Stef Lewandowski
Create something every day

Last night we ran the second in Creative Republic’s events around a creative response to the Big City Plan based around defining a “Fantasy brief for a Creative Director for Birmingham”.

Unfortunately, our planned speaker (the designer Michael Wolff) was ill and unable to attend. We were warned that might be the case the day before, so I came up with a ‘Plan B’ just in case.

Plan B turned out to be quite interesting in itself and ended up causing some discussion and debate that I hope will inform a future event when Michael returns to Birmingham.

All the photos from the event

I gave a talk to kick things off

The following is a summary of the brief talk that I gave to kick off the event, with sixty or so people present at the new Fazely Street Studios in Digbeth. It was intended as a provocation, and a call to action, asking some serious questions with the intention of generating debate and discussion which we could distill into a brief for a fantasy creative director.

Presentation with low quality audio

This presentation file includes some very low quality audio as a record of the event (we had technical trouble and had to use a laptop microphone in a very echoey space, with traffic and rain - headphones recommended).

The following is a summary of the presentation.

Along the way Alex Hughes illustrated the main points live on a flipchart, which I have included below.

A Birmingham Ambient Creativity Audit

When Professor Michael Parkinson produced his “Visioning Study” for the Big City Plan, he based it on a series of visits to and walks around the city. He flagged up lots of things that needed doing, things that were wrong, things that were right, and things that needed improvement. Interestingly at the time there were a lot of items on his ‘to do’ list that sat squarely with the creative and cultural industries of the city, or that would have an impact on improving how successful we are. Things like hang out spaces, signage, cultural venues, a festivals programme, visual expressions of culture and creativity being present in the city, developing a sense of place, developing a visual identity, place-making and so on.

A year later, when Michael Wolff spoke at a talk I chaired at the Plus Festival, he also mentioned how he was interested in how cities are changed and improved, but talked about it from a design perspective. The city as a machine. The brand of the city being the expression of how that machine works. He used the analogy of his work on the Audi logo - the actual work in developing a strong brand is not to do with how much time goes into the graphic design of an icon, but in distilling the essence of a company, finding out what it is about and simply putting a badge on it that reflects that essence and enables it to thrive. Audi builds great cars, so it has a strong brand, so it builds great cars.

Prior to his postponed talk Michael also took a trip around Birmingham, escorted by some of the board of Creative Republic, because he wanted to get a strong impression of the place, to inform his thinking about what ‘brand Birmingham’ is, and from that what our fantasy ‘creative director’ would do and why.

So I wanted to extend on that idea - I took my own trip around Birmingham and distilled it into what I am calling a Birmingham Ambient Creativity Audit.

The Rules

I took my camera, got in the car and pretended to be a tourist for a six hour walk around the city centre:

• Pretend to be visiting the city for the first time
• Pick a major car park as a starting point (in my case the Mailbox)
• Walk the city following the signage
• Seek out creativity
• Take photos

The aim was as a ‘tourist’ to form an opinion on the state of Birmingham’s creativity.

Along the way I took 500 photographs of what I found and they are all now online, roughly annotated and summarised here.

Navigation Street

I started out on the inappropriately named Navigation Street which had a few brand new buildings, which said to me that the city was being regenerated and new architecture was possible. But the signage that I encountered was quite random. Signs would take me down a street and then not link to others. There was no line of sight from one signpost to another. I’d go down cul-de-sacs, the signage would suddenly change in format, and I found myself getting lost easily. As a tourist I found it pretty frustrating.

The Highest City in the World?

A quirk of the strange navigation systems of the city.

Tat Nav

Navigating around the streets of the city you realise how little the city seems to care about you getting about. This is New Street - apparently a major thoroughfair, and while I was trying to find a map of the city so I could get from A to B, I had to stand in amongst the rubbish bags and bins whilst leaning against a tree with one hand. Lovely.

Cluttertastic

The city seems to revel in the idea of having as many signs as possible attached to things on the street. Everything was vying for my attention but little of it seemed to be of any practical use to anyone. The best example was a bunch of pointless street furniture blocking off what would otherwise be a lovely little square outside the Hippodrome. Why is all this stuff here?

Car is King

I got the distinct impression once I’d left the main pedestrian area that I was a second class citizen because I wasn’t behind the wheel of a car. In fact, I started feeling hemmed in by the cage-like maze of fences that I had to navigate. Getting from A to B was definetly via C, D and E along the way. To get from the Bullring to the Hippodrome for instance, I ended up completely lost after following a sign saying Theatres which instead lead to a dingy underpass. I’m guessing the car drivers don’t have that problem - the signs seemed to be a lot better for them.

Tourist Disinformation

I thought I’d go and buy a ticket for a show perhaps, so I followed the signs up New Street for the tourist information centre, only to find myself at Bullring where the signs promptly stopped. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted something down an alleyway. Can you see it?

