Creative Enterprise

Where did 2010 go? and now I am 5

2011-02-02T13:46:00.006Z

Well it's that time of year again where I teach Digital Marketing. I spend a few weeks talking to students about their own online presence. Some start blogs, some develop their twitter identity...last week I asked them to join Linkedin and make contact with me. I don't think any did that.

This year I had to reflect that perhaps I hadn't given my own online presence much love. In fact this blog has somewhat gone to seed. I last posted in late 2009!

This afternoon I am taking a break from marking, last term I had an intense amount of teaching that meant my research suffered and blogging was the last thing on my mind, it also means I've a huge stack of marking still to get through. Still with some light at the end of the marking tunnel I thought I'd spend part of the afternoon figuring out how to go forward with my research and that's where this blog comes in.

I am about to embark on an intense period of time related to my research and PhD specifically and I intend to reflect on the process as I go along. Here I'll be highlighting various aspects for example when I manage to publish something, give a conference paper or read or write something of interest.

That was always the original purpose of this blog which incidentally celebrated it's 5th year last October!! here's a link to that first months blogposts back in 2005 - crikey what a lot has changed in that time!

Did you graduate from Wolverhampton Fine Art 1994?

2009-10-23T12:53:00.004+01:00

Ok so some folks will have noticed some recent Twitter and Facebook activity from me asking the question in the title of this post. If you did graduate from Fine Art 1994 from Wolverhampton. Then please let yourself be known and I'll forward the link to a simple career history survey - it should only take 10 minutes. Here is some of what I've said to the participants:

This survey is for graduates of Wolverhampton University's 1994 Fine Art Alumni. The survey is part of Charlotte Carey's PhD research. The research seeks to understand links between gender and entrepreneurship within the creative industries. Any information you contribute will be stored securely and your name will never be attributed to any of the data offered. This survey is aimed to capture the career paths of a cohort of creative industries graduates. I am hoping that the 1994 Fine art Wolverhampton alumni will participate in this study.

As part of the process of reaching this sample group I am making use of social media with the hope of generating a snowballing effect. Whereby one participant will forward information about the survey to their contacts within the grouping. This is proving harder than expected, partly due to the nature, amount of time that has passed and individuals names changing (through marriage etc.). An approach I am taking is to leverage my own social media networks in order to try to reach this group. All help is gratefully received. If you are or know of anyone within this grouping then please contact me directly via twitter @charlottecarey or simply respond to this posting in the comments.

IEEP; Twitter and Teaching Enterprise

2009-06-25T21:25:00.014+01:00

Yesterday (yeah okay I know I haven't blogged for ages, anyway...) I was presenting to this year's IEEP (International Enterprise Educators Programme) cohort with colleagues from two other universities; Dr Kelly SMith (Huddersfiled, @kellyjs) and Tom Williamson (Coventry @floppyarms). Not really sure how we were billed but I went along to talk about how I have used Twitter in my teaching.

Above is a screen shot of a slide. The table highlights how I think twitter is useful for the different courses I teach on.

I was trying to talk about why I use Twitter? Mainly it's because I teach interactive or digital marketing. So obviously Twitter, along with many other things, is covered. I use it for a number of practical things too. Students can interact with my networks (an area that with colleagues I have discussed elsewhere), develop their own, get an insight into appropriate ways of using Twitter on behalf of their future clients and for developing their own businesses and personal online presence. Twitter is not explored in isolation it is one of many tools (just currently particularly useful). As well as this students are encouraged to use it to annotate the session under a common #hashtag, making for group note taking and an ensuing conversation which, potentially, extends beyond the class room.

At the IEEP event a number of concerns were voiced. One of the issues that arose was anxiety about referring students to documents which held no academic rigour. Along with this was anxiety about the level of academic evaluation as to the value of services like twitter.

My initial response to these two points. Firstly the speed with which technology changes and the ways in which folks use the Internet and apply the various tools available is constantly evolving. In contrast an academic paper can literally take years to go through the review process and be published. This making research relating to use of twitter (at least peer reviewed academic research) rather thin on the ground. Twitter only started in 2006 after all.

A second aspect is a tension which I perceive within enterprise/entrepreneurship education and which has been borne out in various evaluations of enterprise provision I've been involved in. This being the balance between academic/theoretical pursuit and the need to provide students with insight into new and emerging business models as well as timely and appropriate marketing approaches (and that's scratching the surface). I am talking about theory vs practice.

The ensuing talk offered much healthy scepticism and tough questioning.

However anyone would think that we were pushy sales folk trying to flog our wares, rather than a couple of academics discussing how we are embracing new technologies, trying to conceptualise their implications and seeking opportunities from them for ourselves and our students.

Hmm as a final note I must thank the IEEPers as one way or another the debate has ended a long drought period within this blog (been tweeting too much....:-) Thank you and perhaps see you on twitter @charlottecarey

Fear and loathing in doctoral studies...

2009-04-21T18:22:00.006+01:00

Dear blogger forgive me it has been sometime since I last posted.

Dear reader

This blog has lost its way. Or rather this blogger has lost her way. Sometime ago I thought this was a twitter related thing but barely tweet anything worth reading there at the moment either...

Tomorrow I am due to present my PhD research so far.... this goes on and on. I have been delayed somewhat of late. Partly due to what I realise is pure fear! Fear of not completing (I know go figure, pull your finger out and bloody well get on with it), fear of my intended sample group not playing ball. Okay what else? oh yes fear of the whole scale of the thing.

This will not be news for anyone else who has embarked on this particular journey. It is a slog and as I've mentioned here before with all the other family and work things going on there is little time, at least not the right sort of concentrated time I could do with to fully engage with the process. Anyway these may all be excuses. Think I need to figure out a solution here.

Okay I have a much more positive post to write about some other new, interesting and thoroughly distracting pieces of research I've been working on.

Incidentally I might give this blog another chance. If I get a chance I'll update on tomorrow's event.

Kreative Oslo

2009-03-06T05:21:00.003Z

This week I am in Oslo. I am attending the launch meeting of Creative Metropoles, a new project where I am working with a couple of colleagues from across the university and researchers from 12 other EU cities. I'll talk about this in more depth as it develops but my colleague Jon Hickman has made a start by developing some of the conversation we've been having here about creative industries definitions.

Glamorgan Enterprise Education event

2009-01-20T19:01:00.003Z

Just a brief round up of the day back in December where, amongst others, my colleague Harry Matlay and I spoke at Glamorgan University on Enterprise Education. Includes a gym motivating pic!

Enterprise education and web 2.0

2009-01-13T17:23:00.004Z

Okay so there's no new years list. No resolutions (of the blogging variety). Last year was pretty intense but in a good way. I am now more a lecturer than a researcher - although I have a couple of research projects about to get underway and so the balancing act will continue for the forseeable and PhD rumbles on (desperate to get some of my work time devoted to this - that's a little something to work towards).

So my research interests are evolving but still focussed on the following broad topics:

Gender and entrepreneurship in the creative industries
Enterprise education

The former of these is my PhD topic and pretty much under wraps for the time being - it is a long slog with moments or real joy when I can literally feel my brain absorbing new ideas and stuff, but otherwise hard.

The latter, which has emerged from my funded research, has developed into various strands:

Contextualised enterprise education (i.e. enterprise taught within the context of a discipline e.g. sport or art and design)
What can generic business school enterprise education learn from how existing curriculum is taught within art and design?
Enterprise pedagogies and web 2.0 - this is an interesting area and one which seems to have a growing interest. Mainly it's about how education can respond to students increasingly immersed in the online world? how does that make them different sorts of learners? and what fantastic opportunities exist with in social media etc to engage with our students?

Based on the latter I am presenting next Friday (23rd Jan 09) at Birmingham City University for an event run by the Higher Education Academy for English.

HEA/BMAF Enterprise Education Event brief Feedback

2008-12-13T07:46:00.003Z

I am going through an insomniac phase at the moment so at 7.45 a.m on a Saturday morning I've already been up for 2 hours already!

Thought I'd give a little feedback from the HEA/BMAF event I was presenting at on Thursday. I'll frame this around my tweets from the day (I use twitter - micro blogging). Here are the three tweets, the latter 2 are in response to my twitter pal and enterprise education colleague Dr Kelly Smith (from Huddersfield University).

1. A very interesting day. With some tough love re:responsibilities of business schools in relation economic crisis

2. @KellyJS on this basis, what responsibility do we take/have?Could new enterprise/entrepreneurship pedagogy's be more appropriate? about 19 hours ago from web in reply to KellyJS

3. @KellyJS long story short:Business schools continue to teach Fordist models, these clearly don't work in 2008. i.e. credit crisis (David Rae,2008)

The day was set in the dramatic, wintery valley scenery of Pontypridd at the University of Glamorgan. First up was Prof David Rae who gave a timely insight into where we sit as business schools in terms of our delivery of business management pedagogy's. According to David our continued Fordist approach is out-moded and unsustainable. The current economic crisis clearly shows this. This gave a lot of food-for-thought for myself and the other delegates.

As my colleague Prof Harry Matlay and I were immediatly following David we had to think on our feet somewhat to respond to this message. I think, however, that our own presentation complemented his in so much as we were focussing very much on the who, when, why, how and when entrepreneurship/enterprise should be taught? We also considered what Business Schools could learn from how other disciplines deliver their generic pedagogy. Here I used creative disciplines as an example (see this earlier paper which explores this idea). Briefly, we suggest that generic training within, for example, art and design potentially leads to more enterprising behaviour, for example: experiential, project based curricula, peer review (crits), lecturers who are practitioners and exhibiting work.

Speaking with Dr Andy Penaluna (the organiser) yesterday I was expressing my sense of seeing the world and future a little bit differently as a result of this day. From my perspective this was one of those occasions where you come away recognising that your thinking has altered, in other ways a thoroughly stimulating day.

The presentations and a podcast from the day, I believe, will be made available soon and I'll point to them once they're online.

Off to Glamorgan

2008-12-10T12:47:00.002Z

Today I am off to an event organised by Andy and Kath Penaluna on behalf of the HEA/BMAF (Higher Education acadamy for Business, Management, Accountancy and Finance) and ISBE (Institure of Small Business and Entrepreneurship). My colleague Harry Matlay and I are speakers at an event and looking at Enterprise education (there is a brief outline of the day here).

We will be discussing the key questions 'The Current state of Entrepreneurship education: the Key questions'. I will, with the permission of my co-presnter give some more detail related to this when we're done and what we think those questions are. But as always any thoughts welcome?

Hello BCU

2008-12-03T11:43:00.002Z

Today I am due to present to some colleagues about why I blog. So thought I'd I've myself literally 5 minutes to put down as many reasons as possible:
feedback
rehearse
write down ideas
brainstorm
brain dump
practise articulating
collaborate
raise profile
manage profile
have profile
have online presence
be myself
be me
write
write some more
have ideas
exorcise ideas that won't develop
have ideas that might develop
come back to things
a repository of ideas and thoughts
figure stuff out
things to go back to when ideas dry up
reflect
think
think about multiple perspectives
avoid mentioning names
ethics
research ethics
plan
note to self
link
link to people
link to events
link to research
link me to literature
connect me to people
association with events and people and places
tell my story..........

I think I could go on and on. Blimey the endless benefits. Others might mention the 'conversation' being part of, and contributing to, the conversation around my research area.

Okay my blog has also just proved useful to thinking about what I might say this afternoon! Happy day.

a mini catch-up

2008-11-26T21:53:00.003Z

Since I last posted I've been very very busy. This is me in my first full year as a lecturer and still a researcher - trying to find the balance, afraid my blog has gone a bit on the back burner. I've had a couple of conferences in the last couple of months. Most recently ISBE -this is the 5th time I've attended this conference and I enjoy it more and more each year. Perhaps because I get more and more immersed in the networks there and they increasingly provide a rich source of knowledge, friendship and opportunity.

Note to self
A couple of issues that arose which I will blog about at some point:

1. the entrepreneurial university -
- is it lead by an entrepreneur?
- is it made up by entrepreneurial individuals?
- are academics entrepreneurial but just haven't recognised it yet?

2. Are those that are creative industry individuals running a business entrepreneurs?
I was reminded of a definition of 'entrepreneur' which clearly suggests that they are - I need to dig this out - But any thoughts in the meantime are welcome

My blog is 3

2008-10-25T21:03:00.008+01:00

A rather auspicious occasion came and went and I forgot to mark it. You see this little old blog had a birthday. Started on 23rd October 2005 it is now 3 years old. I'm afraid as children go this is a bit of a neglected one at the moment. My life in the last three years has changed hugely both personally and professionally - whether or not this blog has changed I'm not sure. Anyhow thought I ought to take the opportunity to reflect, look back at this blog and possibly to reflect upon its usefulness.

So as a starter for ten here is my second posting October 24th 2005 - 'Creative what?'

I've been in them one way or another since I was born. My mother an artist and art teacher, my father a graphic designer, my brother, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins all artists, architects, computer designers, engineers, map makers, actors, illustrators, jazz musicians or stain glass window painters.....what chance did I stand? ............

Seems odd reading it - especially based on how much I've subsequently read, digested and written about the definitions of the Creative Industries. Moving rapidly on - a year later saw a rather proud moment. My first paper to actually get published in a peer -reviewed academic journal, not many people probably will read or have it (probably) but in the world of academia this is where it's at. Here is my thoughts on it at the time. Pleased to say that this has been followed by several more.

A year later October 2007 saw me at the Plus festival. I really like this posting. I went to see Michael Wolff speak and his words really stuck with me, not only that but I have repeated them - especially the bits about 'creatives needing to be able to articulate their value'.

And now a fourth October 25th as a blogger. I haven't been as good at keeping my blog up-to-date of late. My life seems to be unbelievably busy. I am now a lecturer, researcher, PhD candidate and more recently a PG cert in HE student, not to mention a mummy. But the blog has been and i hope will continue to be a fantastic place for me to get my head around ideas and occasionally when I'm lucky some feedback. It offers me the opportunity to reflect. Ironic that this blog is arguably more heavily read and way more public than any academic journal article I am likely to write, yet allows me to write with far greater ease and informality.

Anyway that is my brief blog birthday post. A lot more has happened I've travelled a lot, met some fantastic people, been involved in some truly fascinating research and listened to wonderful stories in that time - a lot of which have been reported upon here.

So a final word for the next year I must try to blog more often as it really does help me!

Blog Action Day: What can enterprise do?

2008-10-15T21:24:00.003+01:00

Today is blog action day . A day where bloggers are encouraged to raise awareness of a global issue through their combined weight. The issue this year is poverty. So I was thinking: what would be appropriate to this blog to talk about?

I figured I could talk at length about what creative enterprise could do for poverty and possibly link to some examples. And hey I might do that. But thought I would just briefly draw attention to the work some local small creative enterprises are doing to respond to blog action day.

An idea initiated, I think by Nick Booth of Podnosh a small podcasting company, in response to BAD08; he rallied a bunch of other local media companies, individuals and experts to spread their blog/social media related expertise amongst charities working with poverty in our region.

I liked this idea. I liked that a group of small creative companies organised themselves into a critical mass, to provide some practical and useful support - in what appeared to be a very short time. Leveraging the networks that these sectors are characterised by, not to mention the social media platforms they were advising on.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend but I saw this picture from Chris Unitt, taken a couple of hours ago - looks like they had a full house.

Trying to blog...

2008-09-20T21:51:00.008+01:00

Wow can not believe I've not posted since July- I think perhaps my twitter addiction is to blame. That and what has proved to be a very busy summer. Not holidaying you understand but writing. And then writing some more. I've already mentioned this is not something that comes particularly easily to me. But hey.

Thought I would do a little recent news for those who might be interested and for me to remember what I've been up to.

Well term starts soon so I am in the process of writing some course materials for an interactive marketing module I'll be teaching. But as well as this I am developing my current research portfolio and developing some interesting areas with colleagues from all over the place - more news as these emerge. I've also been writing a chapter for the Diana Symposium over in Belfast later this year -this is related to my PhD research so it is taking priority somewhat. I feel a bit sort of too close to this one to talk about it too much so I'll see how it goes before saying anymore.

While in Belfast I will also attend this years ISBE conference, building on some of my project work my paper there develops some of the ideas I've been having around the role of the practitioner as educator and looking to creative disciplines to see how it works there - this paper focuses, specifically on assessment and assessment of ideas (please still do the survey if you do teach in a creative discipline - see last post).

In other news earlier this month I was at BAM in Harrogate. I really enjoyed this conference for the most part. It was in the Majestic hotel which was fabulous - sort of faded glory, I loved it. The conference had a 'Creative and Cultural Industries' track which was great for me. There was a good set of strong papers presented, mainly in a 'round-table' format, which was good for a less formal discussion around the various topics. I've still got to go through all of the various bits of paper I collected, but when I have done I'll try and comment more on some of the themes which emerged.

