Out lecture this week was concerned with managing creative teams.  Chris Bilton’s reading was particularly illuminating with regards to ‘creative brokering’ – stimulating communication between members, understanding their creative processes and using their personal traits to encourage a creative synergy between them.

Annette asked us to think about our own creative process, so here is mine:

Far from Emmanuel’s romantic envisioning of the writer in a cottage, I work best in my square room in a semi-detached student house in Perry Barr.  The absence of cavity wall insulation means I write and design under the comforting heat of a £15 halogen heater from One Stop Shopping Centre.

Many magazine designers use Apple Macs, but I am happy with my laptop.  When I am designing pages I have to listen to music, which I usually listen to through Spotify.  Favoured artists are of the easy-listening ilk, such as Erykah Badu, India.Arie, Dwele or if i’m in a more commercial mood, Mariah Carey (don’t laugh).  I rarely plan or sketch out pages; I first think of the colours I want to use, then the heading font (which takes a while), then the pictures, and finally the text.

When writing or reading, I can’t listen to music.  A few of my friends used to handwrite their assignments on paper, but I can’t do this either.  I tend to just type whatever comes into my head and then read over it afterwards, but I don’t proof-read too much because I’ll stop concentrating.

I take breaks regularly, and like to get away from my room when doing so.  Rather than step outside the cottage and sniff roses, I go into the out house downstairs.  The outhouse  is beautifully adorned with graffiti, permanent marker scrawlings and moss, with the odd slug for company if it is raining.  There is also a beautiful pool outside, which has been created by a blockage in the outdoor drain.  Such surroundings may not be thought of as a stimulus for creativity, but you would be surprised.

On December 18th (the festive season meant a short break from blogging – sorry) myself and fellow student Hai attended the Procuring Social Media event held at Coffee Lounge, Birmingham.  The main point of the event was to discuss what social media is and how it can be used for the benefit of businesses.  There were many social media experts on hand to speak and provide advice and guests were required to move between them.

The speakers were:

• Nick Booth (Podnosh)
• Anthony Tattum (Big Cat Group) – a slide from his presentation is pictured above
• Mark Brill (CEO Formation)
• James Robertson (Online Marketing Expert)

Pictures by Hai Nguyen

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On Wednesday in our final lecture for Creative Industries and Cultural Policy, we were given a talk by Lauren Amery from the West Midlands Cultural Observatory.  Lauren (pictured below) carries out research into the social and economic role of culture in the West Midlands. Her department is a subset of the West Midlands Regional Observatory which is overall a hub of information and statistical data about the region.  Lauren was a particularly interesting guest for us because we wanted to know what part she has to play in policy making.  Her main concern is with collating data and research with regards to the role culture has to play in the West Midlands; one example she provided with us was a survey of cultural participation (i.e. which percentage of the population in the region takes part in cultural activities such as sport, visiting art galleries and so on). Lauren’s working definition of ‘culture’ is the same as that of the DCMS.  

She presents her research to policy makers, and makes suggestions for new policies and initiatives.  We thought Lauren would be more involved with policy making, but ultimately the decision is out of her hands.  An interesting fact she did tell us about was that the only cultural service local authorities have to provide by law is a library – nothing else.  I found this astounding, and it made me think whether this could be changed to foster more cultural participation.  A large concentration of cultural activities in the region are in the urban areas such as Birmingham and the Black Country, whereas more rural areas such as Hereford are short on the provision of culture.  Would making art galleries a legal requirement in all local authorities help increase cultural participation?  I suppose the appropriate answer for this is: how long is a piece of string?

What I also found interesting was Lauren’s methodologies, especially her use of online surveys.  With my second assignment for this module involving primary research, I was interested to see how people such as Lauren approach research on a large scale.  Overall it was an interesting talk, and it made me think about how influential research is in the policy making process.

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Today, during our MA Media Enterprise lecture, we had talks from Justice Williams MBE (founder of TruLifeMagazine and Birmingham Media Group, amongst other things), Daniel Bower of econversions and VoucherCodes.co.uk, and Ruth Ward of Rewired PR.  Al of them had interesting and inspirational stories to tell about their businesses, and I picked up a lot of useful tips.  I recorded the talk by Justice and it’s embedded below (apologies for the poor quality, TV and camera work was never my forte!).

Justice Williams MBE from Karen Patel on Vimeo.

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This is my first blog post for mediaenterprise.co.uk and I thought I would start with my recollections from the MA Media and Creative Enterprise so far.

At the beginning of the course I was also taking part in Insight Out: Managing  a Portfolio Career, which was fantastic and I feel it has prepared me well for the rest of the MA.

I found a lot of crossover between the Enterprise module and Insight Out, which was helpful because it enabled me to really take in what I have learnt.  However, the module I have found most intriguing (and most perplexing at times!) has been Creative Industries and Cultural Policy.

The ‘hot topic’ at the moment seems to be the role of the creative industries in the UK’s economy, and whether the sector can pull us out of recession (and for some people the creative industries also encompasses digital and IT).  Several events have taken place during my short time on the MA including Digital District, Hello Digital, the Big Debate and the national Cabinet Forum.

All of them were concerned with the future; how improving Birmingham’s broadband infrastructure could have long-term benefits for SMEs and the economy (Digital District), how the digital industries can pull the UK out of recession (Hello Digital), how Birmingham’s creative industries should band together to try and achieve the same (Big Debate) and so on.

Has there been enough discussion?

Despite those three events dealing with slightly different themes, all pointed towards the creative industries and how they can move forward in Birmingham.  Though I found them all interesting and relevant, maybe now it is time for the discussions to stop and action to begin, especially from policy makers.

The biggest event of them all was the Cabinet Forum, simply due to the amount of hugely influential creative workers and policy makers in attendance.  One major subject of debate was copyright, which is of particular interest to me due to my involvement in magazine publishing and I will be studying it for my first assignment.  Some delegates felt that the copyright debate is getting ‘old’ and the debate needs to move on, others felt that it was a hugely important part of the creative economy and problems with copyright protection in the digital age (such as illegal file sharing) need to be addressed.

As entrepreneurs, there is no doubt that copyright  (and intellectual property in general) plays a big part in what we do.  If our intellectual property is not protected, our product won’t be unique; it will be exploited and our ideas will not be our own.  One such incident happened to me recently when an article I used for my final year degree project was re-used several times by the FA and other companies without my permission (it was a digital magazine and my contact details were clearly visible on the website). I wouldn’t have minded but I wasn’t acknowledged for it. The (c) symbol doesn’t matter to people in the digital age.

On the other hand, people (creatives and consumers) are unwilling to pay for photographs and articles, but there is the compromise of Creative Commons, where authors can make their work available for free as long as they are acknowledged.

On that note, I am going to leave you with a very good talk by Dr Lawrence Lessig (who came up with the idea of  Creative Commons) about copyright and current policy.

Image (above) by eschpiul.