Ah - obviously the backwards letter ‘i’ is an information centre. Lucky I had a zoom lens on me.

And these must be the public toilets.

They sell a great range of tat.

And I wasn’t impressed on basically being shown the tradesman’s entrance to the city.

There’s only one word for it.

But Isn’t Selfridges Pretty

So I thought I’d go and check out the famous Selfridges building that is the icon image that I associate with Birmingham (being from outside the city and all that). But after being told that I wasn’t allowed to take any photos in the Bullring (I’m guessing that all terrorists carry large SLR cameras rather than high rees cameraphones to be more discreet) I came outside to find that this thing that the city is so proud of is just hemmed in by railings and there’s actually very little point in walking near it because there’s nothing to do over there.

So aside from shops there’s just nothing to do in this part of town I realised.

I’d also managed to walk from the Mailbox, all the way down New Street, through the entire of the Bullring without seeing a single piece of information about anything that might be happening culturally in the city just on the street. All there were were parochial self-congratulatory posters about education, pleas to foster kids, a bunch of sporting events happening next months and not much else.

Basically, there’s nothing going on the city, was my conclusion at this point.

Bullring = Boring

Custard Factory which way?

So in advance I’d heard about this great place called the Custard Factory so I thought I’d try and find my way there. But there aren’t any signs from this part of town.

Follow the stickers instead

But I realised that actually there were a few hints - the backs of the signs were peppered with stickers. So I followed them, hoping they would take me in the right direction. I guessed right! The best way to get to the Custard Factory is to follow them. The trouble is that you end up in the middle of an industrial area where everything is telling you “You have gone the wrong way!” “Turn back!” “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here”. A woman walks past clutching her handbag. A guy eyes up my SLR. I walk on a little faster. Even when I reach the Custard Factory on the wrong side of the road, there’s no signs to tell me where it is and it’s covered in workmen. Oh… it’s that alleyway!

Don’t Venture into Digbeth

I realised that basically Digbeth must only be for the locals, so I turned back. I mean - I should have taken the hint what with all the stop signs, and even sets of signposts that just point back into the city centre. This isn’t a place you’re supposed to go, right?

Go to the Ice Rink instead

I found more signs for the Ice Rink than the Custard Factory so I thought I’d give it a try.

Apparently it’s “More than just an Ice Rink” - it’s a _closed_ Ice Rink.

So where can we hang out?

I tried to find some other places that I’d like to hang out. I found a bit of grass at the back of a Church. But as soon as I arrived a policeman turned up on his bike and just sat there staring at some other people who were hanging out on the bench. I’d also seen lots of signs about “moving young people on”, so I thought I’d better just carry on. I don’t really like being stared at while I have a sandwich and read the paper.

Is someone watching me?

Actually, the more I walked around the more I realised that I was constantly being watched. Some bright spark had realised that the best way of getting new signage (that doesn’t match with the old stuff and is actually less useful at times), was to turn them into CCTV watch towers.  Not very friendly. I saw one of them had been tagged a few times too…

There were some signs of life - a floral trail with bizarre mashups of basket-weaving, flower arranging and fashion design. There were some cool sail things near a big round building. And a few attempts at public art here and there - some of which were pretty good. But I wasn’t getting a sense of place - what was this city about? It all looked very corporate and not at all like there were lots of artists and designers here doing cool stuff.

And the closest I got to a music poster or information on a gig for the first four hours was a poster about a new ’super club’. Sounded neat but I couldn’t find out who was playing or when.

After a while I found some great buildings, but they’d shut by the time I got there. I wish I’d known the Ikon was _that_ way instead of wasting my time trying to find the Ice Rink.

But even then I was seeing lots of stuff that was ‘corporate end’ - big productions and so on. It all felt very ‘hardware’ (buildings) not ’software’ (kids in berets).

What’s on?

(I’m jumping around in time here).

After four hours walking around the city I finally found my first poster advertising any cultural activity that I could actually go to in this city of a million people. I was so happy I started punching the air and sending messages on Twitter. I never thought I’d see the day when I would be jumping for joy at finding out that Dirty Dancing happens every Friday at a chain nightclub.

But seriously - why was it that I couldn’t find a single poster or piece of information about what was going on in the city? Everywhere else I’ve been in Europe seems pretty effective at letting you know there’s stuff happening. I guess there’s nothing happening in Birmingham, right? (Remember - I’m playing the fresh visitor here).

While I was at the Bullring I even tried their fancy information system which has loads of information about their SHOPS, and the jobs you can get in the SHOPS, and all the deals and such you can buy in the SHOPS.

But when you click the Events button, this is what you get. Hmm - a blank screen. I guess there really _isn’t_ anything going on in the city.

Isn’t Artsfest on soon?