Creative educators; ideas assessment survey

2008-07-31T10:26:00.006+01:00

I am involved in a small research project which is looking interesting, part of it requires gathering the perspective of educators from creative discsiplines. Can you help?

'Creative disciplines education is characterized by an experiential, project based learning environment, regular peer review and frequently led by lecturers who are also practitioners. In contrast, teaching entrepreneurship in business schools has been criticised for its traditional lecture and text book based delivery, as well as issues on the assessment of ideas within an academic framework. The aim of this research is to explore how creative disciplines education is taught, delivered and assessed, and how this might inform the development of enterprise education UK.'

Are you an educator in *any* creative discipline? If so I would be very grateful if you could complete this survey on how you assess ideas:

Creative Educators Assessment Survey!

It should only take about 5 to 10 mins and would contribute significantly to this emmerging field.

Following the development of the exercise, academic papers may be prepared for presentation at an academic conference (or for publication in an academic journal which uses this survey data as material). Institution details and names of individuals will be kept confidential. If the results are used for other purposes you will be consulted.

Many Thanks

Charlotte

Community managers for start-ups

2008-07-16T21:34:00.003+01:00

Following today's TE3 Open day and discussion around how, as enterprise educators, we can help students consider their marketing strategies. I came across this link courtesy of local journalist Joanna Geary about whether or not start-up owners can manage their own online communities.

Great to meet everyone who came today - I'll try and blog in more detail about the event in the next few days.

Digital divide - first thoughts

2008-07-13T08:52:00.004+01:00

I got a bit annoyed yesterday evening when I noticed a question I'd raised on the 'live blog' for Birmingham's Big debate had been used in the context of a blog posting about some folks (especially older folks) not having mobile phones, in the context of the digital divide. Anyway once I got over my annoyance it was actually quite useful for me to get to grips with trying to articulate something about the digital divide. Here was my response to the posting:

I must have missed this one but as Technorati picked up your link to my blog and your quoting me I feel obliged to respond. The question I raised was in the context of the debate. Like you, my question was based on anecdotal evidence and intended to stimulate the debate a bit. Perhaps with all of this we each bring with us different ideas and perceptions about who we mean when we talk about the digital divide.

For me I guess it is born out of research work I've been involved in, looking at social inclusion in the creative industries - the digital divide often being cited as an issue or major contributor to exclusion. So perhaps I am/was thinking of a younger demographic than you or at least those of working age.

My point I suppose was that as mobile technologies become more sophisticated, more accessible and the various media converge, then the digital divide might not be as vast as we perceive. I think I was responding to an assumption often made that folks need to be sat at an expensive PC to get internet access, when in fact most mobile phones and increasingly TV's can get internet or digital services. My understanding is that approx 45 million mobile phones are in use in the UK belonging to something like 85% of UK households (not my stats from various online sources).

I think there are issues for example: if a job application form is only made available online, as I believe some local authority cleaning jobs are, then this is an obvious issue as a regular mobile phone would not be too handy in this situation. I guess my point is that a lot of assumptions are made about the digital divide and perhaps we need to be a little clearer about who we mean. Although I have worked with a lot of folks who would identify themselves as non-techy or not computer literate I also see them doing all sorts of sophisticated things with their mobile phones and accessing all sorts of digital services.
Incidentally both my parents and even my 91 year old Grandmother are or have been mobile phone owners.

Having slept on it I think what I was trying to say is a lot of this stuff is about individual perception and confidence, not necessarily about availability and as media converges, mobile phones and TV's become more sophisticated (and with them users) then the divide narrows. Of course this is not my specific area of expertise but certainly I think it is an area which will effect my own research - so thought on this all very welcome.

I should say that there is a disclaimer here: most of my experience related here is from a UK and urban perspective.

Environmental entrepreneurship - the sea change

2008-07-12T09:10:00.005+01:00

This is just a reflection from my lecturer and enterprise educator perspective. As some of you will be aware this blog is about enterprise within the creative industries, following the research I am involved in within that sector. As part of this research I am pretty heavily immersed in enterprise education, initially from the how do you teach creatives to be more enterprising, but also generically how can enterprise be best taught and I've spoken about this here before.

Last month I attended and presented at the ICSB conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia - a sweet city by the coast. I presented some research related to recent ideas about implicit and explicit enterprise education and the idea of contextualised enterprise education. I'll explain about this another time maybe. But for now I just wanted to draw attention to an article I read in the guardian, some of the key note speakers at the conference and discussion I've had with my students.

I'll start with the latter. Back in January I was teaching on a module called 'Ideaslab' during these sessions one of the emphasis was on where folks find ideas, innovation and opportunities. To me an obvious area to look was to opportunities that climate change, greening consumer trends and the increasing emphasis on CSR might offer. So I developed a lecture and series of exercises to work through some of the potential ideas and opportunities. At the time I was a little bemused by how some (not all) of the students responded to this: i.e. as if I was trying to push some sort of political agenda or belief system. Still that is by the by and to me just re-iterated that attitudes towards enterprise and being an entrepreneur, in some quarters at least, are rather outdated.

Anyway fast-forward 6 months and I am in Canada at the ICSB conference and although there are a few papers here and there relating to the credit crunch, climate change and ethical businesses (you see it takes academia a little while to catch up - research -results-peer review to publication and dissemination is a slow process). But one of the occasionally annoying but generally valuable and interesting aspects of this conference was speakers during meal times - these were generally local successful entrepreneurs. A major characteristic of these entrepreneurs (and I don't know if it's a Canadian thing, a trend or a deliberate choice on behalf of the organisers) was that their businesses were generally coming from an ethical standpoint.

The first was a business who re-cycled office furniture and computers and stuff - they then re-used them elsewhere in the world - e.g. furnishing schools in a developing country. The point of the business was to reduce stuff, otherwise headed for landfill, service some corporate CSR policies, do some good in the world and make some money in the process.

The second was a modelling agency run by a very young entrepreneur (24 yrs old) he'd been in business since he was 14! Thing is the business was a different kind of modelling agency - the models were all 'normal' sorts of sizes - you might know some of them from the Dove campaign.

So I thought I'd take these examples back, both hugely successful companies with a conscience, for my next cohort of students. Then just to add a little punch to the argument I came across this from the Guardian. Seems investors are dictating change by backing environemntal and ethical businesses with their funds.

Perhaps the next group of students will start to take this a bit more seriously.

How to register for TE3

2008-07-10T16:32:00.003+01:00

If you want to go I forgot to add the llink to register for the TE3 Open day - there are still some places - go to:

Open day details and registration

It's a free event.

TE3 Open Day 2008

2008-07-10T16:27:00.003+01:00

Well it's come around fast - you may recall me wittering about the 2007 Open day for the TE3 (Technology Enhanced Enterprise Education) project, where I presented the evalutation I'd been carrying out, last year. Well, somehow a whole other year has passed by and once again the Open day is upon us. The event is hosted by Birmingham City University here is the press release:

Universities Unite to Enhance Enterprise Education

[10th July 2008] Leading practitioners of enterprise education from across the UK, will be sharing the latest innovations in enterprise skills development, at the fourth annual Technology Enhanced Enterprise Education (TE3) Open Day. This year’s event will take place at Birmingham City University’s Technology Innovation Centre (tic) on Wednesday 16th July 2008.

Established in 2003, the TE3 project has developed into a collaborative community of Midlands-based enterprise education specialists. In order to expand this collaboration to a national stage, the TE3 Open Day is co-organised with Enterprise Educators UK, a national network of over 500 higher education practitioners from 83 member institutions.

TE3 Open Day co-ordinator, Charlotte Carey, a Lecturer in Applied Research at Birmingham City University’s Business School says: “The main emphasis of this year’s event is on play, as we want delegates to get hands-on and experience the technologies themselves. Sessions will range from high-technology virtual worlds, to mind-mapping table cloths!”

The event’s opening session will explore how internet-based ‘Web 2.0’ applications can be utilised to create engaging and connected enterprise education. The Head of the TE3 project, the University of Birmingham’s Dr Kelly Smith, will join Birmingham City University’s Charlotte Carey to assess the use of Web 2.0 tools, including blogging, social-networking, wiki’s and Twitter, in enterprise-related curriculum.

The University of Wolverhampton’s Jane Edwards and Kevin Brace will then take delegates on a short tour of the virtual learning spaces in the internet-based virtual world, Second Life. Delegates will be invited to sample a virtual enterprise project, which allows participants to experience the cut and thrust of business, in a low-risk virtual environment.

The open day programme also includes an exploration of a wide range of high and low-technology solutions for student engagement and curriculum development, with contributions from Leeds Metropolitan University’s Alison Price and Sheffield Hallam University’s Dr Simon Brown.

Commenting on the importance of enterprise skills development, the Head of the TE3 project, Dr Kelly Smith says: “Enterprise education gives students both an alternative career option and the confidence to make a difference in whatever type of work they choose. By utilising new technology, we can spread learning opportunities to a wider audience and make learning more engaging, helping more students to develop vital entrepreneurial skills”.

Dr Simon Brown, Director for Enterprise Teaching and Learning, Sheffield Hallam University and Vice-Chair, Enterprise Educators UK says: “The TE3 Open Day is a great opportunity for colleagues from different backgrounds to meet and share experiences. Our association with this event provides a welcome opportunity for members of Enterprise Educators UK to learn from this well established and highly regarded project.”

The TE3 Open Day will take place at tic’s Millennium Point campus in Birmingham City Centre. Further event information can be found at www.te3.bham.ac.uk

Research and entrepreneurship ditty

2008-07-06T17:48:00.003+01:00

I've been doing some work on my literature review this afternoon. Like I guess a lot of folks in my situation this can seem an overwhelming experience. I am currently about 18,000 words in. It looks like this section alone will be approx three chapters eventually and I am working away at each of the various sections. But as someone who is not the worlds fastest reader I struggle a bit with it, not least because for everything you read there is a ton more other stuff you could read and all the stuff the folks read who you're reading. Or put another way it's like climbing a mountain in order to reach a destination only to discover, when at the top of the mountain, that there are multiple other mountain ranges a head each of which need climbing.

Another frustration is that each hours reading only seems to result in one or two sentences of critical analysis of said literature. so results are slow going. Today, however I have been getting into it. The mountain was entrepreneurship, the following mountain ranges appear to be economics, neo-classical and Austrian (Fine Art degree is feeling less useful by the minute). I did come across this little ditty that I rather liked, while considering definitions of the entrepreneur, it goes something like this:

An alternative definition suggests that when discussing the role of the entrepreneur, within ecenomic development, one can frame the discussion by taking the view of a historian with hindsight, here the entrepreneur is identified by ‘being the one who was right when practically everyone around them was wrong’ (In Carey 200? Casson, 2003:10)

Not sure why quite liked that one.

Other news PhD related. I have started to disseminate my survey - this is slower going than I'd like, the sample group are harder to reach than I anticipated and I am anxious about whether or not they'll participate. Still fingers and more crossed - I'll blog about this more at some other point. As well as something about researching, ethics and blogging.....coming soon.

Conference in Canada

2008-06-19T17:35:00.003+01:00

I have a big post being written - honest - and I know size isn't everything. But I've had a busy old time of it lately. A great deal of marking, some teaching and trying to get a bunch of research complete before the funding ends and somewhere there is a lot to say. But just a quick note to say I am off, tomorrow, to Canada, to Nova Scotia to be precise-ish. Here I will be attending and presenting a paper related to enterprise education, building on a previous paper looking at the role of the entrepreneur educator or practitioner lecturer.

Anyway the conference is the 53rd International Council for Small Business (ICSB) 2008 World Conference and I'm looking forward to it. It should be good to meet some people, hear about other's research, and an opportunity for some time out of my, recently hectic, schedule to focus on my research. I'll feedback on my return. And perhaps use the flight and 3hr check in!! to get on with that ever so long other post!

Women in the Creative Industries

2008-06-09T10:51:00.005+01:00

I have a rather long and rambling blog post coming together in the background.In the mean-time I thought I'd highlight a recent-ish article, which reminded me of some of the motivations for my research. Here the lack of women in high-ranking positions in the U.K's top arts organisations is highlighted

From the first piece of research I was involved in, looking at 'social inclusion in the creative industries', I've been aware of the sector not being quite as 'right on' as perhaps, I'd originally thought or hoped. As the U.K's culture minister Margeret Hodge puts it:

"Ironically, this sector has a longer way to travel to really reflect diversity than other sectors....there is the challenge around women not just in executive positions but also in non-executive positions... We need to ensure barriers are removed."

The full article is here: More women are needed in top-ranking arts posts, says Culture minister

boo bloody hoo -Yes I'm moaning

2008-06-03T08:21:00.000+01:00

I had supervision the other day and was reminded of how far off my Gantt chart I have got. I think this is pretty usual and trying to do a part-time PhD while doing a full-time job, along with trying to be a reasonable parent is pretty tough going whatever the weather.

Anyway I was trying to work out why I cant just do the two hours every day (should be 14hrs a week) and figured my concentration span just doesn't work like that. I don't think I lack discipline, just that I am working pretty hard at most other aspects of my life and this one, well, it's hard, and at 9.pm (when the other aspects are generally asleep)I don't necessarily have the mental capability or motivation to apply myself.

So what to do? I am having some significant work/life balance issues. Having recently ditched my car I also seem to have an hour less each day! but intriguingly have aqcuired an extra two hours reading time (#onthebus). Perhaps buses could get tables then laptops would be easier to manage - that way I could do whole PhD on the bus!

I don't know how to resolve this stuff I guess I'll continue to muddle on with the constant sense of comprimise and frustrations at a job or some jobs not quite done.

PhD: a child's eye view

2008-05-26T21:02:00.004+01:00

In typical style my daughter was styling out going to bed this evening. This used to involve asking her most tricky questions at bedtime, classics being 'how do you make skateboards?' or 'how was the earth made?'. This has become more sophisticated as we've got older and she has become very good at engaging me in conversation at this bedtime time.

Anyway this evening, for the first time, she showed a real interest in my PhD (oh I know she's smart - obviously seen me waffling about it to some poor soul, cornered at a family gathering, and thought 'that'll buy me 10 more mins' and the rest). Anyway as someone who is big into narrative and the benefits of storytelling, I always value the opportunity to reflect on my own story. What was also good was that her questions are so left-field I could use this for Viva experience.

So here is something like how our conversation went:

Q.Did they always have a PhD or did it only start when you started working there?
A. No the university already did PhDs. Everyone does a PhD on their own subject - sort of something they want to figure out and get expert in. I'm a student, it's a bit like doing a course.

Q.What is your subject?
A.Gender and entrepreneurship in the creative industries

Q.What does that mean?
A.Well Gender is sort of you know whether someone is a male or female, entrepreneurship is about running a business and creative industries are you know art, film making, design and stuff.

Q.Oh - why are you doing that?
A.Well I did some research and it seems women are less likely to run businesses doing that stuff than men

Her: Mum - you know it's just because in the olden days women didn't even work

Me: I guess, I mean I know that's sort of why

Q.Well you don't really need to bother doing the PhD now do you? I mean that's the answer

A.Yeah but. the whole thing is I can't just say that I have to do the research to evidence it.

Q.Why don't you just be an artist instead?

A.Well I was when I left college. You know uncle XX and I had our studio in the Custard Factory and we tried, but you know, I guess I just didn't know how to run a business.

Bingo I was off...

You see as an artist you need to know how to run a business, you know sell your paintings, promote yourself, get commissions, deliver on time, do your tax returns...

(Well that was the entrepreneurship and the creative industries bit covered...)

Creative Enterprise 2008 Presentations and speaker info all online

2008-05-02T11:29:00.004+01:00

Had all the stuff from the Creative Enterprise 2008 conference through yesterday, which has been neatly packaged into a press release and a section on our Media Depts - website with all the speaker presentations and biog details. According to the press release here's what I said at the time with regard to the relationship between schools of Art and Design and Business schools in terms of delevering enterprise education:

"We had some interesting comments about collaborations between Art, Media and Design faculties and business schools which suggested some tensions, however the conference highlighted how, at least two institutions had navigated this and benefited. What is clear however is that the pros and cons of such collaborations are somewhat uncharted."

The full press release can be found here and all the speaker details, presnetations and wotnot can be found here

Teaching new media marketing with Twitter....

2008-05-01T17:37:00.004+01:00

I am sitting at my desk it is 5.38 so officially outside of work time now. Wondering what to do next? I have head spinning issues. You know? when you are sort of over tired, too much to think about, too much to do and ideas and general stuff keeping you from actually doing anything? So I figured I'll blog - get some of it down.

