A number of news items for the Creative Quarter initiative as 2013 gets under way:
The CQ Facebook group is a good way to keep up with news. And if want to talk to someone rather than just read web pages, this group are offering a series of Drop In Sessions on Thursdays:
Many people have requested a drop in session to answer questions and offer support. We are pleased to announce that our current ambassador, Rikki Marr, will be available to do this every Thursday from the Creative Corner building, 8 Stoney Street as of this week ( 10am-12am and 4pm- 8pm). [Note that the Facebook announcement has different times for this week - check before going.]
Another good compendium is the single CQ site which CJ Lyon (@pcmcreative) has pulled together, covering all the Creative Quarter stuff she knows about. This overlaps the Facebook group and is a good starting point if you are new to this, along with our blog post of the launch.
Looking at the emerging management infrastructure, a Community Interest Group (CIC) has been formed. The press release from Antenna notes that both Antenna MD Craig Chettle and BioCity Director Toby Reid will be members.
An advert for the Chief Operations Officer, who will really run things for the Creative Quarter initiative, was posted in early January. The closing date is this Friday, 1 February, so we may see an announcement next month.
NTU, who have nurtured the Hive for some years, will also be playing an important part as they describe in a recent press release.
Broadway Cinema have been successful in obtaining an Arts Council grant
to build a new creative business centre at their home in Hockley, Nottingham. It will create an open-plan centre giving young people access to the latest creative technologies and business support and make the organisation the lead centre for Creative Media in Central England. They will encourage collaboration between artists, arts organisation, technologists, academics and industry to provide a framework for new modes of artistic production, creative innovation and knowledge exchange.
Finally, don’t think this initiative is cut and dried, all determined. There are discussions to be had about scope, style and approach. Adam Bird (@adambird), who has played a strong part in defining the Creative Quarter idea with the City Council, has put his 0.02 euro in with a post on the Esendex company blog.
John is one of our team of bloggers. He can be reached on john AT creativenottingham.com and followed on Twitter @johnwithbeard
The Creative Quarter, a failed old static place in a fast moving mobile new world.
Real creative cities and sectors are established and driven by artists that live and work in them. Often they come from them. They are the spark and force that all creative life evolves and grows from. Mostly they are individualistic divergent thinking mavericks who didn’t and don’t do well in schools or similar institutions. Some are even considered outcasts for many years. The Creative Quarter is an old and failed model of incubator.
see On being Creative in Nottingham.
here http://www.handsuppuppets.com/html/Short_Notts_Stories.html for more.
If any of this worked we would still have emda and the CQ is designed by and for a small group of old thinkers. It will not achieve its stated objectives either. Worse, in corralling public funding, inappropriately in my personal view in the case of Arts Council and Lottery funding, it deprives real Artists of funding for them to ply their creative trade and develop here in Nottingham, especially through Arts Councils’, Grants for the Arts. The only funding many of them can access.
Everybody involved in this initiative is, in my view depriving the people of Nottingham and Nottingham’s artists of an enhanced creative identity and future. It may take seven years, but when our artists have moved away or got proper jobs and all of the ‘investment’ is proved to have been wasted, I hope the people of Nottingham realize how much their leadership has failed them. How by simply supporting and investing in their artists they would have delivered a creative city, a USP, brand and vibrant and industrious creative sector, jobs. And that it is not to late to change.
My role in all this is as an advisor, on a completely voluntary basis, representing the software and tech sector in the city. I have a real concern that by focusing on the money will not build anything sustainable and I want to see moves to empower the young people of Nottingham with skills that will allow them to build rewarding careers and contribute to the city,
What I’m wrestling with at the moment is how I can encourage employers in the city to adopt a ‘give before you get’ approach to supporting skills development and this initiative. We’ve had 30 years of political focus on the self rather than the whole so this is not going to change over night but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start.
I take similar issue with self-serving business consultants, business consultants posing as angels, administrators and landlords. They serve no purpose other than to dilute any initiative for their own ends.
My feeling with this initiative is that there is a genuine desire to get it right. With that is an understanding that replaying the same process of quango driven handouts will not build sustainable change in the city’s economy. It’s this approach that has led me to get involved and my hope is that anyone with similar willing to see a positive change in the city will also join in to help guide it.