Recession

HOW CAN WE ENSURE THAT CULTURE AND CREATIVITY MAKE MAXIMUM IMPACT ON THE UK ECONOMY BEYOND THE RECESSION?

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HOW CAN WE ENSURE THAT CULTURE AND CREATIVITY MAKE MAXIMUM IMPACT ON THE UK ECONOMY BEYOND THE RECESSION ?

- ENSURING MOST RIGOROUS IMPLEMENTATION OF CREATIVE BRITAIN

- CAPITALISING ON THE SUCCESS OF CULTURAL LEADERS

- DELIVERING CREATIVITY AT THE CORE OF REGIONAL AND CITY STRATEGIES

- MAKING BEST USE OF THE INVESTING IN CREATIVE INDUSTRIES? LOCAL GUIDE

Monday 26 October, 2009

– Royal Commonwealth Society, London

Contributors include

Sir John Tusa,Chair, University of the Arts London

· Emily Thomas,Director, Aequitas

· Anne Bonnar, Recently Transition Director, Creative Scotland

· Mark Davy, Director, Futurecity

· Alexandra Jones,Associate Director, The Work Foundation

· Anna Whyatt,Creative Futures Director, ERA

· Jacqui Henderson, Skills Ambassador to the Creative and Cultural Industries

· Chris Garcia, Head of Clusters, South West Regional Development Agency

· Phil Shankland, Managing Director, Inspiral, South Yorkshire

· Brendan McGoran, Creative Industries Officer, Belfast City Council

Issues covered

· How best should we capitalise on the huge contribution of culture and creativity to UK economy and society?

· What should we learn from the vast success of UK cultural leaders unlike those in other sectors?

· How do we ensure creative industries make maximum impact on economic growth throughout the UK?

· What are Government’s agenda and expectations?

· How effectively is the Creative Britain strategy being taken forward?

· What will be the impact of Digital Britain?

· How best can we sustain innovative and sustainable business models for the arts and creative industries?

· How best do we find, inspire, develop and sustain creative entrepreneurs and maximise their contribution?

· How important is cultural branding to regeneration and growth?

· How best to we ensure successful collaboration between artists, architects, public authorities and developers?

· What can we learn from the Ideopolis concept?

· How can culture and innovation make maximum impact to success, sustainability and growth of UK cities?

· How do we ensure creative and cultural industries make maximum contribution and impact on regional growth?

· How best should we use the local government guide Investing in Creative Industries??

· Where can we hope to be in ten years time?

How to Book

To see the full programme, speaker biographies, venue information and booking details Click Here

There are discounts for voluntary and community organisations and for block bookings

Please note

Any problems, please contact Louise Rushworth on 01422 845004 or email seminars@cppseminars.org.uk.

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RSA AGM: Rethinking the community garden

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grow your ownTomorrow is the RSA’s AGM; the house will be full of RSA Fellows here to discuss the organisation, its future and the new charter. We’ve decided to shamelessly exploit the presence of all these experts being in a single place on a single day by running a series of brain-picking seminars.

I’m doing one with the excellentConnected Communities project which gives me a chance to start talking about something that I’ve been working on for a little while now. Back in the spring I was researching the subject of artists working in productive gardens, talking to people like Fallen Fruit, Amy Francheschini – and more recently Clare Patey of Feast. There is a huge enthusiasm around for this stuff. How can we create new ways to garden? How can we create new places to garden?

That connected with an idea that was put forward by a Fellow and so we’re now on the verge of launching our own project, Rethinking the community garden. The recession has meant that there is a lot of land – particularly building land – which is on hold in cities right now. How can we change the idea of gardens as permanent fixtures to something that’s more flexible, something that maximises land use throughout a city turning semi-derelict land into an asset?

We want to attach that to Fellow’s expertise and experience to make the project come to life in New Cross Gate, South London, an area that Connected Communities are already working in. If you are an RSA Fellow and you want to come along to this, or to any of the other seminars, it’s not to late to register. We need bright heads to brainstorm along the the following lines:

  • How can we persuade landowners to let us use small parcels of land for one, two or more years, and leave them confident that there’s not going to be local resentment when they need them back?
  • How can we persuade gardeners to pour their work into a piece of land they might only have for a single growing season?
  • How can we help the users design gardens in a practical way on land that may only be available for 18 months?
  • Research shows that successful garden projects are often run by a small group of people. How can we make a successful garden project that engages a wide slice of the local population?

Thanks to Harmen de Hoop for the use of Grow Your Own Vegetables – again.

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How social media will change the way the arts present themselves

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I have an article in this fortnight’s Arts Professional arguing that the arts need to get to grips with the idea that a mother of a change is a’coming, and about how the arts have a chance to build a strong, resilient network in the face of coming cuts by adopting a new, generous approach:

… we have reached a tipping point. The gap between what new and old media deliver us yawning. This changes how opinions are formed and how audiences are reached. It also raises interesting questions about where high quality criticism is going to come from in the future.

On the surface there’s a simple conclusion to be reached from the arrival of the Twitterati. Arts organisations need to think more about social media. The Barbican website already has a social media networks button on its front page. Fine idea. Twitter can fill empty seats within a couple of  hours of a performace. But at the moment that’s where most people’s thinking stops. This is a mistake because the change is fundamental. Arts organisations, if big enough, used to hire press officers on the strength of their contacts book, but what does that mean now? It’s not just the dipping circulations – accelerated by the recession, newspaper advertising revenues are expected to fall by as much as 21% across the board this year. This means cuts. Emails to old contacts suddenly bounce; they’ve gone freelance. Talent is leaching away from old media. The money spent trying to get column inches is increasingly money less well spent[…] but that’s just the half of it.

Conventional arts websites have become good at doing two things. They list events coming up and sell you tickets to them. If you’re lucky there’s a blog, but it’s often pretty thin fare. These sites exist within a fast-changing internet filled with people sharing news, wit, opinion, photographs, films and music. In comparison arts websites often look staid and monumental […] The key word is “sharing”. If arts websites want to move from the vertical model – telling people what’s good for them – to the horizontal model of using the energy of social networks, then it’s about giving stuff away. As any sociologist will tell you, the basis of any social network, real or virtual, is reciprocity.

Read the whole article HERE.

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