The last few days I've been doing some pretty solid lecturing here at the university. 6 hours Tuesday, 7 yesterday - this is extreme hard work! To retain concentration, enthusiasm and energy for those sort of stretches is kind of exhausting. However the thing I find about lecturing is that you get to reiterate your ideas and thoughts about stuff, if you're lucky you also get the input of some keen minds and whole bunch of new ideas emerge.

I've been teaching New Media marketing. This week I was mainly focussed on online social networking sites, creating community around your product and keeping an eye on the ever changing/evolving online world. Twitter became one of the focuses for these sessions and by day two I was encouraging my Twitter buddies to participate in the lecture (imagine Twitter projected to class).

My final cohort of students were Msc Business creation students they are all 'entrepreneurs'in the making. Twitter offered the opportunity for my class to interact with, some of the freelance and SME community who are my Twitter buddies, one offered themselves as a 'Live' case study, others offered pointers in online marketing.

All of this was unplanned and could potentially be a much bigger session with all of them sat at computers, laptops, pdas or with their mobile phones participating in a more formal way, with my 'followers' chipping in as and when. Another real benefit of the exercise was it was a direct demonstration of how the users help the evolution of the product (Twitter)by reconfiguring its application (teaching aid) on the fly.

Anyway big thanks to Podnosh, Livebrum (URL to come) and Robert Sharl for their input yesterday - much appreciated.

Message and Medium

2008-04-21T11:33:00.006+01:00

Well I've been kind of quiet here since the female bloggers thing. It sparked some interesting discussions and thought processes for me. As my PhD research is very much focussed around gender and entrepreneurship in the creative industries sector I am always sensitive to what are the drivers and barriers to women (and men) within these sectors (Incidentally I am using the DCMS definition of the creative industries which is broad and includes software design, computer games design and publishing - blogging must have a fit there). So the discussion that arose from the Birmingham Bloggers meeting has been a useful one for me, as it highlights some of the opportunities and challenges for the sector in terms of inclusion.

Perhaps some early indications are that women are, potentially, more pre-occupied with the message (content) than the medium (technology)- Of course both are serious drivers of innovation and change, but perhaps here and among the Birmingham Blogging community (ok not all of you I know) the emphasis is sometimes on the latter. Now this is all anecdotal and not even remotely scientific, but as I am currently developing, and deploying, my various surveys (online and face to face narrative interviews). It will be interesting to see if this is an area which emerges.

Incidentally I am keen to develop more research projects in this area if anyone would be interested in collaborating then do drop me an email. charlotte dot carey at gmail dot com

Women, the creative industries, digital technologies, blogging and inclusion

2008-04-02T20:14:00.006+01:00

I want to keep this brief because it's supper time, but a little explanation around this blog, my research topic and how a little event on Monday suddenly put all that stuff into sharp relief.

A story: About 10 years ago I was immersed in all online stuff in the local area (was even regaling the whole 'Charlotte Carey Online' debacle (a rather low budget BBC Radio WM weekly tech radio show) the other day) this all carried on for a few more years and then in 2000 I had my daughter. I took 6 months maternity leave. What happened in that time was a bit weird. I kind of lost my tech mojo or perhaps my confidence to keep on top of the fast changes in technology.

Another thing I noticed was a whole bunch of women that I'd previously met at private views and the like, who had mysteriously disappeared, were now in this other world. The mummy world. It is a day time world where there aren't many private views or networking events, def no impromptu after work schmoozing and networking happens but accompanied by nappy changing and other baby related stuff.

Now this is all quite a while a go for me, mojo was recovered, although slightly altered, private views became once more an option - occassionally. But the whole impromptu thing now has to be planned for.

(and I should add a little disclaimer here: In my experience having a baby and looking after ones small child is one of the most awesome and wonderful experiences - I am not trying to diminish that in anyway. I also know that this is not unique to women and that increasingly men stay at home and take care of childcare)

Now why do I mention this all? well it was this experience and some early research I was involved in that lead me to the work I am immersed in at the moment around gender and entrepreneurship in the creative industries. I got to thinking: if so much about the sector is characterised by sort of night-time living, networking, friendships and 'who you know' then how do folks with caring responsibilities and baby sitting issues get involved? how are their careers affected by this potential exclusion?

This was highlighted recently at the Bham Bloggers (see below) meeting where a bunch of women couldn't make it due to childcare. Now this is not to say that this is the only reason women weren't there (but that is for another posting). But a point that was raised, was that potentially women’s voices are missing and this is pretty serious to the development of these areas. Discussion (see comments related to this blog posting by Stef) led to how women could potentially organise themselves into some daytime blogger meetups, child friendly ones at that. That perhaps these could be a stepping stone to the wider group.

What interests me is that by having a voice, women interested in technology and how it could shape their businesses and the sectors they work within might really add value and a different perspective to the overall mix.

Later: Re-reading my final paragraph and having thought about it some more I realise this sounds a little patronising. What I sort of mean is that they should be shaping/influencing this stuff as much as any one else and in some quarters probably are, but here in the WM it still feels very male dominated - am Imaking sense?

Anyway I'll get in touch with those women and see if we can fix something up?

Social media cafe and blogging and men and stuff

2008-04-01T08:50:00.002+01:00

Last night I went to the 3rd Birmingham bloggers meet. Organised by Nick Booth, Podnosh. Overall I have to say it was kind of fun, and interesting too. First of all I thought I would share the rather mischievous notes/observations I made (verbatim) at the event and if I have time I'll expand on them sensibly.

SXSW(M) bit- tech savvy scale?

Birmingham Bloggers appox 30

Women 2

Dubber - very smooth camera holding/beer reaching action

Digital media passé - apparently

Applying what was learnt at SXSW to other areas beyond creative inds - (Re: Michael Wolf)

Strikes me - I must invite my single girlfriends next time (1/15) "Girls I found where all the men are!"

Co-working movement - Re: San fran

Man from London – ‘wanted folks to know how 'cool' this stuff was.... ‘

Refreshing to know, that at least in this area London doesn't appear any cooler

Social Media cafe and co-working space (sounds kind of familiar~)

Bert and Ernie

I'm humming YMCA while I type - wierd....

CUBIT....back in da day, 90's and custard factory - also thing in Wolverhampton

def recalling research around co-working spaces etc empty spaces

Increasing chance of serendipity

Appreciating canteen at work in a whole new way

Thinking how great in some ways working in a University can be - constant opportunities to network cross faculty/collaboration/serendipity ago go

'Evangelist' totally soo 90's - no?

I couldn't help pointing out that the group was seriously lacking in diversity. All but, I think, three were white, male and around the late 20's early 30's mark. In the pub afterwards it occurred to me however, that as a community it was as much my responsibility to help diversify the group as it is anyone else’s. But I do have some confusion about the purpose of the group.

Is it a group for folks that happen to blog and live in Birmingham?

Is it a group for folks that blog about technology and live in Birmingham?

Is it a group for folks who blog, have an interest in new media/social networking/digitally stuff and live in Birmingham?

Is it a group for freelancers working within new media sector to come together?

It was interesting for me to see how this is developing. From the Creative Enterprise perspective there was a definite focus on how small businesses, sole traders and freelancers can make use of social media both on and off line and I could sense a business plan or proposal to an RDA percolating from some of the group. One thing I would say is a lot of this stuff had been tried before. It is not new that there are a lot of freelancers (particularly in the creative inds) about, who seek out space to network, work, share space and collaborate, even the internet as a conduit to this collaboration isn't all that new, the tools may have changed a bit (was email, newsgroup, discussion lists etc - now blogging, facebook, twitter etc) but not necessarily the application.

I'll expand on some of my bullets at some point.

Homework done 517 words ok Pete?

Oh and just noticed Stef Lewandowski has some pics up

Friday afternoon blues

2008-03-28T16:55:00.000Z

Today I am a bit stuck. I am having one of those days where I am utterly overwhelmed with all that is around me and all that there is to do and I can’t figure out where to start. So what to do?

Blog about it!

I know it might be boring for you (if you are even there) but you know I need to get some stuff out of my head and ordered in some way and this could be the place to start.

Here are a list of the things I am thinking:

1. I heard this and now I know it is true: A PhD is a long and lonely journey. So few other people have sufficient interest or knowledge about the topic, meaning that they don't get why I am ranting about its importance or about one journal article or another blah blah blah....it is a lonely place and apparently never bloody ending.

2. What to teach students?
I have an issue with the expectations of a group of students over what I feel they need or should be taught over their sense of what they need or should be learning. I am looking for a middle ground. I want to equip them with some principles but they want to know how to know how to use particular bits of software - with just 4 hours and 160 students (in groups of 20) what will really be useful for them?

3. Yesterday I went to an LSC/AWM creative inds event. It was an annual forum where regional (West Midlands, UK) 'key stake holders' feedback on what they've been up to and what they are going to do. All reasonably interesting with some new research about to be published on the regional ‘balance sheet’ (I’ll link to this when I’ve had a proper look) this describes the actual ‘supply and demand’ of our regional creative inds sector.

With regards to some of the other stuff discussed I did have a couple of concerns otherwise:

- 'Same old same old' a lot of the same issues covered again and again year on year and somehow never resolved and statistics being used inconsistently by the various stakeholders (I am aware that this is always an issue and about different interpretations of data - something I also am guilty of).

- Richard Florida is still cited widely and seems to be highly influential in regional public policy - this is a little scary, not that Florida doesn't have an interesting and useful hypothesis, more that his writings appear to be followed unquestioningly.

Okay can feel a rant brewing so will be quiet for now............
C

Creative Enterprise 2008: Part 2

2008-03-19T13:41:00.002Z

I am astonished to find a whole week has passed and I haven't managed to complete this feedback from the conference! Here is what I said I'd cover:

- Some of the great student presentations
- My own presentation
- The dynamic duo (otherwise known as Kath and Andy Penaluna)
- Other longitudinal research
and the final panel discussion

So following Linda Ball's outline of research, past and present. Some very engaging students and beneficiaries presented their businesses within the context of the support they received. I was reminded about how hearing some authentic stories from ‘the front’ can really put some meat on the bones of this type of , otherwise relatively academic, conference. The students were two from the MA Media Enterprise, run by Birmingham City University and two from the NESTA Insight Out programme. What was nice was to get to hear some brief comparison between the two styles of provision.

Back in 2006 (Creative Enterprise 2006) Gaynor Richards reported on the DCMS findings, which identified 5 unique styles of enterprise provision for creative disciplines these were:

- Curriculum Embedded Assimilated /Bolt-on
- Extra-curricular activities
- Post-Graduate Courses
- Continuing Professional Development
- External Agency Provision

Here we got to hear some of the ways in which students benefited from these different styles. They also highlighted some key aspects of the provision which have been most useful, namely, the application of the course work to their actual business and career development 'I used my own company as the case study'. Other key things were the access to networks and networking and the increase in confidence they all felt.

After a really very good lunch we broke into workshops. I was in a strand looking at the research side and pedagogical considerations. Here I presented some early findings from a piece of research I have been involved in since 2006. I work in a business school and since 2006 (just before the last conference) I have been seconded (just a day a week) to our school of art and design. Here I have had a research role and have been capturing the entrepreneurial learning and the journey of the first cohort of students on the afore mentioned MA in Media Enterprise. I presented some of the early indicators again highlighting all the things the students had mentioned plus some issues around success criteria (i.e. if a students leaves to start a business - that's a success right? unless you are a big institution teaching that student maybe?) this raised a bunch of issues around whether universities are the best place to teach enterprise and was picked apart in more detail in the Big Debate later on.

After me were Kath and Andy Penaluna. I've seen this pair present before and generally speaking they are a breath of fresh air in the big academic conferences, where one frequently sits through seemingly endless papers and PowerPoint presentations. They describe themselves as a left and right brain couple and stood each in their respective sides of the room. Andy the left, the creative and Kath, the right and ex-bank manager. What was great was how their own story, which they regaled, highlighted some significant differences in approach from a traditional business school approach to an art and design approach to teaching and learning generally and teaching enterprise specifically. Again this simulated a lot of questions about the role of the business school in all of this.

Finally Antonia Walker gave an interim view on some research she has been carrying out at Bath Spa University. This is a longitudinal study capturing the perceptions and aspirations of students, tracked through their lifetime within the university. Here she is capturing a more real picture of what students’ imagine they will be doing once they graduate. This will certainly prove to be a telling and important part of the overall picture as this field of research matures.

In the late afternoon I was joined by Andy Penaluna and Sian Prime (now a freelance consultant but previously she headed up the NESTA Academy), between us we responded to questions from the audience and from Dr Paul Long who chaired this more open, panel debate. The discussion ranged from what constitutes an entrepreneurial university? to how creativity, education and enterprise can meet. If anyone has any further comments or feedback on this or the other parallel session please do 'comment'.

That's it for now.

A paper about the last conference abstract here.
A paper about characteristics of art and design education and implicit enterprise education

Creative Enterprise and SXSW

2008-03-14T09:58:00.005Z

This is a little aside to the conference proceedings. A couple of thoughts have been coming together which I just wanted to try to get straight in my head. At the conference the final question to the audience was something like 'have we missed anything?' and of course inevitably a bunch of issues get missed because, well it was only one day. Still even though I piped up something along the lines of 'needing to consider social inclusion ' because ultimately the sector with all its networking is extremely exclusive (just do a quickie demographic audit next time you're out at a launch/conference/private view). Importantly I should say that in my own research experience what gets termed the 'creative industries' is often coming from a very white, middle class and western perspective - okay I am now off on a tangent and need to reign myself back in.

What I want to talk about is technology. Because what occurred to me (while swimming - always a good thinking place)was that when I am talking to students here (business school) about their business ideas what is imperative is how they engage with/adopt/ keep abreast of new technologies. I mean it is hard to imagine a business were some sort of web presence/capability or in fact the whole nature of the business wasn't just online (okay - I’ll give you sole trader window cleaner).

... and we didn't emphasise that much on Wednesday (apart form one student flagging up that the relevance of a module on the MA Media Enterprise which looks at new technologies and new media - apolos I can't remember the exact module name off the top of my head). Anyway it occurred to me that Dave Harte (yes him again) was simultaneously also part of a network of local folks out in Austin Texas at the interactive conference (although his was more of a virtual presence - obviously).

My understanding was that this group of creatives’, all I believe from slightly different disciplines (journalist, web developer, designer, blogger... anyway look at their site) were out there on a major fact finding mission on behalf of the West Midlands creative industries sector - all disseminated as it went along - they also asked folks from back home to suggest tracks/panels that they should attend on our behalf. I with my new media marketing lecturer hat on asked them to go to some of the marketing focused things but what occurs to me now. Now it is too late. Is it is the enterprise panels that may have been really useful. How small creative businesses and new nascent entrepreneurs in the sector can leverage technology? Although I guess that was probably the gist of a lot of the whole conference.

But here's the thing: when we teach students to be enterprising, we really need to be making sure that they are in a competitive position to be able to understand and exploit the continuous change and development of technology and have them really get how folks (customers/suppliers/promoters/distributors) engage in it.

Yeah and Dave? SXSW09? Room for any lecturers?;-)

CE08 update

2008-03-13T16:11:00.006Z

A quick update - had this link through from Jemima Gibbons, from Interactive Know How who facilitated one of the workshops - 'Teaching practical entrepreneurial skills' - I didn't get to this one so it's good to get a flavour from her notes of the day: Intereactive Know How

Also Dave Harte of Digital central has linked to everyone who spoke!

Oh yeah and another thing - the whole thing was recorded - so should be a podcast and some rather dubious pics of speakers coming soon!

The first insallment! CE08

2008-03-13T16:09:00.000Z

Yesterday was the 2008 Creative Enterprise conference, hosted by
the Media departmentof Birmingham City University and situated in the historic School of Jewellery.

This was a day long conference exploring issues of what's working in terms of teaching enterprise to creative discipline students. The day went in a usualish format i.e. organisational address, keynote speaker and then if took a bit of a detour some refreshing perspectives from students and beneficiaries from various courses followed by the most amazing lunch courtesy of Lassan restaurant in the jewellery quarter.

The afternoon consisted of two sets of break out sessions one of which I presented some early findings from the research I am doing with the MA Media Enterprise (will talk about this later) - I also got asked to sit on a panel discussion.

So here are some highlights (incidentally if you came along then please do feel free to comment with your own highlights):

Following a very smooth introduction from Dave Harte: marathon runner, who'd of thought it funny man and project leader of Digital Central , Linda Ball from the University of the Arts London, gave a keynote address and picked out a whole host of issues which were continually referred back to throughout the day by the various speakers. These included:

- The importance of critical both self and peer evaluation - This is a key attribute of an art and design education and it's interesting that Ball has picked this up as I understand it a sort of success criteris in entrepreneurial life.

