increased expectation placed on community-driven initiatives and a climate of major cuts to public services to conceptualize the future of intermediation in the creative economy.”

Once the programme is finalised by Dr Melanie Fasche of University of Toronto I’ll post it here to give further information on discussants et al.

Laura’s travel diary

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by surflaura in Uncategorized

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Birmingham, cities, connected, Creative economies, Festivals, Manchester, Salford

The last few weeks have been an exciting, stimulating and educational time for me as I have embarked on the early stages of my PhD journey, quite literally!

Rail travel

The first adventure was at the FutureEverything Summit in Manchester. Over two days of presentations in the rather impersonal Piccadilly 4 building, followed by an illuminated mass choreography down at Salford Quays, I experienced at close hand some pioneering work in the complementary fields of digital art, urbanism and technology. I even got to stand for several minutes in the dark inside the University of Salford’s own sound-proofed anechoic chamber in the Newton building, close to the SURF centre, listening to a processed audio installation, all part of the annual FutureEverything festival experience.

Speed of Light

A theme running through many of the conference presentations was that of people re-appropriating frameworks and processes in order to ‘hack’ existing systems of urban living and develop smart and sustainable solutions to some of the problems created by cities. These interventions start with individuals using a combination of social media and public spaces to connect active citizens into responsive communities, where innovative and co-created practices can generate action. “In terms of organising and deciding” said Dan Hill in his keynote speech “the government now has competition”. Stirring stuff indeed.

The next day it was onwards to Birmingham, in search of more ideas and evidence to help inform the shape of my thesis, which currently looks at the role of universities as intermediaries in the festival economy. With visits to Bristol, Brighton and Bradford planned too, I was excited about having the opportunity to visit these great British cities and explore their civic architecture.

Last week in Brighton at the Beyond the Campus 2nd Workshop, Dr Paul Benneworth said “as social and spatial forms, buildings reflect their use”. He was talking specifically here about universities (with reference to Liverpool Hope University’s Cornerstone creative campus located in Everton) but it brought to my mind the words of walking urban historian Ben Waddington, who had revealed the psycho-geography of hidden architecture in Birmingham on his Invisible Architecture tour at the start of Flatpack film festival 3 weeks earlier.

Flatpack is an ambitious new festival in Birmingham that this year spanned 11 days in March. I went for the first weekend, my first event being the city walk. It was snowing heavily and freezing cold, but a crowd of 20 or so gathered at the Film Bug Hub, a vacant shop taken over by the festival team to house logistics in the Colmore Business District (one of the festival partners) to set out on the 90 minute tour.

Other partner venues I visited included Birmingham cathedral, in which I saw a screening of the silent Dreyer classic The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) with piano score, a local café screening free short films in its basement and the recently restored Electric cinema by the station.

On Sunday I caught a bus over to the University of Birmingham’s Bramall Music Building to see the oldest surviving animated feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) with live percussive accompaniment. Birmingham UniversityThis last event was a collaboration with the university’s new Arts and Science Festival, a public programme of exhibitions, talks, performances, workshops and screenings organised by the Cultural Engagement team which, in the words of Ian Grosvenor, Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement “celebrates the University’s identity and makes available the first class research generated by one of the UKs leading higher education institutions”.

Back to Leeds to catch up on some sleep, but literally the next day I was off again, to Paintworks in Bristol this time, to hear brief updates from the latest developments coming out of the major AHRC community based research projects across the country, including news from the four AHRC research hubs, one of which is ‘home’ to the FutureEverything festival director Drew Hemment. Literally hundreds of organisations are currently enrolled in AHRC-backed research projects, in areas ranging from heritage archives to niche food producers, fashion SMEs to animation film makers. I can send more information about individual projects to anyone who wants to know more, but what is really good is that there are some recurring themes and individuals in these early stages of evidence-gathering that will help as I establish my research questions for the next phase.

I’ll need a few days at home to really think about what these are going to be, but with the Bradford Film Festival underway this week, that’s not quite happened yet!

The Big Tent Activate Summit, Delhi, India

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by saskiawarren in Conference, Exhibitions, Meetings

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Art, cities, communities, Creative economies, Delhi, digital, google, guardian, India, Intermediation, internet

Organised by Google, The Guardian and MediaGuru. 21 March 2013.

