My blog is 3

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?

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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