- She also really emphasised the importance of continued development of creative practice 'Critical for success', something, I feel, sometimes gets lost in all the discussions around developing enterprise in these sectors.

- Other issues around the nature and characteristics of the sectors, all now well documented the networking, motivation, portfolio working were themes picked up again and again throughout the day. Mainly in terms of how education can try to stimulate these and provide a rehearsal space for some of these later entrepreneurial behaviours.

- Another key theme again picked up by many (myself included) was the importance of experiential learning, Linda described a 'Progressive experiential learning cycle' model to describe this.

- Confidence again was a key theme, and a bit of a no-brainer you might think, but the implications relating to confidence are wide in terms of social inclusion and diversity issues.

Linda also spoke about the business skills required and the nature of business support that would be beneficial. I'll get onto all this in more detail in a later posting. So far I am upto about 10.45a.m yesterday morning so I'll leave it at that for now and post a little bit more later about:

- Some of the great student presentations
- My own presentation
- The dynamic duo (otherwise known as Kath and Andy Penaluna)
- Other longitudinal research
and the final panel discussion.............but right now I need to do some work work!

Oh I nearly forgot and must remember to blog in detail the buzz word of the day 'risk' who takes it and when?

Creative Enterprise 2008

2008-03-12T17:36:00.004Z

Briefly, just back from Creative Enterprise 2008 - I know Dave Harte (Digital Central) gave out this address so I will endeavour to do a proper blog posting with, what I saw as, some of the highlights of the day - but for now I am on my way out to another event - so it will most likely be tomorrow!

If you did attend please do email me with anything you'd like discussed here (or if you didn't for that matter)

charlotte dot carey at gmail dot com

New Zealand, enterprise and academia

2008-03-09T08:51:00.000Z

Written last monday - posted sat

Well back from what felt like a flying visit to see my brother over in Auckland (NZ). Having woken up at 3a.m for the last couple of nights and having my morning 'smoko' (I don't know it's what my brother calls elevensies - he is totally gone Kiwi and lost is sarf London twang) by 8.45 in the morning, I thought I might as well put the time to reasonable use and report back on thoughts and observations from a city that appears to be extremely enterprising.

Observation one: Owning your job and intra-preneurship

I bought a wedding present for my brother and his new wife - it was a steam iron. Now on the face of things this is not the most exciting story, or gift for that matter, but here's the thing I came out of the store having bought the top of the range, most expensive iron that the store had. This was not my intention when I went in. But Thomas explained to me, in great detail, the differences between each of the irons, he really new his stuff and shared his knowledge with great enthusiasm - who knew that irons get dirty inside? he'd even come across a woman who'd had 'ants living inside her iron'- but not this beauty with special clean inside device, self-turning off switch and stainless steal face - well the coated ones peel apparently. Safe in the knowledge that I'd selected an iron that would last a lifetime, Thomas then offered me a 20% discount - just like that!

The thing that struck me about the whole thing was that Thomas was at most 17 years old, he refferred to the irons as 'his section' he knew everything about the irons, he was enthusiastic about irons, he SOLD me an iron, he sold me the most expensive iron on his section without me realising or begrudging parting with over 100 dollars (discount included) for the privilege. The store was a big old ware house style B an Q type place but the experience was very personal and professional. when I mentioned this all to my brother he explained this was common phenomena in NZ because individuals were really encouraged to 'own their jobs'. Now from an enterprise perespecitve and when, in my work, I have been thinking and discussing enterprising organisations and developing enterprising characteristics it struck me that giving ones staff the autonmomy to make descisions (e.g. give discounts), to have that level of responsibility and ownership makes such a difference to the consumer, customer and service users experience. It presumably empowers the staff member and makes them have more of a sense of loyalty to the company. Anyway I'll think more about this and its fit with enterprise but it occurred to me that Thomas had more scope to use his initiative and be enterprising than, perhaps his UK counterpart, he had the knowledge and power to offer me the discount when he recognised I was at the crucial 'tipping point'.

Observation two: is everyone in NZ self-employed?
Okay fast froward to the wedding day, a beautiful ceromony, at home, followed by a sit down lunch for the 20 or so guests prior to the big party. Around the table every person was or had been self-employed (apart from the kids). All of whom within the creative industries. In fact I was tempted to do a quick survey while at the table. I'd half planned to do a comparative (with Birmingham) study of female run creative industries run companies and do the interviews while out there but decided to have a holiday instead. But here, at the wedding breakfast, i had a t least five of the thirteen sub-sectors covered. On closer inspection it would seem that self-employment in NZ is rife and with their film industry growing rapidly it would seem the creative industries are also a major growth area.

Observation three: Academia is international - nah
Talking of the NZ film industry the monday after the wedding (wow not even a week ago) I had the great pleasure in zooming over to Massey university (the Auckalnd campus) where I met with an esteemed colleague, who has written extensively on entrepreneruship within New Zealand and specifically about its creative industries.

I was struck by how academia offers you this great framework with which to speak with colleagues from across the globe, in fact at the wedding I'd spoken to a lecturer/researcher from AUT University he and I are both struggling with balancing the whole PhD/life/job/when to publish/conflicting advice thing - all very bonding!

Hokey Pokey ice-cream!

2008-02-08T17:28:00.000Z

Now I'm probably not the most frequent blogger so not posting for a few weeks will probably not be noticed, but just to say that unless I feel especially inspired to do so, things will be a little quiet around her for the next few weeks. I'm off to the drink 'flat whites', eat hokey pokey ice-cream, 'merge like a zip' and look and live on a volcano for a bit. Yes. I am off to New Zealand to see my big bro get married - will obviously check out the enterprise scene in Auckland and will report back on any findings on my return (1st wk March) when normal service will resume!!

Creative Enterprise 2008 Conference update

2008-02-01T11:22:00.000Z

I Just, very briefly, wanted to mention the Creative Enteprise 2008 conference, happening March 12th here in Birmingham. Amongst other speakers, I will be feeding back some of the research findings from the work I have been doing in this area - with our School of Art and Design's MA Media Enterprise(I'll try and post more about this before I go off to NZ next week) but just thought I would flag the conference up as I believe it is nearly sold out!

Online identity, new media marketing and entreprenruship and more all mixed up!

2008-01-30T17:01:00.001Z

I have been feeling a long and rather rambling blog post coming on for a few days so here goes.

A lot has been happening in my working life and bits are beginning to join up where other bits are falling away. I'll talk about this a bit more in a bit. Firstly I feel obliged to clear one or two things up. Following the Created in Birminghamwin of the Guardian Media award for Best independent blog (congratulations again to Pete and Stef), Pete Ashton gave an overview of various blogs that he has come across and who make up part of the general blogging milieu within Birmingham. Now the only reason I mention this is he referred to my blog presence as a little schizophrenic and I wanted to explore this a bit.

In my teaching work (although I am called a lecturer in applied research) I teach a module called 'New Media Marketing'. This incidentally is based on a previous career where I had various job titles, which included: 'Online PR and Marketing coordinator, online marketing consultant/strategist, Internet consultant and the such (made up names, for at the time, made up roles - i.e. not that many people even used the internet let alone consulted or taught how to – mid 90’s on). Now I may talk about this work in more detail at some other point. But the point I wanted to make is that within my lecture today I was talking about the concept of online presence and Pete's comment struck me - that my own may be a little ambiguous. But then here's the thing? Does it matter? Should I explain? Is it not working if I have to?

Later on in the day I came across Stef Lewandowski, who I don't think will mind me mentioning a couple of brief points that came from our discussion. We were talking about the debris one leaves in 'cyber space' (sorry couldn't resist haven't heard it called that for a long time but I referred to it in my teaching today - when I cited this event: Virtually there; the future shape of cyber space'.).

Did I mention this was going to be long and rambling (possibly a good moment to hit the back button - except... there is some interesting stuff about why I do what I do?)?

So am I hopelessly off topic in my ponderings here?

Let me try and bring it back together, firstly, an explanation of my two blog thing, then secondly how all these strands, the teaching, the online presence etc fit with my research and the topic of the blog - Creative Enterprise.

1. Back in 2005 I started this blog to accompany an expanding area of research which I had been involved in for some two or three years. I had worked on a research programme looking at a bunch of projects which were exploring social inclusion in the creative industries including Strip search by Hi8us and , projects by the RBSA, Scriptand many others. Throughout this time I interviewed and captured the 'journeys' of the artists, writers and musicians involved. A key issue that kept arising was that ultimately folks needed skills in how to be self-employed, how to seek and exploit opportunities and how to build momentum and confidence around their talent and offering (and a bunch of other things - there are a number of papers published on this). Anyway this whole experience sparked my imagination and I became heavily immersed in the world of enterprise and entrepreneurship within the sector. I finally settled on a PhD topic (I'd say title but keep changing it) and that was ' Gender and Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries. In my day job i.e. the contract research I get paid to do my work I was beginning to focus on Enterprise curriculum in creative inds HE provision. So out of these two areas this blog was born. It was intended to be an informal space for me to explore issues, and hopefully get feedback, around enterprise within the creative industries sector.

Last year I found I was beginning to go off topic or at least wanting to. So I started a
personal blog. Here I rant on about other stuff (much less than I do here) it is an experiment I might dump it, I might grow it, I can't decide. But the point is that it is not related to this topic. However it probably has the same tone of voice, both are ultimately about me or my experience and a reflection of what is happening at a given time in my life - so in that regard it maybe a little schizophrenic.

2. How do all these things I am waffling on about fit together? And what on earth has any of this got to do with creative enterprise? Well a couple of things. I am aware of are how everything is coming together (in terms of thoughts etc). I am one of those people that really hope that their research feeds into their teaching and guess what mine is! Both in terms of pedagogical considerations and also in terms of content. I am transferring what I know about creative discipline styles of teaching (you may recall earlier postings which talk about characteristics of creative ind education which have implicit enterprise education) to how I deliver my lectures within the business school! The second thing is when teaching New Media Marketing I am aware that a great deal of theory dates as rapidly as the Internet evolves. So I am feeling really privileged to be amongst a bunch of people figuring out how the whole blogging thing works and drawing directly upon their experiences to add context to my lectures - in short you're all going to be case studies!!

And breathe! not sure if I'm done or if any of this makes sense but I have typed enough ... for now.

Memories

2008-01-25T20:46:00.000Z

Today I went over to Wolverhampton School of Art an Design, the place where some 14 years ago I graduated with a degree in Fine Art, Time-based Media. It was more than a little weird to mooch about. I was over for a meeting and sort of insisted on heading for the 7th floor. The thing that was weird was that I ended up telling my story of my career to the lady I was meeting. As the career 'journeys' of creative graduates makes up a large proportion of my research, it was strange to hear myself regaling my own story.

I was so touched to back in the place, especially as the lady serving coffee recognised me! (obviously spent rather longer in the canteen than you're meant to) but I also remembered the fun we had, the weird and sometimes ridiculous, sometimes pretentious movies we made, the odd exhibitions we set up in strange locations, the opportunities to show our films shows at places like the London Film-makers coop and the general rehearsal (private views included) of a life in the arts that this gave.

Unfortunately there were no students about which added to the wierdness, but generally it was just totally ace to be back in the big old Brutalist building over looking the ring-road.

push and pull in creative entrepreneurship:briefly

2008-01-17T20:51:00.001Z

I saw my supervisors today, both of whom I like a lot and who seem to compliment each other in style and give me the right mix of kick up arse and support. Some interesting issues came up, well for me anyway. Apart from the usual things of me needing to pay attention to regular stuff like punctuation etc. there were some points around 'Push and Pull' factors to why folks become entrepreneurs.

I expect I might talk about this a bit more at some point and have a feeling I may have published something around this already, although perhaps not here. But the thing was around this 'if you go to art school are you then pushed into entrepreneurship (self-employment)?' or by going to art school are you responding to an 'entrepreneurial' pull or as I described a desire for independence?

Or am I just going entrepreneurship crazy?

Presentations from CURS

2008-01-15T20:33:00.000Z

You may recall an earlier post relating to an event over at University of Birmingham - 'Creativity and the Creative Value chain', well they've published all the presentations here. Along with news of their next event. Thanks to Ian for the link.

Birmingham Bloggers

2008-01-11T07:58:00.000Z

Birmingham Bloggers

I live and work in Birmingham UK.

Last night I went to the first meeting of 'Birmingham UK bloggers' (name under review). We met in the back of the Kitchen Garden cafe, in the Kings Heath neighbourhood of Birmingham. I was a lone, late 30's female, amongst a group of rather young men (not an altogether unpleasant experience) and I know those that turned up where not particularly reflective of the wider local blogging community - it did mean, however, that our table was a veritable smorgasbord of gadgets! Anyway enough of the observations.

The thing about a meeting like this is that it is hard to figure out why we're getting together. I guess to meet and share with a bunch of folks with a similar pursuit. What became clear was that the role of blogging is changing, with user generated content cited as more heavily read than the generic corporate type websites (I don't have ref for this but think it was the gist of what one of the other bloggers said) it would seem that all sorts of organisations are looking to the blogging community to either harvest or exploit this content.

Now in some respects this is a good thing. I mean we write this stuff, imagine someone, somewhere reads and cares and if someone links to you well then that's all good. But what came across strongly was the sense of what characterises a good blog. For me authenticity and independence stuck out. From my perspective I blog here about my research and my personal blog about my personal rantings and stuff. It is not specifically about where I live and not about where I work. But of course, these things are often interrelated, there are cross-overs and frequently there might be issues, which would be of interest or might feed well into some other organisations context/agenda.

I get the sense that the blogging community is at a strange point - a bunch of organisations were cited, who either: want a blog, content, or appear to have a bunch of ready made stuff. But how as a community do we organise ourselves? Should we organise ourselves? Should we be capitalising on our networks and content? Should we be promoting the city we live in? or be using our blogs to do so? Should we be happy to have our content re-purposed for some other organisations benefit/context/agenda? Now this is not to say that this blog is of any huge value to anyone other than me having a place to waffle on, but I got the sense last night that these are some issues we (the bloggers) need to be considering.

I should say that some of this discussion was in the context of this Guardian article which failed to give Birmingham a mention so for my part I will do my bit for my local blogging community because, well, I said I would. These will include having a specific Birmingham UK bloggers blogroll and tagging my postings with ‘Birmingham UK’ where appropriate (maybe always?) and by the same token I would encourage others to do the same.

New year again

2007-12-31T10:04:00.000Z

Another busy year awaits me. Already stacks of deadlines loom for various papers and conferences. Part of research being dissemination I can't shy away from these but there never seems to be quite enough time especially as I am about to start teaching significantly more than before. This is all good though - as a researcher I always wanted to feel like my research in some small way might eventually make its way into curriculum and perhaps this year there will be scope for this.

Looking back at my previous two years resolutions some things remain the same:

New Year 05/06

New Year 06/07

1. My PhD is well underway. It is a huge undertaking and is always with me unfortunately I never feel I have enough time to devote to it. My new years resolution in relation to this one is to either get some funding to buy out some of my time and get on with it (I need to think outside the proverbial box on this one) alternatively I need to get into the habit of getting up at 5 a.m (2 hrs before my daughter) and do that everyday. I find the evenings after 9p.m I am just too tired - still enough of this bleating.

2. Networking has gone pretty well this year. My field is expanding. I now keep coming across more and more people who are researching or at least interested in my areas:

a. Gender and entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries
b. Enterprise and entrepreneurship curriculum in/for creative disciplines

Next year (2008) sees the 2nd of the Creative Enterprise conferences here in Birmingham (I'll blog about this in more detail shortly).

3. Blogging - I've done much better in 2007 than 2006 in terms of quantity of postings although had a few wobbles over quality and relevance. For 2008 I guess this blog will continue to evolve. Recently it seems to have turned more into a listings of various conferences and speaking opportunities - I need to have a think about this - interesting or not. To accompany the blog is a Facebook group (which is also under review - (in the way that these things are in a permanent state of review) and earlier this year I began a personal blog where I felt the need to rant about something off topic - here I will shortly be describing my New years plans to reduce my CO2 emissions (ignoring slightly my February trip to NZ).

Challenging gender stereo- types in the work place

2007-12-10T14:58:00.000Z

Tomorrow I am presenting at the 'Social footprints' symposium at the ICC in Birmingham - this is a free event for Businesses, academics and policy makers to gather and report on various research relating to corporate social responsibility, work/life balance and various other related topics. I am doing a turn:

Challenging Gender Stereotypes in the Workplace; what the soft indicators tell us?

