SUMMIT GOING ON

by Tracy Shaw, Loca Creatives Director


Photo: Dawn Robinson Photography, courtesy of Kirklees Communities and Leisure

 

What better way to kick the new year into top gear than an afternoon taking "an international, national and local view of how creative thinking, activity and problem solving have found innovative solutions to regeneration, community development and economic growth"? Well done Kirklees Communities and Leisure, for putting on a Creative Summit that offered "world renowned keynote speakers" and brought together dozens from the local creative sector. Those kinds of energising opportunities come round all too rarely.

So with "creativity is the cornerstone of innovation" as the hook for the afternoon, what spurs did we get to go forth, be creative and innovate?

We got some juicy facts and figures. Compelling figures - taken from recently published DCMS Creative Industries estimates - of the kind that make you feel grateful to be working in a booming sector rather than an ailing one (the 2.5 million people employed in the UK's creative economy account for one in twelve of all jobs; the creative workforce has been growing faster than other sectors; creative businesses' GVA accounts for 5.2% of the UK economy). And thought-provoking facts of the kind that make you wonder if current education policy isn't missing a trick - according to Wayne Hemingway's sources, truancy rates at Key Stage 4 are lower in Design than in all other school subjects, and highest in the STEM subjects (on which note you might like to take a look at STEM to STEAM).

We got music.  The Charlie Winston 'Boxes' song that Dr Rita Klapper used to get us thinking about breaking out of habitual thinking and behaviours was pure cheese, but as a device it seemed to work. Contributions from the floor suggested that plenty of people connected with the idea that we too easily get boxed into constraining roles and socially imposed identities when in fact we all have the possibility of being "a thousand me's" - doubtless a reassuring notion for anyone trying to jigsaw together a viable living from 'portfolio working'. The passing round of actual boxes into which unsuspecting audience members were invited to fit themselves perhaps laboured the point a little, but their solutions were all nicely creative and it provided some ice-breaking entertainment for the rest of us. Tellingly, no one came up with the response that Dr Rita was really looking for - refusing to even try.

David Parrish gave us a salutary reminder that creativity is not the sole domain of those who work in the arts sector but is in and around us all; and that Creativity + Innovation won't make a successful business unless you do the hard bit and get your business formula right too. He had wise things to say about the importance of knowing yourself and keeping a sharp eye on your competitive environment, the benefits of co-opetition, the marketing power of the freebie, protecting your creative and intellectual property, and the choices to be made between being a creative labourer and a creative entrepreneur (one makes you money while you sleep, the other doesn't). All good stuff, and all freely available to be dug into more deeply in the eminently readable T-Shirts and Suits - useful back-up for anyone present whose concentration was distracted by the whoooosh on every slide change.

From Wayne Hemingway we got great stories - ones that I imagine he's dined out on quite a bit over the years (while privately wishing he were at home with a bowl of cereal?) but they stand up to the re-telling. His own business start-up story, alongside partner Gerardine (now she sounds like a woman who refuses to be boxed in by fear of the unknown) is an inspirational tale of can-do entrepreneurship for which the phrase 'nothing ventured nothing gained' might have been coined. Fast forward 20 years to the Hemingways' collaboration with Wimpey Homes (Gerardine - "just because we've never designed houses before doesn't mean we shouldn't give it a go") and the start of their award-winning involvement in social housing design. This being an area of particular personal interest, and a direct link to the "bringing innovative solutions to regeneration and community development" bit of the Summit publicity which I'd found so enticing, I was sorry not to get more on this - but Mr H was respectful enough to recognise that more from him would cut the next speaker short. Would it have made a difference if he'd known she wasn't actually going to speak? Anyway, happy to do cereal at mine any time you fancy a further chat, Wayne.

More music - and more cheese, this time of the disco variety - from art lecturer, performer and self-confessed music and social media obsessive, Dr Rebekka Kill. It was late afternoon, the sugar surge from the cake-and-networking break had worn off and we'd been listening to speakers for 3+ hours - but suddenly a room full of heads nodding to the beats, hips shimmying gently in seats. Dr Kill rocked. History will probably never relate whether it was actually white wine in the bottle that she necked her way through, but it introduced an element of edginess into the proceedings. Glugging wine straight from the bottle?!  Before six  o'clock, on a Wednesday?!
 

This wasn't necessarily innovation (it seems djtheduchess has done this gig several times before) but it was a refreshingly novel twist - a whole keynote speaker slot completed with not a word spoken, not even a Q&A. The format meant that the concepts behind the 7" vinyl - conveyed in snappy one-liners via PowerPoint - were condensed almost to the point of oversimplification, but it made for a nicely pithy presentation with certainly enough content to be thought-provoking. Look - it is possible to be a successful hybrid of your various selves, rather than living out your academic days and your disc-spinning nights in different boxes. What will the new forms of social media look like - disco-esque Facebook, punky Twitter, the best bits of both, or neither of the above? I'm not sure that the overriding objective of the event was to leave the audience pondering the question 'So am I Disco or am I Punk?', but it was a great note to end on.

So, we got examples of creative thinking and good advice on being creatively entrepreneurial, in abundance. Did we get innovation, and the impetus to make more of it happen? We did each receive a dinky take-away sample of the hottest in printing technology, courtesy of the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre (check out the A Primer on 3D Printing TED Talk for an eye-opening introduction). But a skip round TED's Innovation category, Nesta's catalogue or Culture Label's publications on creative entrepreneurship (to name but three) might suggest that, at that particular moment in Huddersfield, we were some way away from the cutting edge.  And yet it's all relative, isn't it? I imagine every one of us will have taken away a lightbulb moment, some stimulus, a conversation, a concept or a connection that will prompt us to try something we've not tried before, take a leap in our business, form a new alliance, devise a new project or shake up a habitual way of doing something.

Innovations and creative sparks will emerge from the Summit on our terms and in our own contexts, then. Some will be small and some more significant, game-changing even. How about sharing yours with the rest of us in some way - disco, punk, or whatever works for you?