(With apologies to Artsfest, but you do need to know this guys)

I’d heard that there was Europe’s biggest arts festival happening or something, but I think I must have been mistaken because there weren’t any posters, I managed to find a flyer in a gallery and a second of video on a TV in this nasty walkway bit up to the canalside bit, but I had to double check the date with the tourist info people, who told me it was already on and happening at the Art Gallery. Hmm. Confusing. I guess I must have been wrong.

In a city of this size I was expecting a festival to be happening every weekend, but it didn’t seem there was much going on at all. It does make you wonder that if this is a major event in the calendar, how are cultural events like this communicated to the city?

It left me thinking - is live music still alive?

And that’s when I found my first live music advert! Woohoo! Oh hang on - that was last week. This was one of only three posters that I found in the whole of my trip that were in the public space. Weird.

But of course it’s still alive. It’s just completely hidden from view in the main area of town. I managed to find a gig to prove it. I liked the Yardbird and even stopped for a ‘pint’.

Indie culture - the independent, just do it, creative/cultural force I see in most other European cities seems to have been squashed out of the city.

It’s being deleted.

And my conclusion, playing the first time visitor is that sadly this city of one million people called Birmingham does not on first hand experience look or feel creative.

Nor does it look like there is a £1.1BN industry around creativity based here.

In the main city centre we are all but invisible, with clone town shops and brands being the order of the day, with little or no coverage of what the actual culture of the city is all about in any way visible to the untrained eye.

So… someone needs to sort it out…

To illustrate the point

Alex Hughes created some amusing and very quick images to illustrate some of these points. A few of my favourites:

View all of the illustrations | Alex Hughes

Then it was over to the room

We then gave the rest of the evening up to the people who were present to respond to the challenge I’d put down. Did they think this was fair? What should we do about these problems? And if we could give a brief to a fantasy creative director, what would be in it for each of these issues and ones we hadn’t discussed.

To be honest I was a little nervous that I’d gone too far with my scathing remarks, but we didn’t have much of a verbal conflict about them which surprised me. After a few clarifying questions and valid points about my less than scientific six hour study, a healthy debate kicked off around the tables.

It was light-hearted but productive, and after an hour each of the groups came back with some very exciting ideas in response. These will make up a whole blog post on their own, and they took the form of drawings on sheets of paper and a speaker from each table putting forward some very smart and innovative responses.

A few key issues that I am sure will come up once we’ve been through the responses and pulled them together into something coherent.

• Creative use of space - using what we have in a better way
• Connectivity - a psychogeographic map of the city?
• Stop whingeing - we aren’t Barcelona so stop pretending
• A Hub - a place in the centre that inspires culture
• Free the poster - find a way to allow posters and the ‘indie’ to thrive
• A festival a week - every saturday should be festival day
• Lobbying - if we all grouped together under one idea, could we make it happen?
• Reclaim the streets - make the streets less cluttered and easier to navigate
• History ain’t History - inject some creativity into the celebration of the city’s past

(These are the ones I can remember and I have interpreted and shortened - Helga has the actual sheets but I wanted to get this up, especially with Dave Harte and a few others already blogging).

In fact I take it back - each one of these subjects deserves a whole blog post, if not a whole event!

But that was a fantastic effort by some very talented people to think about this stuff and come back with

Thank you

I’m sure there was some disappointment at Michael not being able to make it, but actually I think that we now have some fantastic ideas and some thinking already done, that we can bring with us when we manage to rearrange his visit to the city, and it could potentially make that time all the more valuable.

As it turned out it was an enjoyable evening and we’d all really appreciate any negative feedback about the event (it ran on a bit, for example, I was a bit shouty, etc.).

And as one of still only a handful of events we’ve run - big thanks to everyone at Creative Republic for making it happen, especially Helga who I forgot to give a mention to on the night. Sorry.

A closing thought

Seeing the city through fresh eyes was an enlightening experience. Really attempting to see the place like a new visitor is challenging but I think was a valid thing to do at short notice.

What I would say is that the negative viewpoint I put forward in the presentation was intended as a source of debate, to spark discussion, and I am a strong supporter of the creative and cultural scene in the city. There are some things wrong, but there are a lot more things right. It would be great if we could fix a few of the simple things that could be done to really make the place better as a place of creativity and culture.

We started by looking at the idea of a fantasy Creative Director for the city following our previous event. But I put it to the audience on the night, that when the problems are put in front of us in such a way that we can easily see them, all it takes for each of us to try to fix them and we all become that creative director.

It’s a team effort - and as Rosie Kay said, if we chose one thing that needed doing above all others, and twenty of us were to write to our MPs and councillors about it, perhaps we’d be able to make that thing happen. Perhaps it’s as simple as that?

Perhaps we’re not talking about a single person here, so in terrible English:

Are we are all “the creative director of Birmingham”?