This will be reporting on some research I have carried out over the last couple of years on behalf of the Agender project. Here I have been immersed in the project, from chairing an EU working group looking at 'Women into non-traditional employment' to being part of the UK, specifically Birmingham based, working groups looking at: how we might better support women into some of these roles and as a researcher interviewing the participants throughout the lifetime of the project to capture the: 'soft indicators of distance travelled'. Some of this work has involved a film school, some has looked at construction and sports coaching. Each have their individual characteristics in terms of barriers and opportunities. Interestingly, for me, is that the creative sectors are not so different in terms of their limitations in terms of accessibility and inclusivity.

If I get a chance I'll expand on this in a future post, with a possible glossary of terms for those not fluent is EU speak.

"We're all going to hell in a hand cart"

2007-12-05T17:54:00.000Z

Today I attended the 'Cultural industries and Climate Change in the West Midlands' event organised by Culture WM.

The scene: 2p.m, The Electric Cinema. Nothing happening, sitting in darkened cinema, other people milling around but no obvious start. 2.30p.m People arrive, sit down at panel arrangement on the stage. So far so strange. But then it started ( I didn't ever manage to get a programme - figured printing it off would just not be right).

Firstly the guy from the Stirrer (again no program no name - I mean he said it once but I didn't hear - so apologies) who introduced the thing and set the tone with: "Not about how climate change will effect cultural sector, more how can the cultural sector effect climate change".

Next he introduced the panel (of four) who each gave a brief talk, the fourth Professor John Thorne from University of Birmingham (I'll look for the URL ) gave a presentation based on his discussion paper. This was followed by questions and some discussion and it was all done by ten to four.

So the headlines for me:

Richard Davis, Director of Marches energy agency started off by suggesting:
"We're on our way to hell in a hand cart". But considered that there were reasons to be hopeful and went on to describe various positive aspects of how companies and countries are responding to Climate change. He suggested that the cultural sector needs to help wean the public off of their addiction and national past time of consumption and shopping.

A lady from the DCMS called Patricia (again issue with programme) spoke about how their main activity now had sustainable development at its heart. She also spoke about some research they had commissioned into what existing research had been carried out. Looking at the effect of climate change on the cultural industries. She also said they'd have some practical case studies of how other cultural orgs had adapted to climate change. She also spoke about how the West Midlands were doing okay and that it was coming from grass roots rather than government.

Next a lady from the National Trust spoke of how buildings were being wrecked by flooding. She suggested that the heritage sector were 'the canaries in the coal mine' as they are having to deal with the effects of climate change everyday. She was the first to mention the idea of a 'Green audit' something it became clear that we should all do.

After a short and funny little film about climate change, Prof Thorne (from the Climate and Atmospheric Research group UOB) gave his key note.

We are in, what he described as, enhanced global warming, experiencing changes at a decadal pace (as opposed to thousands of years previously). Encouragingly countries have been pulling together in the last 12 months. Scientists are now looking to other sectors to get people to change habits. Currently we each generate 10-11 tonnes of CO2 we need to reduce this to 3 tonnes, as our climate gets hotter we'll need to use less water, ultimately we all need to change our behaviour.

Bearing in mind some stuff around Birmingham's master plans I thought this was particularly poignant:

'We need innovation, we need to use our intellect "the green revolution to start here as did the industrial revolution, we need to put the WM at the forefront of this revolution'.

He spoke about how the Cultural industries can help:

-They can help with communicating the issues (e.g. Al Gore film)
-They can pledge to make changes
-They can innovate and be enterprising
-he also spoke about cultural climatology but I didn't quite get that
- He suggested a season of events - cultural events highlighting issues of climate change
- Practical education and training
- Websites
- Price reductions on tickets to theatre, cinema etc for those who cycle, walk or use public transport
-Climate change heritage walks

Following this questions from the audience and some examples of folks building carbon neutral art galleries etc. there were also questions around who funds the innovation?

Anyway this is a very brief round up of some of the points addressed at this event - I have yet to absorb or consider what all this means. Certainly climate change is a huge anxiety, however I felt that the speakers set out some inspirational means that we might all engage in doing something about mitigation and/or adaption.

There are mighty challenges ahead of us all (most of which are only touched upon here) but by the same token there are opportunities to reinvent how we live, do business, curate our exhibitions, play the music we play, light and heat the venues and theatres we use and ultimately lead the way through out practice. There were discussions around green procurement strategies and other funding ideas, but I guess for me I was thinking about how to we teach our students to have this embedded in their thinking? How do SME's and creative entrepreneurs respond and lead on this? How will they need to adapt their practice? and how as a community can we all get each other moving on this stuff?

Creative industries - theory and practice

2007-11-30T20:00:00.000Z

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

2007-11-18T19:11:00.000Z

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

2007-11-10T20:55:00.000Z

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

2007-11-06T10:30:00.000Z

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!

Blog doubt and lack of focus

2007-10-31T18:26:00.000Z

I've been reading a lot of other peoples blogs lately and becoming more inclined to comment on what they've got to say. This has led me to reflect on this blog which has been ticking a long for the last couple of years with occasional spurts of activity and then longer periods of inactivity. I've been beginning to think what's it all for? Who exactly am I writing this for? who benefits and is any of it of any interest or value to me or to anyone else? Perhaps the fact that I am questioning this in the first place is a sign.

So this posting is based on that reflection and for me to consider and re-state (for my own benefit) the purpose and scope of this blog. I think originally it was to accompany my research, get some comments and feedback from other folks working in the field. I guess also to help me reflect on all the stuff I 'take in' through reading, interviewing people and generally absorbing through my work and life. The benefit to me is that it is a non-academic environment to write freely.

Perhaps I am in a state of flux? I am a little unfocussed, I work on a number of research projects, usually related to gender or enterprise or the creative industries and if I am lucky they collide and in so doing have relevance to my PhD stuff. When reflecting with colleagues about another project (wellbeing and work/life balance stuff) I realised that my own work/life balance is shot. Ah you see - I am way off topic! Or perhaps there is a link here. The point really is that I am currently so overwhelmed with all the various projects I am working on that I am struggling to focus on the big one. This blog was intended to help me focus on my personal research and right now it is not working. So what to do? Give up? (Anyone who knows me knows I am pretty crummy at giving things up - although a blog is hardly a vice - unless I suppose if it is coming from some sort of narcissistic position - will have to ask psychologist friends).

One of the benefits of this blog is that it has introduced me to a bunch of people and opportunities I wouldn’t have had previously, and which relate to my research. On that basis it would be worth continuing. It has also offered me the opportunity to try out some ideas or describe them at least. However whether I have anything interesting/of value to say right now is an issue. I am interested - why do other people blog? What do they get out of it? How often do you doubt your blogs purpose? And why do we need to share? i.e. why am I going to click the publish button right about now?!?

For now I am done.

Incidentally I lasted three days when I gave up coffee last week - so expect a posting by the end of the week.

Might be of interest

2007-10-27T23:53:00.001+01:00

There is some stuff about La traviata and other shows I've been to in the last week on my personal blog it is a little off topic for here but might be of interest.

Last Friday= Michael Wolf talk + Plus party

2007-10-22T17:18:00.000+01:00

Friday night I went along to the very chilly Wild Building in Digbeth (Birmingham UK). Here a large and drafty warehouse with all original fixtures and fittings housed the Plus design festival. I was heading along to the Michael Wolf talk and energy permitting (and I knew it would) the end of show party and launch of Blink magazine.

The contrast between the large drafty environment and the slick (and by this mean tight, professional often beautiful) design stands was powerful. It was one of those moments when you feel like you could really be in any uber cool, urban, down-town art/design thing, anywhere in the world. Although I did have a few encounters with some Nathan Barley types.

Michael Wolf was also pretty cool - I'm not sure what I was expecting - but as I perched, rather recklessly on a bean bag with my legs buckled under a tiny coffee table in - did I mention it was drafty - in a cold spot, I didn't even notice the hour or so of the talk pass. For me it was reminiscent (the talk not the environment) of sitting at my uncle Charlie's (an artist) kitchen table listening to him and my dad (a graphic designer) disseminate pearls of wisdom about art and design and what's good, bad, the history and future of and all sorts of anecdotes.

However enough of that the format took the form of local designer Stef Lewandowski chairing a panel who directed questions to Michael (apparently he prefers this format as it requires less preparation).

Here are some points and thoughts that struck me:

- He spoke about the need for designers to be taught (I guess as students - so listen out HE ) about how to articulate the value of their contribution. 'What is your contribution worth to the client?' This is something I recall from my own distant freelancing days. Getting your head round the idea that a piece of design might be the making of a product success - so what is its value in that context?

- Recognising that new designers struggle sometimes to have the confidence to say how much they 'cost', he suggested role-play and the sort of experiential learning that I have advocated many times. He was suggested young designers (or old for that matter) role play amongst their colleagues and rehearse.

- He also spoke of being 'real' - this was a bit spooky for me after various 'authenticity' rants I've had in the last few weeks.

- Interestingly when I asked about how the UK were fairing in the context of increased competition from 'emerging economies' he spoke of the only real competition being with oneself - you're only as good as your last piece of work etc.

- When I pursued this with questioning this further and in the context of 10 years of governmental policy aiming to support and grow our creative industries he suggested that things were a little bleak. But that ultimately the issue was that companies (and by this I understood clients) were 'rather boring now' and the 'need for creativity to throughout a company'. This was an interesting perspective in the work that I am involved in as it sort of suggests a much more holistic approach is needed.

There was much much more however..

After the talk I loitered for the party. It was like being at an animated version of Facebook - I am always struck by how generally, people are much more attractive in the flesh - not just to look at but much more friendly somehow. The atmosphere was upbeat with free beers and cocktails and some delicious food from the patisserie in Kings heath (Chorizo sausage roll! I know I never even thought of it before but it really works). There was also a band of very cute/cool teenage girls who looked vaguely familiar I think they may live round my way. I really liked them and felt like there was something very cool and sort of constructive/creative and professional about their whole vibe - especially as they were pretty young and the place was packed full of the great and good of Birmingham's arts mafia. I missed the last few hours as sought refuge in the pub.

Authenticity and influence

2007-10-13T20:48:00.000+01:00

I have been struggling recently to write this blog, sort of have half arsed ideas that I write about but lack cohesion. So I have a bunch of postings in draft of the rambling variety. But there are some observations and things I have been thinking about related to my research (I can almost hear the yawns -I know I find myself tedious don't worry about it) that I'd like to share.

Here's the thing: there is a word I have heard used in a couple of different scenarios. I have subsequently used it in order to influence an individuals perception of the validity of a piece of work I have been involved in. The word is authenticity. I will no doubt find myself writing about this more formally as my methodology chapter takes shape. As someone who is heavily immersed in the world of storytelling and capturing stories I am always aware of the power of the authenticity of a story told, I perhaps have just not articulated this much yet. As I say this is pretty early days thinking and I have recently discovered colleagues in my own institution who know a great deal more about this stuff. I guess it is similar to what the press experience in terms of 'human interest' type stories.

The second time this word was used was yesterday when attending a 'Influencing and negotiating' training day - it was okay as these things go, 8 hours of pop psychology in 8 easy to do group work activities. It was fun, no it was funny, belly laughs, mirroring each others body language etc etc learning the tools of influence and possible manipulation. But again what came up was this: if you pretend to be someone other than yourself you will probably not be trusted - this was not, incidentally, what the facilitator told us to be true, more our collective realisation of the value of authenticity. Strange it is pretty hard to figure out your authentic self - but that is a whole other topic.

Okay. As is often the case in this blog I am not exactly sure where I am going with this stream of consciousness. But what I find is often the case is when you start to see patterns in what people are saying around you then you are on the verge of discovering or at least making sense of or understanding something, However as a researcher of the qualitative variety recognising the value of the real-lived and authentic experience in terms of research data is important.

Private views

2007-09-26T21:33:00.001+01:00

I took my daughter (who at 6 was not the youngest!) to a private view this evening. It was at VIVID and called Binary Oppositions. It was an interesting-ish exhibition, a mix of music and images.

Here I want to briefly highlight a conversation I had with an artist (not the show's artist) we were discussing thoughts around employability within the creative industries. Something I have been aware of and have previously referred to as 'tacit knowledge' came up. This is the idea of some people knowing what the sector is like prior to graduating for example both my parents went to art school, my dad a graphic designer, my mum an artist and illustrator. When I did a degree in Fine Art I had a pretty good idea of what was in store for me when I graduated. I knew on graduating I might have to a. work for free b. be self-employed, c. be un-employed for a while d. all 3 (answer for me 'd' + some waitressing).

A lot of my work has been about social inclusion in the creative industries within this work I've come across a lot of individuals who are the first person in their family to go to university, they get a degree in a creative discipline, they graduate, have a degree but here's the thing there are no jobs!! In this sector a degree really doesn't equal a job but it might equal a bunch of opportunities.

Anyhow obviously universities, people like me and many others are increasingly trying to figure this all out and how better to equip students and graduates for a career in the sector.

Incidentally while out bumped into a number of Birmingham bloggers it was a veritable convention will try to remember to post pics to flickr or facebook.

Coming up

2007-09-19T17:44:00.000+01:00

A couple of regularish events are coming up. In November I am due to present a couple of papers at this years ISBE conference in Glasgow. These papers are based on two areas I have been working on over the last year.

The first is a literature review relating to my own area of research around gender and entrepreneurship within the creative industries. This will be in the women's track. The other is around how to deliver enterprise education outside of business schools and reflects on the evaluation of the TE3 (Technoogy Enhanced Enterprise Education)project. These papers are both co-authored with my some of my esteemed colleagues and as it gets nearer the time I'll see about making them available.

Another event coming up is the 'Social Footprints' symposium at Birmingham's ICC on the 11th Dec. Here colleagues and I from four HE providers from the West Midlands will be running a workshop on capturing and developing 'Soft indicators'. This is how within a piece of evaluation you capture the harder to quantify outcomes of an intervention (apologies for Euro speak).

I'll find more details out on both of these and keep you posted.

Tuesday

2007-09-19T17:36:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a meeting at the LCC (London College of Communication). Things in this part of South London have changed a lot since I was there.

I stayed overnight with a friend in East Dulwich and this morning took the number 12 bus through my old stomping ground, Peckham past my uncle Charlie’s place, on past Camberwell art school where I took life drawing classes on a Saturday mornings (after I grew out of Ballet I guess), down the Wolworth Road, past what was and maybe still is Southwark college where instead of staying at school and doing A level’s I did my first diploma in general art and design and practised being a real mini art student and upto Elephant and Castle where the talented ended up at what was LCP (London college of printing). Following this burst of nostalgia I went into the meeting at what is now LCC.

I was invited me to attend a meeting that was a tentative look at developing a research group looking at teaching enterprise across creative disciplines. For those familiar with this blog this is an area I’ve been researching in one form or another for the last four years. The meeting turned out to be bigger than I’d expected (approx 15) from various research, teaching and other backgrounds and some really interesting issues and opportunities were uncovered.

This will be, no doubt, something that those chairing the session will disseminate and report on fully but I thought I would, without going into too much detailpick out some of the highlights from the meeting for me:

The need to integrate theory and practice – as a researcher, especially one of the ostensibly applied variety, this is something I would always advocate and within my own institution I am always hoping to achieve.

The need to unpick a little of what already happens within an art and design education that might already be contributing to entrepreneurial intent of students – I have been bleeting about this for a while and currently have a paper out for review which fingers crossed will be published in the not too distant future (I’ll keep you posted as and when).

There was a bunch more stuff around international context, developing pedagogies, training needs of staff and a variety of conferences and publishing opportunities that will help this fledgling group have a voice.

When I’ve heard back from the organisers I’ll let you know who to contact if you’re interested. In the meantime feel free to email and I can pass on your contact details.

Creative Entrerprise Facebook Group!

2007-09-14T18:03:00.001+01:00

Since Monday I have become the proud administrator/creator of Creative Enterprise Facebook group!

The idea is to have a more interactive environment for me to disseminate some of my ideas and research, connect with other folks working in this area and hopefully help facilitate the general community of practice which is developing around enterprise and entrepreneurship in the creative industries.

I am always keen to here from others working around some of these ideas and it's always good to see what others have written etc. So please go along, join, contribute your ideas and thoughts while hooking up with others from around the UK and beyond working in this field.

Charlotte

Procrastination, distraction or creativity fuel

2007-09-12T18:00:00.000+01:00

Sometimes when I get stuck, usually about a month before a deadline (I find I get really unstuck a week before and can write literally thousands of words a day). When that happens I find myself not doing the task in hand and filling my time (which is very easy to do) with all the other bits and bobs I kind of should do but are not exactly high priority (like say writing my blog).

