Creative industries - theory and practice

Today I have been at the University of Birmingham's Business School. I was attending a seminar Creativity and the Creative Value Chain. Anyway turns out it was an extremely interesting day with lots of food for thought with speakers from across the UK. Some highlights for me:

Defining the creative industries - this is a troublesome area - and some in-depth critique on the issues of, for example, lumping a bunch of 'sub-secotors together were discussed. This is something I've written about previously. There was some quite serious suggestions that the reasons for the particular UK definitions and inclusion of some sub-secotors, over others, might be a little more cynical than one might hope.

Some interesting work testing out Richard Florida's theories of what makes a creative city - an interesting UK map with creativity levels illustrated in increasingly darker shades of blue: Birmingham quite dark blue, Solihull quite dark, Sandwell positively anaemic.

I was joined by several colleagues from my university, some of whom were speaking in the second half of the day (I was not on this occasion). I was struck , pleasantly, by what I realise is a bit of a characteristic of my own place of work. You see what was evident is that we are pretty industry facing - the three presentations by colleagues were all about how they and the respective projects they represent engage with, support and work in collaboration with the local and regional creative industries sector. It was great to hear this practical stuff to put all the earlier theoretical stuff into context. Very interesting.

Female entrepreneurship conference tomorrow

Tomorrow I will be heading over to Birmingham Chamber of Commerce to present. I am one of several speakers and the main thrust of the event is to celebrate the work carried out on and ESF EQUAL project. This is the info I have on it:

Making Women's Enterprise More Equal

An event to celebrate the success of

EQUAL Women into Business work in the Midlands

A mainstreaming and networking opportunity

designed to share and connect best practice

Dear Colleague,

I would like to invite you to the Making Women's Enterprise More Equal event.

When : Monday 19th November 2007 12 noon – 3 pm

Where : `The Hospitality Suite, Birmingham Chamber of Commerce

75 Harborne Road, Birmingham, B15 3DH

What :

- Key Note Speakers, including Lorely Burt, MP and Jill Parker, Enterprise Brokerage Director, Business Link West Midlands

- Presentations of products and outcomes generated by EQUAL projects in the region

- Showcases

- Demonstrations and Stalls

- Networking Buffet Lunch


I believe this is a free event - any interested parties can email me and I'll forward to the organiser. I'll be presenting the stuff have done recently around ' Gender and entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries'.

A little feedback

Back from Glasgow, having had a full-on time. Both my presentations went pretty well, it was standing room only in the women's track on Wednesday afternoon - but I guess it helps presenting in the first session. I got some interesting questions and feedback and met a couple of interesting others working in similar areas. Following the welcoming reception, much wine and not quite enough sleep, I got up on Thursday morning to deliver my second paper. Another good audience of some 60-odd people - this was in the enterprise education track and an increasingly intimidating audience (the more often I go to this conference the more I realise how high ranking and influential some of the other delegates are - in the world of enterprise, small business policy and academia that is). Still it was a good opportunity for me to talk about some of my ideas, thoughts and research around contextual enterprise education - more on this soon as a paper which relates this to the Creative inds should emerge in the public-ish domain in the not too distant future (fingers crossed).

I guess I should also take this opportunity to thank my co-authors who are all helping me to become a better and more thoughtful writer and whose ideas help make these papers, I think, pretty interesting reading. When I get the chance I'll try to feedback some more around what the great and the good feel we should be doing for entrepreneurs and small businesses here in the UK and what the threats and challenges etc might be. Incidentally do email if I can furnish you with any of my stuff.

Off to Glasgow

I am currently putting together a bunch of slides for a conference I am attending over the next few days in Glasgow. The ISBE (Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship)conference is annual and in its 30th year. It attracts approx 600 delegates to come and listen to what's happening in terms of research, education and policy relating to entrepreneurship, enterprise and small business stuff. I am again presneting two papers this year - click the titles to go to the abstract and see what I've been up to:


Supporting enterprise educators; how to promote enterprise in new areas ®

Gender and entrepreneurship in the creative industries; what the literature tells us ®

This conference is extremely full-on with 9 thematic tracks running concurrently. Over the past four years, since I have been attending I have noticed the increase of attention to the creative industries at this conference - I'll report back on how it went and what sort of feedback I recieved - for now I'm back to the powerpoint - so annoying that I can't use Keynote for it!