In March 2013, I was invited by United Kingdom Trade & Investment to attend a summit on the future of digital and media in India as an expert on the creative economy. The Big Tent Activate Summit, held at the Taj Palace Hotel, Delhi, was financially underwritten by Google along with The Guardian and MediaGuru, an Indian media services company. A short statement from the organisers explained the agenda was to “discuss and debate the impact of the Internet on the Indian economy, politics, media and culture.” Marking the first Summit to be held in India, Eric Schimdt (CEO of Google) and Alan Rusbridger (Editor of The Guardian) talked alongside politicians, media specialists, economists, academics, digital entrepreneurs and, to a lesser extent, marginalised groups and individuals. Weaving a somewhat problematic path through commercial gains to be made by big business and digital as a force for challenging inequalities in India, the summit nevertheless raised some interesting issues.

There are 150 million internet users in India. However, despite appearing huge in comparison to UK metrics, this figure only represents 12% of the Indian population. Of this 12%, the majority are on narrowband with just 1% estimated to have broadband. By point of comparison, the US has 80% penetration and UK 73% penetration (in market-speak). The internet effects how we work, govern, bank, learn and entertain. Furthermore, it has the capabilities to transform how we communicate with each other. As Kapil Sibal, Minister for Communication and Information Technology, told delegates the internet ‘allows communities to talk to each other’. Yet Section 66 was widely discussed by panellists as a curtailment of the democratic freedom of expression with divergent opinions on whether this was justified to prevent violent protests and killings in the most extreme of cases. Despite low usage, Ministers Omar Abdullah and Shashi Tharoor did agree that social media, and Twitter especially, was increasingly taken seriously in politics due to their power to influence as well as amplify volatile subjects.

In regards to equality, Sibal and Schimdt urged the Indian state to ensure wireless networks and fibre optics were installed so that everyday people can reach information. Further, devices must also be affordable, in particular smart mobile phones. Interestingly, 3/4th of the growth in internet usage has been through mobile and tablet therefore web publishers targeting Indian markets need to consider small screen experience with low text, in contrast to the big screen computer experience we were first introduced to in the UK.

Innovative battery-operated education labs used in rural villages were showcased, which took ZAYA, a mobile and digital learning experience, to areas that lack text books and sometimes electricity. A breakout session at lunch by Radar also showed how technology could support marginalised groups through the usage of simple text messaging as a means of citizen reporting in politically, socially and geographically isolated areas. Dalat women were amongst those who shared their stories with Rusbridger, eventually getting past hotel security only with help from the organisers, demonstrating the caste system still shapes everyday experiences in India.

During my 5 day visit I also had the chance to pay a visit to Sarai which is part of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies located in north Delhi. Sarai in an interdisciplinary research centre which runs the Media City Research project and Cybermoholla. These are digital labs located in neighbourhoods in Delhi aimed at connecting with diverse socio-economic groups and young people; echoing some of our community engagement priorities in Birmingham and Manchester on the Cultural Intermediation project. Also Sarai’s environment is itself a case study of a cultural intermediary, connecting creative practice, theory and political action from its position within a megacity in the global south. I was very impressed by my brief visit to Sarai and hope to start a conversation with the academics and practitioners based there on our shared interests going forward…

Big Story Interviews

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by saskiawarren in Exhibitions

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Art, Birmingham, cities, communities, Creative economies, Culture, Engagement, Intermediation

One of the things I’ve been working on alongside Natasha are films of Big Story interviews with key ‘movers and shakers’ from Birmingham’s creative and cultural economy. The aim of the interviews has been to develop a common understanding of the site-specific and broader contextual stories around the development of the creative and cultural economy in each place. These narratives bridge the historical research by Ian and Natasha and governance research by Beth, Karen and I. Filming in Birmingham has already been done with: Roger Shannon, Film Producer; Derek Bishton, creator of photography magazine Ten.8; Anita Bhalla, Chair of Creative Cities Partnership and Head of Public Space Broadcasting, BBC; and Lara Ratnarajah, digital and business expert.  Overlapping with the Manchester work, Natasha and I also travelled down to London to interview Ben Kelly, the designer of The Hacienda nightclub. The rest of the Manchester Big Story interviews will be conducted by Natasha, Beth and Karen using walking techniques and photographs in an aural and visual mapping of the stories.  We’re hoping to facilitate focus groups in both Manchester and Birmingham at the end to share and refine the stories, building a picture of the distinctiveness of each place. Using the concept of ‘stories’, the Big Story methodology we’ve developed will develop urban narratives about change, transformation and the reconfiguration of places in dialogue with existing creative cities discourse.