Actually thinking about it it could be that these phases follow the meeting of a deadline.

As I guess most folks in the world of work have, and certainly in my line of work there seem to be, a constant stream of deadlines. For me these are conference papers, final reports and if lucky a journal article - they (the deadlines) seem to come thick and fast and sometimes it can feel a little relentless - (oh did I mention the self-inflicted personal research targets). More on this in a bit.

Anyway as you might have guessed I'm going through one of these phases right now and I have spent the last two days at an altogether relevant conference. The conference was the final showcase of projects funded through EQUAL (I am carrying out a piece of research looking at 'Soft indicators of distance travelled' on one of these projects which has been aiming to 'Challenge gender stereotypes in the workplace’). Anyway this proved to be a fascinating look into how a whole bunch of projects sort to do this. One of particular interest to me was a project that was looking at women returners (i.e. women who return to work having taken a career break following maternity leave/or extended childcare giving).

It specifically looked at women in SET (Science, Engineering and Technology) and there were some terrifying statistics. Something like (and please don't quote me) only 20% of female SET graduates return to a career in these sectors following childbirth! I know this is an issue within the creative industries also where the fast change of pace in certain sub-sectors can have a damaging effect on an individual’s confidence in their ability to perform or keep up with the changes in technology if they've had a significant break. I missed the URL so will have a look and see if I can find a link to the project in question. Again I don’t as yet have the evidence for this being entirely the case in the creative industries or know what impact there might be on a woman who is self-employed in one of these sectors. But my personal experience and my own research into this is beginning to suggest a link.

As for me was I procrastinating by going to the conference? after all I could have been sitting typing away, was I deliberately distracting myself from the task in hand or (and I like this one more) was I feeding my brain, listening, making new connections and hey fueling my own creativity?

Damn that's another 448 words that could have been in my report/chapter/paper agghh!

Reflections on online presence

2007-09-06T08:53:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about a bunch of stuff. Although I have been pretty busy here (universities are lovely and quiet over the summer months although full of builders instead of students) I have been reflecting a lot and also observing those around me (albeit from a virtual position i.e. their online activity and presence).

With Facebook having seemingly swept the 30 something generation (UK west midlands at least) this summer into an online frenzy of virtual activity I am reminded of some of the stuff I/We used to say.

(NB: for those who don't know in a previous life I was heavily immersed in the online and Internet industry/sector/fledgling local scene as was)

Anyway what we said was something like this: your online presence goes beyond just your website (of course a no-brainer right we all know that now) it is every email you send, every posting you make to newsgroup (those were the days)etc etc.. Of course fast forward a few years and this is your Flickr, Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Youtube what ever other social networking, photo/music or other repository you happen to use.

What is interesting to me is how we present and manage ourselves in this heavily published environment and how do we advise our students to make absolute best use of the opportunities that these networks offer.

So here I'll briefly give a couple of examples of what I am on about (and I am sure this is something written about/studied in much more detail etc.. I am just thinking aloud/atype? but I'll get to my point in a bit).

Example one: Me
I am reasonably internet savvy have been using it for a long long time. I feel comfortable and confident with most of the stuff I come across, I feel aware of the public nature and the 'wild fire' that can sometimes be initiated when one says something kind of provocative. By the same token when I use Facebook I like to have some fun with it, be myself, be open etc.. but I also find it a fantastically good tool for meeting folks working in the same area as me. This blog has also proved a really good mechanism for making contacts with people working in my area. But I am kind of careful too (a whole bunch of my 'friends' are colleagues or potential colleagues) so I try not to get too drawn into all the other stuff on say facebook (pirates, vampires etc).

Example two: my friend (there is nothing scientific here)
A recently qualified psychologist using Facebook and just realising how little information about her self she really wants out there. Does she really want clients to know she is say single? does she really want employers to know whether or not she recovered from her hangover (thanks to concerned friends wall postings)? probably not.

What is my point here with all of this? Well once again and as ever I'm thinking about the creative industries. Last year I presented a paper about the characteristics of the creative industries. As anyone who has ever worked in this sector will I'm sure testify there is a pretty heavy duty night time element to it - private views, launches, after show parties etc etc.. The boundaries between friendship and work and social life and work are often blurred (and quite different from some other sectors) but ultimately need to be managed or at least considered (whether you know you're doing it or not) because professionalism and presentation are also a major characteristics.

I sense here that I am waffling and not reaching any sort of conclusion. I guess there are a few things here - do the creative industries lend themselves well to these types of online networks and social groups? (of course yes) How careful does one need to be about what one publishes? (and opinions one gives) and as educators how can we encourage students to make the best use of these environments (actually the better question might be what can we learn from students about managing ones online presence?) and with so much scope for things being archived (see this posting) how much of what we say now will come back to haunt us? On that note I’ll stop.

Tony Wilson

2007-08-18T10:47:00.000+01:00

A little bit belatedly I wanted to mention Tony Wilson and how shocked I was when I heard of his death. While driving back to Birmingham from the country on Monday morning (where I had had a bit of a news fast) Jo Wiley gave a moving tribute and played some classic tracks from the 80's. I didn't know Tony Wilson but saw him speak a couple of times below is an extract from a posting I made late 2005 responding to a talk he gave in Manchester:

It was great to hear Anthony H Wilson tell the story of the Manchester music scene. As someone who did their growing up, teen age and student years through this time, I loved hearing his story and felt aware of the strangeness of part of my own experience and a time I felt I really lived through being consigned to history. Not to mention being a Londoner and the whole Manchester music thing being a rather bitter pill to swallow. I remember going to clubs in London who were trying to introduce house music and everyone desperate to have their rare groove and funky beats back on ... we just didn't get it like Manchester did.

I should also say that throughout that time I and many of my friends made regular trips to Manchester just to go to the Hacienda - so Tony thanks for the memories.
(Wednesday, October 26, 2005)

easy to digest

2007-08-18T10:02:00.000+01:00

Dave Harte of Digital Central has been doing a sterling job of putting together some rather irreverent digests of the gigantic strategic type reports that come his way and although it's kind of funny he does manage to pull out some of the salient points as well as highlighting some useful documents. As some one who generates some pretty hefty reports myself I am wondering what scope there is for a 'digesting service' or perhaps that is the challenge for the author - try to do a txt message version maybe! Certainly that might increase the audience size.

It was reminding me of a service that I would like or something I would like to encourage and that is a sort of literature alert service. Wishful thinking on behalf of the researcher I know. But trying to stay on top of all that is published both academic and other is a permanent job. So here is a request readers these are my key words phrases:

- Gender and entrepreneurship in the creative industries
- Widening participation in the creative industries
- Entrepreneurship in the creative industries
- Enterprise and entrepreneurship curriculum for creative industries

If you come across anything that you feel relates to these topics then please let me know - send me the link or title or synopsis - I'd like to think I was kind of on top of things having just completed a literature review for a paper to be delivered at this years ISBE - but low and behold within a week of submitting I come across more!! Now not everything is relevant I need to be selective but some key works just can't be missed out.

Me me me

2007-08-09T23:41:00.000+01:00

I have a new blog - not sure if another one is really necessary but feel like I need to go off topic and this new one is for more general ranting and not so related to work or my research.

Feel free to take a look
Charlotte

Birmingham power 50?

2007-07-21T22:00:00.000+01:00

The Birmingham Posts Top 50 most powerful people list was published today, I've had a quick look through and some interesting statistics:

45 of Birmingham's top 50 are male
4 are female

Encouragingly 14 of the list are involved in the Creative Industries from the following sectors/roles (by my reckoning).
- Arts council Chair and Arts centre Director * - Marketing  - Dance - Music - Software designer - Architect - Music maker - Publishing - Radio presenter - TV maker - Artist - Curator Gallery Director - Music administrator * - Journalism

(*2 of the 4 women listed are involved in the Creative Industries (neither are on the list as practitioners)

I do not wish to belittle any of the contributions those on the list have made to the city, region and beyond, but the list as it stands begs some quite obvious questions namely: where are the women on the list? Does this mean there are only 4 influential women in Birmingham? this is not my experience? where are the creative women in Birmingham, why aren't they listed here? and finally what can one do to redress the balance, to highlight and similarly celebrate their contribution?

It would be good to have a look at the criteria and try to develop an alternative listing and I do not mean a women only list. Any suggestions for whom should be considered? 

Busy busy busy

2007-07-06T22:00:00.000+01:00

What a week? I have done a whirl wind tour of the Midlands (exciting honest).

First my week started with a bunch of interviews with students on our school of art and designs MA in Media Enterprise - it is fascinating seeing how these students are responding to the curricula, their own perceptions of enterprise and how enterprising they feel they are. More on this later an interim report is due (from me) sometime over the Summer. So will try to make something available online.

Tuesday saw me over at Staffs university for the TE3 open day - TE3 being the Technology Enhanced Enterprise Education project which held I believe their third 'open day' and this time supported by UKSEC. Here I was presenting the findings of the evaluation which I have been carrying out recently - it was a pretty intimidating experience Staffs have a state of the art fully functional TV studio so the 80+ audience (of quite serious and senior looking academics) sat behind the much scarier cameras and the whole thing was filmed and web streamed. Anyway having said that it was a great opportunity to see what some of the partners have produced in terms of pod-casts and electronic portfolios and I didn't get camera shy after all.

For me one of the interesting aspects of this project has been the lessons learnt from the efforts to develop teaching materials across disciplines i.e. teaching enterprise outside of a business school. These have been lessons from sports management to the creative industries and it's interesting to see how issues vary across these different disciplines and how each benefit from their own 'flavour' of enterprise ed. Kelly Smith and I will be presenting a paper on this at this years ISBE conference - more on that another time.

The week continued a pace with various trips around a day in beautiful Warwickshire countryside - being trained at Wroxall manor I am amongst other things and 'innovation mentor' and will shortly be providing service design consultancy on behalf of my institution. Thursday some different training at Harbourne Hall (which has the most ornate Victorian interior) here I am learning how to be a teacher - strange really I did 4 or 5 years of lecturing prior to my current role with no training now I do very little lecturing but at least have a better idea how to .

Finally today more interviews for the MA.

What's in a name?

2007-06-22T15:41:00.000+01:00

Where was I? Oh yes

The Scene: Private view, surrounded by the great and good, I bump into an old friend, an artist and design lecturer who is chatting to a senior colleague.

Friend: Charlotte and I went to college together
Me: Hi, yes we did time-based media, through Fine Art
Friends colleague: Oh really what are you up to now?
Me: I work in a Business School
Friends colleague: Oh dear
Me: but I do work around the creative industries (apologetically and slight pleading in voice)
Friends colleague: oh dear
Me: It's all about gender and entrepreneurship in the creative industries
Friends colleague: what? oh dear entrepreneurship? oh dear what's that!
Me: well....
Friends colleague: Right I must go and find.. (Read: I'm off to do much more important things, heard it all before, I'm an artist)

Anyway this exchange took place recently and left me in a rather confused state. Apart from the fact that the said Friends colleague had been utterly dismissive and rude I kind of got it - his attitude - I understood, I have been in that mindset and now I am in another. But it is very hard to articulate what had happened.

A couple of days later I was regaling this story to another friend, who also is a an artist who had this take on the exchange: 'It's just sort of defensive arrogance, the creative sector is just so competitive and that attitude stems from that. The idea that somehow a creative individual is different you know - creative not entrepreneurial - that's almost like a dirty word'.

Anyway I know from an academic perspective that the literature picks up on this, that creatives don't identify with being called entrepreneurs etc. But to be frank most of my dealings with educators from creative disciplines is generally much more down to earth and frankly realistic.Recognising what life is like for graduates and the need to prepare them as best possible for careers that are very likely to involve some level of enterprising behaviour - if not entrepreneurship..

Enterprise education: and another thing...

2007-06-21T12:06:00.000+01:00

Previously I have identified two areas where enterprise is inadvertanly (or not) taught within creative disciplines (at least art and design). These briefly were:

- Lecturer as practitioner
- Experiential learning - project based real-life briefs being responded to

Today I am going to cover a third and perhaps the most obvious - I am surprised I haven't made mention of it before - the Degree Shows!

Yesterday, speaking to a very senior colleague here at the university I was reminded of the time and investment spent on putting together ones final show. The degree show, for the uninitiated, is an exhibition of all final year students work that takes place right about now in all art and design institutions in the UK (and possibly beyond). The exhibition generally lasts for four or five days and is kicked off with a Private view.

My ISBE conference paper last year discussed the characteristics of the creative industries. In it I make mention of the night-time social element of the creative industries. I guess for some of these students the degree show private view gives an opportunity to experience some of this night-time activity, the start of things to come maybe, the boozing, schmoozing and apparent (fingers crossed) constructive networking that might take place. Maybe:

- meet potential employers/clients, future collaborators.
- present and talk about work
- have a professional experience
- showcase work

Anyway I'd be interested to know how useful these events actually prove to be to students, as my own is all a bit of a blur and a rather long time ago now. Interestingly this showcasing concept has been expanded upon at UCE, where I work, with the New Generation Arts festival. This festival includes current, recent and past graduates and is a much wider celebration of creative talent originating from the university. I like the fact that it recognises the need to continue to highlight and showcase ones work beyond the degree show.

Also other thoughts I would like to share are some observations around the whole concept of entrepreneurship and how in some quarters it is still very much not recognised as relevant to the art and design community. But I'll save this for when I am a little more awake.

Coming up

2007-06-08T18:53:00.000+01:00

I am busy completing a report for some evaluation I have been involved in. This has been of the TE3 (technology enhanced enterprise education) project, a generally successful collaboration between 12 regional (West Midlands, UK) universities who have been developing electronic teaching materials for teaching enterprise.

I presented a paper in Lancaster based on this research a couple of weeks ago and am now writing, as I say, the final report which will be available at the TE3 open day in July - this is a free event and I will be doing a brief turn in the afternoon reporting back on this evaluation.

Nesta, Ugly Betty and other TV moments

2007-05-29T13:06:00.000+01:00

Disclaimer: one or two popular culture type references which will be meaningless to some are included.

Last Monday I took the slow train down to London - I was heading for the launch of the HEA, NESTA and NCGE funded ‘Creating Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship education for the Creative Industries' research. En route I bumped into someone else who was also attending. As we headed over to Nesta together they asked if I'd ever seen 'Ugly Betty?' (U.S TV show for the uninitiated) "Yes, why?" I said. "You'll see" they said. Low and behold the NESTA HQ could have been a set; from the all white, glass covered surfaces right down to the 'blue tooth head-setted' receptionist. I did chuckle.

Here the similarities ended as proceeding and eye ware took on a more serious nature (sorry so many funky/fashionable glasses in one room was heady). Anyway enough of this trivia. The presentation of the authors offered a little insight into what had been found, and from early indicators it would seem that little in terms of 'know-how' and 'evidence of what works?' has changed in the last year (since our Creative Enterprise conference findings were published)- although the extensive evidence base is very welcome and I shall certainly make use if it in my own work(they interviewed and consulted widely across creative inds HE).

Sir Christopher Frayling, the Rector of the Royal College of Art and Chair of the Arts council made a point about the ‘importance of the practitioner teacher with in art and design’ and that ‘there seemed to be little research out there that had picked up on this’. I was struggling to keep quiet at this point as in January I presented a paper at the MeCCSA-AMPE 2007conference making this very point having analysed various strands of data that highlighted the teacher as practitioner influence and potential entrepreneurial role-model.. aaggh. As a good colleague of mine says: 'if it isn't published, it didn't happen', or something like that. That said a version of this paper should be published in the next 12 months.

Later that day I had another TV moment as I checked myself into the Travelodge in Lancaster, having disembarked my London to Lancaster train sometime shortly after midnight all suddenly felt very Alan Partridge. The Travel lodge in Lancaster doesn’t boast proximity to the lake district as other Lancastrian hotels do. No it boasts access to a Burger King as it is situated in a motorway services. Nothing ‘Mode magazine’ about that I can promise you!

Travels and thoughts

2007-05-19T21:26:00.000+01:00

I have been extremely busy in the last couple of months. To give a flavour of life as a researcher, at least where I work, here is a snap shot of my working life. I am in the process of completing the evaluation of the TE3 project, this has been a fascinating insight into what appears to have been a really successful multi-university collaboration looking at technology enhanced enterprise education (hence the three Es). Well on Monday evening, following a flying visit to London to hear the HEA and nesta research findings of creative entrepreneurship I am off to Lancaster to the Symposium: Engaging HEIs in business and the community: A learning perspective where I will be presenting a paper co-authored with Dr Kelly Smith from Birmingham University. I am back in Birmingham from Thursday and hoping to get back on track with some of my other projects specifically the MA in Media Enterprise course which I am involved in some research work - you may recall the Creative Enterprise conference last year, we are now in the process of putting together a follow up conference for next year (please do email for any info) as well as this I am going back to the students to interview them as part of my tracking their progress.

Last week I was in Sardinia on a study visit for the Agender project (Challenging gender stereotypes in the work place). Apart from 30 degree blue sky conditions we got taken on a tour of various incubator projects and university spin-offs, a trip to Tiscalli's head quarters and all the projects we were taken around had a focus on supporting women and in most instances in new technologies or entrepreneurship. Sardinia have similar issues to the West Midlands in terms of graduate retention but very high unemployment, currently 10%. It's interesting some of the schemes they have for attracting ex-Sardinians back. While away I got an email through from EQUAL works an organisation that flag up good practice that the funding has generated (the ESF EQUAL funding that funded the Agender project). I was a little surprised to see this little gem (apparently I don't look like this in real-life... I do hope not).

Other things that are bubbling under and which I will no doubt mention in more depth soon are the 'post graduate researcher teaching course' I am doing, a possible cross-faculty project I have some involvement in and service design - a new project for the university which I am learning more about.

And breath....oh yes my PhD 14 x hours per week. I think my daughter thinks my laptop is attached to me!

Thinking

2007-04-17T17:05:00.000+01:00

Apologies for previous post it probably made little sense to anyone other than those involved a sort of 'had to be there' type thing. Anyway I have subsequently had some thoughts on how my blog can help facilitate and maybe be a kind of layman's version of my PhD. I have had over the last couple of years some extremely useful feedback from folks on the general stream of consciousness that seems to make its way onto these 'pages' I have also found it a useful place to direct people when my university webpage is really rather static and gives only a snapshot of what I am working on (although a much more recent pic). Still I thought to get my head into gear and think through how I might use this blog for the purpose of my PhD I would start by cataloguing where I am now and where I am struggling and what will happen next. Although I didn't think this was going to be a 'diary' type thing I think it may turn into one.

Incidentally is it just me or does Safari not like the spell check in blogger?

It is public!

2007-04-17T12:27:00.000+01:00

Some time ago I pondered on the pros and cons of blogging from a researchers, even academics, perspective and on the reluctance of some colleagues to engage in the blogging world. Today I have been reminded of something key to this argument that is your blog is public. Now I try to be reasonably careful with what I write (grammar and punctuation I know are problematic) and I am aware of anyone (or please someone) being my audience. So far so good.

However this morning I was reminded of how what one writes can be construed or misconstrued by the reader reading. Apparently according to one such reader I'd previously referred to it as an 'impromptu PhD'. I couldn't recall writing this or for one moment considering it even vaguely impromptu on the basis that it took a good couple of years to settle on a subject which I felt sufficiently interested in to spend (fingers-crossed) 3 years working on.

Anyway looking back over my previous postings I noticed this:

'An example of this impromptu PhD chat came yesterday'
Women and Men again, Wednesday, August 23, 2006

So I did say it. However for clarification I was referring to the 'impromptu' conversations I was having all over the place at any given tome with anyone who happened to look even vaguely interested about my PhD. So there we have it - vindicated. I do see my PhD as 2nd only to parenthood or there abouts after all.

Now what about this blog? I need to figure out if I am going to continue with it and what role it plays in my PhD.

Creative industries - belch

2007-03-02T17:06:00.000Z

Blah blah blah Is it possible to have audio indigestion? The Creative Industries! Possibly the most over used term, one I myself use way too often and one I can't help feeling is kind of like the emperors new clothes. But then this has been said all before. Researchers who were once wax lyrical about the possibilities (and I am not denying they exist) of this growing sector now pour scorn as yet another 'creative quarter' emerges or portal purports to be a 'one-stop-shop' for some aspect or other of the sector.

Rant over

I will move onto something far more constructive shortly.

New Year, fresh start

2007-01-03T09:46:00.000Z

So another year begins and as usual the new year provides an opportunity for reflection and future speculation. Looking back over the last year I started by reading my last new years blog and noticed I'd made some resolutions which I imagined were quickly forgotten, but here they are and here's what happened:

1. PhD - get started
Yeah!! I got started finally - settled on 'Does gender have an influence in entrepreneurship in the creative industries?' or something like that struggling somewhat with my questions - but more about this soon, much background and literature review stuff underway/done but relevant articles, academic or otherwise would be gratefully received.

Down side: have acquired reading glasses too much squinting at screen and arms not long enough

2. keep on blogging
Well I did some....Admittedly not as much as I'd have liked as the feedback and contacts made are really useful as is the committing thoughts to writing.

3. Network - make connections get the whole 'linked in' thing working for me properly
Well this is an interesting one, I seriously had my head down last year, have probably never worked so hard in some aspects this hermit like activity doesn't lend itself so well to networking but in a job where you are constantly coming into contact with people I'd like to think some areas have strengthened and some have inevitably been let go.

This time last year I was heavily involved in the organisation of the first ' Creative Enterprise conference' by UCE Birmingham (my work place), this went well and lead to a number of national connections being made, especially with in the research community interested in this area. Later in the year I had similar involvement in a smaller conference specifically targeting researchers and those interested in 'Female entrepreneurship'.

Other interesting connections have been through my Agender work where I chair a transnational working group looking at:
Women in non-traditional employment' this has offered some fantastic opportunities to network with European partners from: Catalonia, Germany's Rhur region, Sardinia and Milan.

So apart from keeping up my blogging I did okay with my resolutions so will think of some more for 2007.

For now Happy New Year and here's hoping 2007 proves peaceful, prosperous, exciting and satisfying for us all.

Writing writing writing

2006-10-06T16:22:00.000+01:00

Being a researcher (which I thoroughly enjoy incidentally) seems to go something like this: Have an idea, read, read, read then read a bit more, figure out whether your idea has been done before, go a head and pilot your idea (i.e ask some people some questions about some stuff), read a bit more, analyse the answers to the questions figure out how they fit with what other people say and think, have some of your own ideas, read a lot more and then write, write, write and write a bit more with intermittent reading.

Now for someone like me who went to Art School and struggled a little with English, Grammar etc this writing bit can be tough. However this research gig is giving me no end of practice and I am delighted to have received, today, a copy of the most recent edition of Education and Training (a refereed, academic journal no less) where on page 518 can be found:

Enterprise curriculum for creative industries students; an exploration of current issues and attitudes

Written by myself and co-authored by Annette Naudin, the recently appointed lecturer for Screen Media Lab and BIAD's MA in Media Enterprise, of which I am the researcher - capturing the journey of the students.This paper highlights some of the key issues and features of creative industries curriculum related to enterprise and entrepreneurship, taking as it's basis the findings from our Creative Enterprise Conference way back in January 2006 - check back for an update as a new paper is in the pipeline following up on some of these findings....
As ever any feedback welcome.
C

Women and Men again

2006-08-23T09:43:00.000+01:00

Having finally got around to applying for my PhD, I find myself almost incessantly thinking about the possibilities and realise I am often high jacking conversations. My proposed research area is 'The role of gender on entrepreneurship in the creative industries' - you may recall earlier postings which cite a pilot study that I carried out in the West Midlands.

An example of this impromtu PhD chat came yesterday while working on the Agender project, which seeks to break down barriers and gender inequality in non-traditional fields, I met with a film crew, some of whom were beneficiaries and some of whom were film makers. We were recording some footage about men into caring profession but the ongoing conversation was all about the sector that the film-makers found themselves in and a very insightful conversation it was to.

The film makers, both male, highlighted a number of issues:
1. In their opinion women make far better negotiators and producers, they are less ego driven so more inclined to manage the projects better.
2. Going into a meeting in order to get funding worked better if you had a mixed team (although one of the men cited a number of occasions when working with his female partner, funders preferred to deal with him when negotiating got to a certain point, even though by his own admission she was actually much better equipped than he at these types of negotiations.)
3. They both identified that it was a very tough industry and felt that it was more so for women' they have to make a choice they either have children or not, but it is much harder for them if they do'.
4. They both said they came across a lot women working in the sector, however a bit of digging around and like my small sample identified, a great deal of women work in the sector but few run businesses. Interestingly they felt that a lot of women were responsible for distributing public funds to the sector.

So anyway these are just some insights offered, but for me the useful part of this discussion was it helped me to think about how I might capture the different genders attitudes to one another within this sector and their perceptions of the role of gender with in the sector.

Conferences

2006-08-23T09:34:00.000+01:00

Later in the year I will be off to the ISBE conference, as are many of my colleagues. This annual national conference is the place for all things related to small business and entrepreneurship. All things being equal I will be presenting a paper on the pilot study of female entrepreneurs in the creative industries - which copyright dependent I will make available from this blog.

Creative Industires Women in business

2006-05-26T10:29:00.000+01:00

Again another great stretch of time has passed since I last posted. This is something to do with spending the whole of April in New Zealand and Germany and taking a little longer than anticipated to get back into the swing of blogging - still enough excuses!

Although I have not been blogging I have been heavily involved in writing up some of the findings of recent research. As reasonably new to this whole research gig I can tell you that academic writing is hard (for me at least) and hugely time consuming this is mainly due to the amount of reading, understanding, salient point finding and then re-writing that is required. But I could go on and on about this - it is something I feel I am only really just getting the hang of and understanding the merit of the depth of literature review and rigour required.

More interestingly, perhaps, than my ponderings on writing are what I/we have been reporting on. One of the papers looks at some of the initial finding of a piece of research I've been involved in over the last twelve months which looks at female entrepreneurship in the creative industries. This has been for me a fascinating study into an area I have personal experience of and in some ways proved to back up all of the things I ever new about this sector, briefly these comprise of issues around friendship, networks, the night-time economy and fluid teams. Of course you'll have to wait for the paper to be published (if ever).

What was unexpected for me was how hard it proved to be to find the women. I was looking for women across the sector who were running established businesses (with employees and trading more than a year). This proved to be much harder than anticipated. Subsequent research has born out this initial revealing finding. Women are indeed under-represented in the sector in terms of business owners for example in Birmingham (UK) only 17% of businesses in the film and TV sub-sector are run by women. This is not to say this is the case across the country or sector but is certainly indicative of the situation I came across.

Anyway that is all for now just a little food for thought. Why are there so few women running businesses in the sector and does it matter?

Yikes I'm on a roll

2006-03-10T11:08:00.000Z

Not quite.

Just wanted to mention, briefly, another blog of mine that might be of interest to some of you.

Another project I am working on called Agender (an EQUAL ESF project) have positively encouraged the use of blogging as an ongoing part of the research process (part of a wider desire for complete transparency). I really welcome this approach as having worked on public funded research projects in the past I have always found the line between what is public, when does it become public and what is owned by the funders rather ambiguous.

This approach also offers me the opportunity to get feedback, provides an ongoing platform to share idea with other partners in the project and hopefully contributes to the wider learning of the partnership as we go rather than a just a weighty report at the end.

Anyway I'm in danger of ranting. The project itself is looking at non-traditional job roles e.g: women into construction, IT , software design and men into childcare - it's early days but do take a look Agender Blog.

Tell me a story

2006-03-10T10:44:00.000Z

Forgive me dear Blog reader but it has been over a month since my last posting. Not quite sure what happened, blogging fatigue maybe? I'm trying very hard to find my blogging mojo so in an attempt to break this negative cylce of low content production I'll just start writing and see what happens........

Maybe I'll tell you about some stories. In an earlier post I questioned my own creative output, being a researcher and all (hey I have a fine art degree it matters...ok). Well some useful responses courtesy, I belive, of Antonio Gould made me examine this whole thing a little bit more and reminded me that within research there is always the opportunity to take a creative approach, not to mention the endless writing that seems to accompany it.........not always so creative.

But here's the thing. Recently I have ben using a narrative methodology in my rsearch, in two ways both eliciting stories that people have been told and also having folks tell me their own experience as a story, this, in particular, I find extremely interesitng (it helps that I am genuinly interested in hearing about people - read nosey if you like). What I have discovered with this approach is that amongst other things it helps with the following things:

Both you and the interviewee identify the most salient points through the story
Everyone understands stories, so it is a nice common curreny between interviewer, interviee and future reader
It helps you find out how an orgnaisation/individual has made sense of a situation

I recently spoke to a senior colleague who introduced me to this approcah, he also makes use of drawing and all mannor of other creative means to understand and explore human and organsiational experiences.To this end I will be attending some regular workshops to try to get my head around these other methodolgies and hopefully will be testing them out on some folks.

My next step is how to make the writing really interesting to read (and I don't mean this blog, I'm hoping the posts are short enough not to get too dull)....and to think about other methods of disseminating my research findings.

Pictures and Surveys

2006-02-02T17:28:00.000Z

Here is one of the only reasonable pictures that I took at our event at the Custard factory last week. Unfortunatly none of them came out too well, but this gives a bit of a feel for the day. We have recently sent out a brief survey to all delegates to gauge current attitudes towards the creative enterprise agenda. This will be included in the final report which will be available via Media Content Lab's website soonish.

If you would like to contribute to this survey then please email responses to the following questions:

1. How would you describe your role within this field?

2. What is your attitude towards educating Creative Industry students in enterprise?

3. What could Higher Education be doing to better support Creative Industry students and graduate progression into self-employment and/or entrepreneurship?

4. How would you like to see the field of creative enterprise education progress?

5. What would be a useful tool to help you learn more about this field? (e.g. website, email discussion list, newsletter)

6. Would you be interested in attending a follow-up conference (2007) to explore and develop some of the themes relevant to this topic?

7. Do you have any comments relating to aspects not covered above?

Creative Entrepreneurs from Creative Students

2006-01-26T17:41:00.000Z

Well it's the day after what proved to be a pretty successful event. Antonio Gould one of our panellists and Director of 3form a local Internet company has posted this very positive account of the day on his newish blog. Overall I found the occasion very positive with some clear next steps for how as a community of interest we might all start working together i,e those folks with an interest in educating creatives in enterprise. For me there was a whole host of new ideas that came out of the event and really by way of reminding myself here is a bullet list of future posts I will attempt to write from things that came up from the day:

1. Do creative people learn differently? Or is just that they are taught differently?
2. What can Business Schools learn from Arts Schools in terms of experiential learning for future entrepreneurs: i.e brief, self management, critique
3. With the increasing lack of failure in HE (i.e no one fails anything anymore) is being a student detrimental to developing your enterprising abilities. (i.e failure, coping with failure/rejection is part and parcel of the real world for creative Industries).

There are many more but I will try to get back to these soon. There will also be a longer and more comprehensive breakdown of the conference coming soon/tomorrow.

Are creative people entrepreneurs? 1st attempt

2006-01-22T21:30:00.000Z

Here I am making a brief examination of how the four or was it five? aforementioned characteristics of entrepreneurship fit with the profile of creative industries people.

Entrepreneurs are prepared to take risks

This got me thinking. Are all folks that go through creative industry type courses* entrepreneurs? Based on the highly competitive fields that we are training people for aren't those creative individuals taking a risk on their own talent, future employment, financial and not to mention emotional well-being (i.e if it doesn't work out and it doesn't always). Do they make an investment in their talent and hope it pays dividends?

The Entrepreneur manages resources, knowledge and power (as opposed to being an employee and having those things managed by other people)

Levels of self-employment within the creative sector are very high. In some sectors as many as 80%* of individuals are self-employed. With over 42%* of creative industry graduates having had some level of self-employment in the first five years of graduating.

Doesn't sound like employee material to me ..although note to self :- must remember to ask esteemed colleague about entrepreneurship through necessity, survival...When that is the only employment option!

They are in pursuit of profit (although this may come in the form of something other than money) but lead us to question how do we measure 'other' types of profit?
Now this is a strange one, you see and this is anecdotal, from my own experience and backed up by a series of recent interviews. The motivations for people within these sectors are often around full-filling a creative need, not being an employee, not selling out or giving up, doing a better design, building a bigger profile, being 'known' for being good at what they do. The motivation is never cited as being financial although all recognise that this is a requirement of staying in business and continuing to do what they want to do. In terms of this profiting them I need to think about this one.

Personal satisfaction is a major motivator
As above - this is a major motivational factor in this sector and a major reason for folks pursuing the self-employment route.

Their relationship to opportunity: they tend to either seek it, create it or recognise it and presumably exploit it!
In a recent piece of research I was involved in, that looked at social inclusion in the creative industries, one of the major barriers to beneficiaries (individuals who took part in the project) becoming or sustaining self-employment was there inability to do any of the above, sometimes these were the most talented individuals but there inability to exploit, recognise, or pursue opportunities set them apart from others. There maybe many reasons for this but what it did identify was that in this sector where talent is at such a high premium without the opportunity its not worth having. Incidentally the groups who were targeted for that piece of research were from communities who were vastly under-represented in the creative industries and had even lower levels of self-employment.