 I’ve attached a short 6 minute clip of the first interview which features Roger Shannon, shot by film-makers Aman Alimshand and Karishma Popat from Birmingham City University. Enjoy!

New beginnings

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by saskiawarren in Meetings

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Art, Birmingham, cities, Creative economies, Hello Culture, Manchester

We travelled to SURF at Salford University on Friday 30th November to meet with Beth and Karen on the Governance workpackage.  This part of the project will include looking at governance through the role of the state, the rise of cities (so multi-level governance), institutions and knowledge networks. We also discussed the importance of capturing the creative practices of those organisations which are not usually categorised as part of the creative economy, such as the NHS employing video-makers or creating exhibitions. Big Story explorative walking interviews with key creative intermediaries from Greater Manchester and Greater Birmingham will connect the work being done on the Historical workpackage by Natasha and Ian with the mapping of contemporaneous practice by the Manchester and Birmingham researchers (Karen and Saskia).

In other news, Paul Long chaired a workshop on Transforming Cross Innovations as part of the Hello Culture conference on digital technologies, with Steve Harding of Birmingham City University talking on Cross-Innovations and me talking about this project (Custard Factory, 23 November 2012). Beyond a fruitful discussion with delegates on their potential role in the research and the projected outputs of the two projects, I met some interesting practitioners, including Deirdre Figueiredo from Craftspace and Alex Corkindale from mac who I’m following up with.

Thank you to those who have given their time already to be interviewed. In the past fortnight I’ve spoken with:  Debbie Kermode (IKON); Josephine Reichert (Ort); Noel Dunne (Creative Alliance); Dorothy Wilson (mac); Mike Tweddle (BE Festival); Steve Ball (Birmingham REP); Henrietta Lockhart and Adam Jaffer (BMAG).

Cultural Intermediation’s photostream

13 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by saskiawarren in Exhibitions

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Art, Birmingham, cities, communities, Creative economies, The Drum

Autumn Almanac, IKONAutumn Almanac, IKONEnvision programme launch, Aston Villa Football ClubEnvision programme launch, Aston Villa Football ClubThe Drum, AstonThe Drum, Aston
Kalaboration, The Drum, AstonSustainable Stories, the CUBE, ManchesterSustainable Stories, The CUBE, ManchesterInteractive touctable, History Galleries, BMAGHistory Galleries, BMAGHistory Galleries, BMAG
History Galleries, BMAGCity States, Liverpool Biennale 2012City States, Liverpool BiennaleCity States, Liverpool BiennaleCity States, Liverpool BiennaleArts and Culture Summit
World Mental Health Day Sing-a-Long, RSO/CBSOWorld Mental Health Day Sing-a-LongPen Museum, Jewellery QuarterJewellery QuarterBBC at The Mailbox

Cultural Intermediation’s photostream on Flickr.

Here’s some images of the activities and exhibitions written about on our project blog!

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  • Summer’s over, but festival season is just starting!
  • Ideas4Ordsall
  • Creative Commissions in Balsall Heath

Archives

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Twitter Updates

  • RT @Jessicasymons: Headlining ontheplatform.org.uk on creative industries: 'creative’ is original output, ‘industries’ are mechanisms fo… 4 years ago
  • RT @Jessicasymons: @UEParticipation @AGMcat Interesting article written in 2014 gets to heart of same issues emerged @CultIntermed in Salfo… 4 years ago
  • RT @Beth_Perry_SURF: An offering for #WorldPoetryDay - 'Just Urban Research?' youtu.be/oSm_VGE_lPc @CultIntermed @CHIMEproject @JamandJu… 5 years ago
  • RT @Beth_Perry_SURF: The necessary limits to coproduction? @MistraUrbanFut @jamandjustice @CultIntermed http://the theguardian.com/environment/20… 5 years ago

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