* I will dig out the references for these stats, mainly from the Destinations and Reflections report (1999)

5 days to go!

2006-01-20T16:36:00.000Z

Ladies and Gentlemen there are now just 5 days until the Creative enterprise event I and some colleagues from our faculty of Art and Design are organising. I will be feeding back shortly afterwards, We have had an overwhelming response from potential delegates and have filled (if they all turn up) each of the Custard Factory theatres seats and a reserve list of 20! This will be a busy day and very timely with the recent publishing of the Cox Review which will undoubtedly get some airplay next Wednesday. This review is definitly worth a read, especially as the role of higher education in promoting creativity and enterprise is heavily featured.

Questions answered? sort of

2006-01-18T16:16:00.000Z

The other evening, following a long day at work, I and some fellow colleagues trundled down the corridors and passageways of our building to attend a workshop lead by our esteemed colleague and widely acknowledged expert on the subject of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, Dr Harry Matlay, Professor of Small Business and Enterprise Development. What followed proved to be a highly entertaining and even a little challenging dipping of the toes into the often complex world of entrepreneurship theory (?)

In this post I will just cover the event, as I saw it (I would like to say for the record that this is my interpretation and the messages I took from it), what happened etc and in a later post I hope to apply some of the stuff that was spoken about and hazard some observations as to how it fits with the Creative Industries sector.

The event was aptly named 'What is Entrepreneurship?' couldn't have come at a better time for me (see earlier post 'entrepre-what?' post) as this has been a question arising again and again since I got involved in this whole creative enterprise gig.

So here's where we got to, it's worth saying that, and Harry eluded to this, that we were somewhat covering the basics and like so many things with every answer came more questions, the answers of which are apparently being saved for a future event.

This was very much a participatory event and throughout we were asked to question our perceptions of what constitutes an entrepreneur:
Is Entrepreneurship about: Risk, state of mind, profit?

Harry went on to describe some 'Rules' of entrepreneurship at all times questioning our understanding against his and acknowledging that there are many opposing views as to what entrepreneurial traits are. But apparently entrepreneurs amongst other things tend to exhibit the following:

- Entrepreneurs are prepared to take risks
- The Entrepreneur manages resources, knowledge and power (as opposed to being an employee and having those things managed by other people)
- They are in pursuit of profit (although this may come in the form of something other than money and lead us to question how do we measure 'other' types of profit? – a point I will be re-visiting)
- Personal satisfaction is a major motivator
- Their relationship to opportunity: they tend to either: seek it, create it or recognise it and presumably exploit it

With a lively audience there was plenty of debate and disagreement around each of these issues and plenty of food for thought for me about the relationship between these attributes and folks from our sector. Accompanying this workshop was a thoroughly researched, well written and apparently award winning paper by Dr Matlay entitled: Researching entrepreneurship and education Part 1: what is entrepreneurship and does it matter? This paper offered up many more potential posts for this blog so watch this space!

New Year

2005-12-29T11:00:00.000Z

Happy New Year etc and for me some new years resoloutions:

1. Phd - get started

2. keep on blogging

3. Network - make connections get the whole 'linked in' thing working for me properly

Entre pre what?

2005-12-21T16:53:00.000Z

Okay so last week at a rather stimulating 'away day' with the team, we touched on, but didn't get too involved in, the definition of an Entrepreneur. Over the last couple of months I've attended several conferences were the words 'enterprise' 'entrepreneurship' 'freelancer' 'self-employed' and 'business owner' seem to have been used interchangeably. So anyway this day I guess I was doing that same such thing in relation to the creative industries (two other heavily used words) and my esteemed colleague (prof) was quick to point out my inappropriate use of the word entrepreneur. Based on this I have decided I need to apply some rigour to my use of language, but here is where I was coming from.

Firstly here is my original home spun version of what I had always considered an entrepreneur.

It all started with when I was about 12 and my dad described Arthur Daley (Minder, Thames Television) as an 'entrepreneur' he, my dad, described an entrepreneur as someone who sought and exploited opportunities in order to make money (or something like that) the general vibe was someone who was an opportunist, motivated ostensibly by making a reasonably speedy return on their investment (usually from a lock-up in south London).

As I got older I started to think of entrepreneurship as something pretty seedy, this was the 80's after all and my naive left wing, art school trained views lead me to distrust the commercial world and the money crabbing greedy 'entrepreneurs' I perceived as benefiting from Thatcherite Britain...where am I going with this?

Anyway it took me a long time to get over this view, some how as an artist if you did 'commercial' work you had some how sold out. But hang on. As an artist I did pretty quickly get into the commercial world after all I had ideas and opportunities that I needed to exploit, that were timely, that might just serve to raise my profile or might serve any number of 'other' purposes. But was this activity entrepreneurial? When a student leaves art, design, drama, music college and they find they have to work as a freelancer do they not need to exhibit entrepreneurial traits? seeking and exploiting opportunities in order to succeed in a crowded and competitive market?

Well this is all fair and good but it's just me expressing some thoughts and opinions and in the academic world that isn't sufficient. There are definitions, whole strands of academic scholarship devoted to the subject and here I will try and bring to you some of those definitions and ideas as I discover them. You might also wonder whether or not the definitions are important. I am suspending judgement until I find out a little more but my main focus for this is to questions whether or not individuals working in the creative industries, whether they be self-employed, just freelancers or running small companies are actually entrepreneurs?

Technorati Tags: Creativity, Enterprise,
Education,
Entrepreneurship,
Internet,
Creative Industries, Business,

Mini Conference

2005-12-17T22:10:00.000Z

I spend a day a week seconded to our Faculty of Art and Design, as well as working the research strand of their new media enterprise MA I am helping them to organise an event looking at Enterprise curriculum in Higher Education for Creative Industries. I've been responsible for generating the content of the day and so far it's looking pretty interesting. Rather than duplicate it all take a look at Media Content labs website, this is the department with in the faculty running this course. It's also quite a unique collaboration between the business school and Art School, quite appropriate for something looking at Creative Enterprise. I'll keep you all posted as this develops. For your diary it's 25th January 2006 in Birmingham UK

Technorati Tags: Creativity, Event, Art, Curriculum, Enterprise,

I have a hunch...

2005-12-12T13:56:00.000Z

Now I know I've mentioned this before but what started as a vague hunch is transforming into an idea or an opinion at least. Okay so first of all let me set the scene it's Wolverhampton 1991-1994, School of Art and Design 7th floor, (the school of fine art) off a long corridor there are light and airy (often cold in winter) rooms (I will refer to them as studios) in each studio there are between 1 and 6 students sometimes the studio is full, sometimes empty. Each student has their own space, their studio space.

Unlike most students these are not governed by a rigid timetable of lectures, essay deadlines and workshops. Instead they are given briefs to work to, often devised through negotiation with their lecturer (client) and then they are left to get on with it. Although the lecturer will appear from time to time over the coming weeks/months the student will only get to see him/her if they schedule an appointment (meeting). But for the most part they will get on with their work, will require self-discipline and motivation and will often seek the support of their fellow students(colleagues, networks)to bounce ideas around and brain storm.

At an agreed time the groups of students will present their work for critique, they will be required to present to a group of fellow students and lecturer (colleagues and clients) and be prepared to defend the rigor of their work. They may also be required to find an external avenue for presenting this work (a gallery space), requiring negotiating with external groups and orgnaisations.

Okay so what's my point? Well this is a brief outline of the type of education I experienced. And experience is the right word, the transition from Art school to the real world, although painful in some ways was quite straight forward. Well what did I need? Oh yes a studio space (check), some clients (check), some self-discipline and motivation(Check, check). My point is that this sort of experiential learning is not so far removed from the idea of an incubation unit.

The Creative Industries have very high levels of self-employment and endeavours, based on this model, I wonder, is it that suprising?

What is the role of blogging in research?

2005-12-05T20:53:00.000Z

Following on from my previous post I am trying to get a consensus of some sort as to what the role of blogging is within research. With Creative enterprise I intend to gradually create a place for ideas and gradually build links with others, encourage others to comment and contribute and in so doing contribute to my research. But how does this fit with the regular research process?

Okay in my reasonably limited experience there seems to be quite a lot of secrecy around people's research, with embargoes on findings and obsessions with ownership until the last piece of analysis is complete. Now I know that this is often stipulated by funding bodies, but for someone who worked in internet companies and always talked about the virtues of open source and open philosophies to content distribution the whole embargo thing seems counter intuitive.

I'm not suggesting that one has all raw data online but a certain openness with issues that arise etc.. could offer opportunities.

Maybe I'm missing something?

In need of focus

2005-12-05T19:47:00.000Z

This might be a bit off topic - but I have some concerns that arose today:

As someone who is relativly new to this academic gig I am just getting used to the way things are done. The type of research I'm involved in seems, often, like reportage.... let me explain.... a colleague and I were talking about this today. I identified a feeling I've had while involved in this work with the creative industries it often goes something like this:

'I used to be someone who created stuff and now I am someone who reports on other people creating stuff'

A part from seeming somewhat depressing, I wanted to get to something else, I mean research in other fields is often about innovation, discovering things and creating things. So my question to myself is:

'how am I innovating? what am I creating?'

What are we trying to fix?

2005-11-26T21:29:00.000Z

While involved in all this work to develop curriculum for teaching creative industry type students how to run businesses and be more enterprising, I keep asking myself: 'what are we trying to fix here? ' now I might be doing myself out of a job here, but with 42% of graduates from this sector having some level of self-employment in the first 5 years, and realise this is much higher than other sectors, then well, isn't something going right? Now don't get me wrong there are people who do need more advice, support, who maybe lack confidence, role models, finance or self-esteem. But surely the question should not be what can we teach the creative industries but what can they teach other sectors? I have some ideas about this relating to the nature and style of teaching on arts courses and will try to get my thoughts together about this for a future posting....

ISBE 2005

2005-10-30T22:29:00.000Z

The Institute of Small Business and entrepreneurship have their annual conference coming up. This year sees it taking place in Blackpool on the 1st-3rd Nov. I'll be delivering a paper called 'Sustainable Inclusion' based on a project I've been involved in and looking at the work of a couple of creative/cultural organisation's who have been working towards greater inclusion and diversity. As usual I'm obsessed with the sustainability of work that has short-term funding and how the knowledge/learning gained embeds in the culture of the organisation and whether this is evident in their future approach. I'm also on the look out for other folks doing creative industry enterprise stuff.....I'll let you know how the conference goes

Tuesday in Manchester

2005-10-26T08:56:00.000+01:00

Ok so yesterday I got up early, made may way to Manchester, got very rained on and spent the day listening to the great and good talking about Enterprise and Creative places. This was the Cambridge MIT summit. For me this was a day of stimulating and thought provoking talks. Here are some of my observations from the day - there may be more:

Diversity was a key issue that came up again and again, numerous research cited diversity as one of the key drivers for creativity and 'happy' citizens, but at this conference I had to ask the question; where were the black people? Is it okay to ask the question, open up the dialogue about diversity and inclusion to such a homogenous audience. For me I felt acutely aware of the non-inclusivity of academia. I was reminded of very white, male dominated conference I'd been to last year were the 'old' boys network' had been positively tangible. I don't wish to criticise anyone but having just spent the last three years researching organisational diversification and social inclusion in the creative industries I can't help wondering when the wider academic world is going to 'walk the walk'. I cant help wondering how different the debate might have been would have been had the audience and speakers been more diverse. I did speak briefly with Richard Florida about this and it was something he had been aware of throughout the day and commented that the final panel of speakers was also male dominated, with just Kirsty Wark who was ultimately acting as a facilitator.

It was great to hear Anthony H Wilson tell the story of the Manchester music scene. As someone who did their growing up, teen age and student years through this time, I loved hearing his story and felt aware of the strangeness of part of my own experience and a time I felt I really lived through being consigned to history. Not to mention being a Londoner and the whole Manchester music thing being a rather bitter pill to swallow. I remember going to clubs in London who were trying to introduce house music and everyone desperate to have their rare groove and funky beats back on ... we just didn't get it like Manchester did.

I should also say that throughout that time I and many of my friends made regular trips to Manchester just to go to the Hacienda - so Tony thanks for the memories..

I will respond to Richard Florida's speech in a later when I've had more time to digest it all.

Creative what?

2005-10-24T12:53:00.000+01:00

Creative industries what are they anyway?

I've been in them one way or another since I was born. My mother an artist and art teacher, my father a graphic designer, my brother, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins all artists, architects, computer designers, engineers, map makers, actors, illustrators, jazz musicians or stain glass window painters.....what chance did I stand? With a strict diet of Ballet, Modern, Jazz and tap from age 4 and paper and scissors (my choice apparently) as toys, and batique and pottery as 'at home activities' what was I supposed to think the world was really like?

So having finally given up on becoming a Ballerina age 15 (it wasn't that I was that bad just got interested in other stuff (read boys) and didn't have the required drive to really go there) I moved onto being an artist, five years of college and Art school, two years of being a very poor, working for free artist (read waitress) and 5-6 years of working with my other half in a new media and internet consultancy I feel I have a perspective on these things.

For the last couple of years through employment choices I have found myself heavily involved in the city-wide (Birmingham UK) drive to develop the Creative industries. But I have a problem. I mean I know what they mean - the DCMS have there definitions and we all go by them. Apparently the creative industries are made up of some 13 sub-sectors including everyone involved from fine artists through to advertisers, to software designers. My concern is that Creative insutries as a 'catch all' includes some very varied occupations. In supporting and nurturing these professions are we lumping them altogether? Is it possible that really their needs might all be quite different?

I don't know the answers to this...yet

Enterprise curriculum

2005-10-24T12:47:00.000+01:00

I work in a business school but am seconded a day a week to work with our faculty of Art and Design, together we are organising an event to investigate and work through the issues of enterprise curriculum for higher education creative industries courses. The event is due to take place on the 25th January 2006 in Birmingham (UK) - I'll be keeping you posted on how this develops anyone wishing to participate please email me.

Phd Conundrums

2005-10-24T01:04:00.000+01:00

For the last year colleagues have been encouraging me to start my PhD. But with short term contracts and plenty of ambiguity around my future working status I'm more than a little afraid of making the time commitment. Then there's the big question - Which of my many research interests is going to keep me interested for 4 odd years! But as a very dear colleague reminded me over coffee this morning;' all the time I'm thinking about the time is passing' and he's right I could be a year into it if I'd applied when it first became an option.

So here's the plan. As I've said tomorrow I'll go to Manchester as planned. I'll take my laptop, not as planned. I'll use the three hours I'll be on a train to and from the conference to really figure out what my PhD is going to be about. And then I'll apply. You see time is my other issue. With a young child and ever increasing guilt about how I split my time between work and home-life I want the PhD to ideally be part of my work-life and not the latter. But work/life balance is another post for another day.

Coming soon

2005-10-23T21:30:00.000+01:00

Tuesday I'm on my way north to the Cambridge MIT summit in Manchester (UK) to see Richard Florida speak. As someone who's books have been pretty influential on my own work and thinking in the last few years I'm really looking forward to this. Will report back.

What's it all about?

2005-10-23T21:19:00.000+01:00

Welcome to Creative Enterprise. As the name, I hope, suggests this is my area of interest, below I've bulleted my main research areas. But as much as anything I'll be trying to figure out what creative enterprise actually means?

So briefy just to set the seen

My research interests:

- Social Inclusion in the creative industries - what are the barriers to disenfranchised citizens to accessing employment and self-employment in this growing sector? And why is it not as diverse as one might anticipate?
- Graduate entrepreneurship in the creative industries - What is the responsibility of HE in supporting under and post graduates into self-employment? Capturing the journey into self-employment/starting a business - case studies. Including a specific study looking at female entrepreneurship in the creative industries - case studies across the thirteen sub-sectors identified by the DCMS
- Organisational diversification - a piece of developing research capturing the journeys of SME's in the creative industries as they try to diversify their work forces, audiences and markets.
- Creative cities and spaces - how all the above stuff fits into creating a fabulous and creative place to live.
- Business succession planning and non-traditional gender roles (these are two other projects I have some involvement in and tend to influence my main areas of interest - they may crop up from time to time.

I'm planning to use this blog as an external space to explore some of the thoughts and issues I come across in my day job (university researcher) and really try to help focus my mind on what work is the most interesting to pursue. I will also report on some of the events and stuff I go to and freelance jobs I work on.

Apologies in advance this stuff will be rough cut I don't intend to get too precious about spelling, typo's and generally badly formed ideas. I just want a place to get it all down. Constructive contributions welcome.